Two Morphologies or One. Inflection Versus Word-Formation

2
Two Morphologies
or One?
Inection versus Word-formation
Andrew Spencer
1 Inection and Derivation as Lexical Relatedness
We traditionally distinguish two principal ways in which words can be

related through morphology. On the one hand the words print and printed
are related because they are both inected forms of the verb print. This is
inectional morphology. On the other hand, print and printable are related
because printable is an adjective which is derived from the verb print. This is
derivational morphology, sometimes also called word formation. To avoid
the ambiguity inherent in the term word we often use the term word-
form for the inected forms of a single word, and the term lexeme for the
more general notion of word, such as PRINT and PRINTABLE. A lexeme
can be thought of as an abstract characterization of all the linguistically
important properties of a word, much like the information found in a
dictionary entry.
The set {print, prints, printing, printed} comprises all the word-forms of
the verb lexeme PRINT. These word-forms, paired with their inectional
meanings, constitute the inection paradigm of the lexeme. On the other
hand, we would not normally want to say that printable is a form of the
verb to print (or vice versa)that is, the form printable is not a member of
the inectional paradigm of the lexeme PRINT. Instead, we generally say
that the lexeme PRINTABLE has been derived from the base lexeme PRINT
by a word formation process, or, more accurately, a process of lexeme
formation.
Compounding introduces additional types of lexical relatedness. The
lexemes HOUSE and BOAT are not related to each other but they are both
related to the compound nouns HOUSEBOAT and BOATHOUSE. Another
type of lexical relatedness is seen with clitics. Thus, the past tense form of
the auxiliary HAVE, had, appears as the full form /had/ and as the clitic
(or reduced) forms /d, d/ in different contexts. Now, when the clitic forms
are attached to a host word or phrase we have an expression that we could
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28 ANDREW SPENCER
call a phonological word, which contracts relations with other types of

word. Thus, in Sued already left we have the name SUE in the form /su:d/.
But this isnt really an inected form because the clitic /d/ will attach to
any word which happens to end the subject phrase: The people they wanted
to sued already left.
There is an important difference between compounds and clitics on the
one hand, and relatedness dened as inection/derivation on the other.
Compounding and cliticization refer principally to the manner in which
expressions are constructed. In this respect they are to be contrasted with
construction types such as afxation, ablaut (stem-internal vowel change)
or even conversion (no morphology at all). By contrast, inection/derivation
refers to the (putative) functions of those constructions: inection denes
word-forms of a lexeme while derivation denes new lexemes. These func-
tions are independent of the construction type which realizes them.
In principle, compounding/cliticization, too, can realize any type of
relatedness, just as afxation can. In practice, compounding tends to expand
the stock of lexemes, and hence is a kind of lexeme formation. Nonetheless,
in some languages (for example, many of the languages of South East Asia)
compound verb constructions have come to resemble grammatical categor-
ies expressing aspectual notions such as completed event or ongoing pro-
cess. In this respect the compound verbs are like inections. Clitics often
realize categories similar to inections, such as tense or case, but clitics
also realize the functions of discourse particles, and in many languages
reexive clitics are used to derive new verb lexemes, often with idiosyn-
cratic meanings compared to the non-reexive base lexeme.
It is generally accepted that the same morphological devices are seen in
inection as in derivation cross-linguistically. We could call this the Uni-
formity of Realization Property. This property strongly suggests that we
should describe inectional and derivational processes using common
descriptive machinery (that is, afxation and so on).
In this chapter I will discuss the inection/derivation distinction in the
context of the broader notion of lexical relatedness. Two words are related
if they share some central property, such as their form or their meaning, or
if a central property of one is properly subsumed in the other. For instance,
the form of word might be dened by adding an afx to the form of a base
word, or the meaning of the derived word might be obtained by adding
semantic content to the meaning of the base. I shall couch the discussion in
terms of functions or relations which map one set of representations,
features, and so on to an output of some kind. I shall refer to the lexical
representations which are included in the domain of this function/relation
as the base or base lexeme and the lexical representation which is
outputted by the function I shall call the derivate.
I will argue that the division between derivation and inection is a real
division but I will show that there are several other intermediate types
of lexical relatedness which cannot easily be dened as inectional or
Two Morphologies or One? 29
derivational. I will use these observations to argue that all systematic,

