English plurals in Construction Morphology

This article demonstrates how the theory of Construction Morphology can account for both the regular and irregular plural forms of English nouns, while avoiding the problems Halle and Marantz have identified in the Extended Word-and-Paradigm Theory. The fact that Construction Morphology (CxM) allows representations ‘at varying degrees of abstraction’ (Goldberg 2013) enables it to account for the morphological structure of forms like oxen. The fact that it is non-derivational precludes incorrect forms like *oxens, while allowing correct forms like wives.

Source: Language Sciences - October 12, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research