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Blocking as a Function of the Nature of Linguistic Representations: Where Psycholinguistics and Morphology Meet

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Competition in Inflection and Word-Formation

Part of the book series: Studies in Morphology ((SUMO,volume 5))

Abstract

This paper addresses the question to what extent morphological blocking in language is a rule-based phenomenon. We argue that language users do not operate with a blocking rule, but that a form preference emerges as a result of cognitive selection mechanisms in a neural network of linguistic information. The actual target form develops its own token frequency in a probabilistic process, known as Preferential Attachment. After some time and some generations, one form will develop a nearly absolute dominance with its own local token frequency. This model implies that there is no blocking as an active negative action, but only a local lemma specific frequency, built up by a stochastic Preferential Attachment process, which favours one of the theoretically possible forms and, as a consequence, ‘suppresses’ the other options.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=thief%2Cstealer&year_start=1980&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=10&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cthief%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cstealer%3B%2Cc0 (April 14, 2017).

  2. 2.

    To follow the mentioned example with three variants, it can be mentioned that Frisian has indeed a third alternative, next to -ens and -heid, namely -te: gruttens, grutheid and grutte all three exist, with substantial overlap in actual use and meaning.

  3. 3.

    See: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mouse (visited March 30, 2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German and Scandinavian Languages & Cultures, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Arjen P. Versloot

  2. Fryske Akademy, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

    Eric Hoekstra

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  1. Arjen P. Versloot
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Correspondence to Arjen P. Versloot .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Romance Languages, WU Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Franz Rainer

  2. Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Francesco Gardani

  3. Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Wolfgang U. Dressler

  4. Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Hans Christian Luschützky

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Versloot, A.P., Hoekstra, E. (2019). Blocking as a Function of the Nature of Linguistic Representations: Where Psycholinguistics and Morphology Meet. In: Rainer, F., Gardani, F., Dressler, W., Luschützky, H. (eds) Competition in Inflection and Word-Formation . Studies in Morphology, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02550-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02550-2_6

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