regular, productive patterns of lexical relatedness are paradigm-driven,
even if in the case of canonical derivation the paradigms are maximally of
two cells: hbase lexeme, derived lexemei. From this it would follow that
paradigmatic inection and derivation are essentially different instanti-
ations of a single type of lexical relatedness function, in conformity with
the Uniformity of Realization Property.
Such an approach brings with it an important conceptual problem. Let us
consider languages with fairly rich morphologyspecically, both inec-
tional and derivational morphology. If derivational morphology creates a
new lexeme then that lexeme may well have to be inected. How can one
and the same mechanism dene new lexemes and also the inected forms
of those lexemes? For instance, in our example PRINT~PRINTABLE the verb
base and its derivate have entirely different inectional paradigms.
PRINTABLE has no inected forms, in fact, though in a language such as
German the translation equivalents would have different sets of forms
(DRUCKEN to print {drucke, druckt, drucken, gedruckt} vs. DRUCKBAR print-
able {druckbar, druckbare, druckbaren, . . .}). In general, whenever the lexical
relatedness function changes the lexical or morphosyntactic category of a
base, the derived word will shift to an entirely different inectional para-
digm. This seems to entail that we have to dene two distinct types of
lexical relatedness after all. I shall call this the Differential Inectability
Property. This property introduces a tension between the canonical func-
tions of inection and derivation and the Uniformity of Realization Prop-
erty. I address that problem in the nal section.
A caveat: the discussion of this chapter is narrowly focused on models
that accept broadly speaking a paradigm-based view of morphology (for
example Zwicky 1985; Anderson 1992; Aronoff 1994; Stump 2001; Brown
and Hippisley 2012; Spencer 2013; see also Chapters 16, 17, 18). For models
which continue the American Structuralist morpheme-based tradition
(Chapter 13) the discussion of this chapter will be entirely irrelevant, if
not incoherent. This seems to include the Minimalist Morphology frame-
work developed by D. Wunderlich and colleagues (Wunderlich and Fabri
1995). In contemporary minimalist syntax (Chomsky 1995) coupled with
Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Chapter 16) there is no
real notion of word and in particular no notion of lexeme that can be
reconstructed (see also Borer 2013 for a recent defence of this approach).
Morphologically complex expressions are constructed in the syntax by
merging roots with other roots or with functional heads. Inectional
morphology and derivational morphology alike are, therefore, both types
of (syntactic) compounding, formally speaking (though it is not clear that
the notion compound as opposed to phrase makes much sense in that
framework).
One consequence of the Distributed Morphology view is that the head of
an inected word is the outermost inection of that word, while the rest
30 ANDREW SPENCER
of the word serves as a complement to that functional head. The most

natural interpretation of the term lexically related in such a model is
sharing the same head. Thus, in compounding, catfood and dogfood, both
headed by -food, are more closely related to each other than either is to
catap or dogcollar. By parity, the words printed, taught, sang, went are all
related to each other by virtue of being past tense forms, while print, prints,
printing, printed just happen to share the same root (and are thus like catfood,
catap, catnap, . . .) (Williams 1981). However, we must bear in mind that it
is actually incoherent to think in terms of lexical relatedness in a frame-
work like Distributed Morphology that accords no status to the construct
word in the rst place.
2 Meaningless Lexical Relatedness
There is an important distinction to be drawn between patterns of lexical

relatedness which are part of the grammar of the language and those which
are relics of an earlier tat de langue and no longer the result of living
productive processes. The distinction can be hard to draw. Processes can
be productive but in restricted ways, limited to certain areas of vocabulary,
and moribund morphology can sometimes develop a new lease of life
(Bauer 2001). At the same time, languages often increase their lexical stock
by ad hoc processes of word creation, which do not represent a systematic
grammatical process of any kind. Nonce creations such as brunch or metro-
sexual are not the result of a systematic word formation process, though
they are in some sense permitted (licensed) by the grammar of English.
In lexeme formation generally it is rather common to nd words related
solely by form and not by meaning. This is very common with semantically
idiosyncratic (idiomatic, non-compositional) or lexicalized compounds.
The form text in textbook adds no meaning of its own to the whole and
certainly does not give rise to the specic meaning of textbook compared
with book. On the other hand, gingerbread denotes something which, while
generally containing ginger, is not a kind of bread. The form cran- in
cranberry, notoriously, does not even exist outside the compound (and the
same is true of the -ric of bishopric).
However, a great deal of the morphology discussed under the rubric of
derivation is of the same kind. Consider the verb UNDERTAKE. Formally
this contains (forms of) the lexeme TAKE, because it shares the irregular
inectional paradigm of that verb, and this implies that the remnant, under,
is a prex homophonous with the prex in UNDERESTIMATE. But there
is no semantic relationship between the prex and the verb root of UNDER-
TAKE and its components. In the case of inectional relatedness it is often
difcult to assign a meaning as such in the rst place to the inectional
component, and instead we tend to say that the inection realizes or
expresses some kind of feature (value) or morphosyntactic property.
The phenomenon of meaningless derivation illustrated by UNDERTAKE

may seem somewhat marginal in English but this is misleading. In a
language such as Russian a very large proportion of the verb lexicon is
constructed from a prex and a root neither of which can be assigned a
meaning. Moreover, English shows a similar pattern with its particle verbs,
such as TAKE DOWN/IN/OFF/ON/OUT/UP. In certain of their uses the
verb and the particle are completely meaningless: TAKE DOWN record in
written form, TAKE IN deceive, TAKE OFF propel oneself into ight;
imitate, and so on.
Particle verbs illustrate another issue that has to be considered when we
look at the architecture of lexical relatednessnamely, the characteriza-
tion of word. There is an important sense in which, say, TAKE IN deceive
is a single word-as-lexeme, while being composed of two separate words.
A particle verb is thus a multiword expression (MWE) which realizes
(the forms of) a single lexeme (see Los et al. 2012 for a detailed synchronic
and diachronic study of particle verbs in English and Dutch). Similarly,
though more controversially, we might want to say that there exist MWEs
which realize inectional propertiesthat is, inectional periphrases
(Brown et al. 2012).
A compound is another instance of a MWE in word formation, in that it
is a single syntactic word unit formed from two lexemes. However, what
usually distinguishes compounds from bona de phrases is some measure
of semantico-syntactic opacity or lexical integrity (Chapter 10): the ele-
ments of a compound are not subject to the kinds of displacements and
discontinuous dependencies found in normal syntax. We cannot normally
question, elide, pronominalize, tropicalize, or otherwise affect the house of
houseboat by means of syntactic processes, and in noun-noun compounds it
is not even possible to freely modify the modifying (dependent) noun with
an adjective. Thus, although we can say stone wall and wall of badly dressed
stone we cannot say *[badly dressed stone] wall. In this respect compounds are
somewhat different from the MWE lexemes exemplied by particle verbs.
The morphosyntactic properties of particle verbs tend to inherit properties
from syntactic phrasal constructions and do not exhibit the kind of lexical
integrity typical of compounds. However, in languages which have rich
compounding processes we frequently nd borderline cases which are hard
to analyze as clearly compounding or clearly phrase formation.
Where lexical relatedness is no longer driven by meaning we cannot
speak of a paradigmatic relationship between bases and derived words.
On the assumption that only paradigmatic relatedness is governed by the
grammar this would mean that opaque relatedness is not strictly speaking a
grammatical phenomenon. However, it is abundantly clear that the types of
nonce word that can be created will be restricted in various ways by the
grammatical organization of the particular language. Thus, while Russian
has thousands of semantically opaque prex-verb combinations it lacks
verb particle constructions of the kind found equally abundantly in English,
32 ANDREW SPENCER
Scandinavian, and many other languages. Moreover, in contrast to Russian

prexes, those of German, Hungarian, and other languages enjoy the kind
of syntactic freedom of placement that is associated with particles.
3 Lexical Representations
Before turning to types of relatedness we need to clarify certain aspects of

those representations that relatedness itself is dened overthat is, lexical
representations generally.
Assuming that we are describing a language with rich inectional
morphology then any lexical entry for a major category will have to specify
at least three sets of properties or lexical attributes. In Spencer (2013) I label
these form, syn(tax) and sem(antics). The sem attribute is some kind of
semantic representation. The syn attribute determines what kinds of words
and phrases the lexeme selects and is selected by. The form attribute
species all the information needed to inect the lexeme, including, of
course, the phonology of the basic forms (root, stems, or whatever). In
addition, it is convenient to assume an attribute lexemic index (LI), a
unique label (for instance, an integer) which serves to individuate lexemes
and allows us to represent notationally the difference between forms of a
lexeme and related but distinct lexemes. I shall write the LI as the name of
the lexeme in small capitals for perspicacity.
We can think of systematic lexical relatedness as being dened over the
content of these attributes. Two representations are lexically related if
(i) they share the value of an attribute or (ii) the value of an attribute for
one word is subsumed in the corresponding value of the other word. For
instance, synonyms are lexically related because they share the same sem
attribute (and hence, by default, the same syn attribute), while homonyms
are related because they share the same form attribute, but nothing else.
Inected forms of a given lexeme are related because they share syn, sem,
and LI attributes, as illustrated in Table 2.1.
In Table 2.1 we see a schema for representing lexical relatedness.
I represent forms in terms of a pairing of LI and a set of inectional
features. The set u is the empty set of features, so that hPRINT, ui denes
the basic uninected form of the lexeme, its root (here labelled STEM0).
Table 2.1. Lexical entry for the lexeme PRINT
base derivate
hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {3sg}i L

FORM STEM0(PRINT)=/print/ STEM0(PRINT)=/print/ z
SYN VERB(SUBJ, OBJ) _____
SEM print(x,y)] _____
LI PRINT _____
Table 2.2. Derivation as lexical relatedness
hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {SubjectNominal}i
FORM STEM0(PRINT)=/print/ STEM0(PRINT)=/print/+ er
SYN VERB(SUBJ, OBJ) Noun

SEM print(x,y) person(x) such that drive(x,y)
LI PRINT PRINTER
Table 2.3. Lexical entry for the lexeme print
FORM (hPRINT, ui) = /print/
SYN (hPRINT,ui) = VERB(SUBJ, OBJ)

SEM (hPRINT,ui) = print(x,y)
LI(hPRINT, ui) = PRINT
The 3sg inected form is related to this base in part because its form
subsumes that of the base and in part because it shares all its
other properties with the base. That sharing of properties is represented
by _____ and it can be thought of as the result of a kind of identity default
function (or General Default Principle in Spencer 2013: 191; see below,
Section 6): if a morphological rule fails to specify an operation over a part
of a lexical representation, then assume that the relevant representation
remains unchanged.
Canonically derived lexemes involve a non-trivial change in all four
attributes, as shown in Table 2.2.
The {SubjectNominal} label is that of a derivational feature which
governs the (paradigmatic, regular) derivation of a subject nominalization
from a verb (cf. Stump 2001: 257). Each of the four attributes is distinct
from that of the base form of the verb lexeme (and, indeed, from any of
its inected forms). However, the form of PRINTER subsumes that of the
base form of print and, more importantly, the sem attribute of PRINTER
is the sem of PRINT with the added semantic predicate denoting the subject
of the predication.1 Hence, we can say that the base verb and its derived
nominal are lexically related (paradigmatically so, in fact).
The LI, however, can also be deployed to dene the lexical entry itself.
A lexical entry is a representation that is not dened (yet) in terms of any
feature content, but which abstracts away from all the possible inected
and derived forms. We can therefore represent a lexical entry as a function
from pairings of hLI, ui. Thus, for print we will have the lexical entry in
Table 2.3.
From the lexical relatedness schemas shown in Table 2.2 and Table 2.3 we
can see that (canonical) inection and (canonical) derivation are maximally
different types of lexical relatedness. However, the schemas suggest that
1
Semantic representations are given in a very much simplied form.
34 ANDREW SPENCER
there might be a variety of different types of relatedness intermediate

between inection and derivation. In Spencer (2013: 139) this property of
lexical relatedness is enshrined in the Principle of Representational
Independence (PRI), which states that it is possible to relate words by
dening any combination of the four main attributes of a lexical represen-
tation as the default or null relation.
I shall explore some of the consequences of the PRI in Section 6 but before
that we must consider in more detail the relationship between inection,
derivation, and compounding.
4 Distinguishing Compounding from Inection/Derivation
In principle there is a very simple way of distinguishing compounding from

other types of word formation and from inection, in that compounding
combines forms of two distinct lexemes. However, this still leaves concep-
tual problems, for two reasons.
First, compounding often results in lexicalized forms that have idiosyn-
cratic semantics, so that we have to treat compounding as a form of lexical
stock expansion (in the terms of Beard 1981), and hence a type of word
formation. On the other hand, there are many languages in which com-
pounding is extremely productive and frequently on-line, so that nonce
compound words are created which do not necessarily nd their way into
the permanent lexicon. English noun-noun compounds are like this, in that
its possible to create almost any combination of simplex nouns and give
them a pragmatically or contextually dened relationship. In a classic
study, Downing (1977) cites numerous such instances and the way they
are interpreted by speakers. Another instance of productive compounding
is found in languages in which a noun functioning as the direct object of a
verb can be compounded with that verb, noun incorporation. Thus, in
Chukchi it is possible to say either hunter.ERG killed.TRANS bear.ABS with
ergative-absolutive subject-object alignment and subject-object agreement
on the verb, or hunter.ABS bear=killed.INTR, with absolutive subject align-
ment and subject-only (intransitive) agreement. Any appropriate noun can
be incorporated into the verb in this way, and any transitive verb will
typically permit noun incorporation (Spencer 1995). Perhaps more interest-
ingly, Chukchi also has a very productive process under which an adjective
root is incorporated into the noun root that it modies attributively
(Spencer 1995: 47782). This adjective incorporation is obligatory in some
contexts and is the default construction when the modier itself is not in
focus. Other modier-like elements such as possessive pronouns, demon-
stratives, question words, and numerals can also be incorporated into the
noun they modify.
The signicance of such largely unconstrained incorporation phenomena
for the architecture of morphology is that we have to decide what is the
lexical status of such compounds. Thus, if (as reported by Downing 1977) a

speaker chooses to refer to a particular chair in a particular room at a
particular time as the apple-juice seat does that mean that we have to say that
apple-juice seat is a lexeme (in the same way that we would want to say that
houseboat was a lexeme)? Similarly, suppose a Chukchi school teacher asks
in a grammar lesson ra=litsol-t nqam ra=cislol-t what=person-s and
what=number-s (of the verb), incorporating the combining stem ra- of the
wh-word ra what into the nouns for grammatical person and number
(Spencer 1995: 479). Do we want to say that ra=litsol-t, ra=cislol-t are
distinct lexemes?
There are two further related issues thrown up by compounds. One
concerns their form and the other concerns the meanings of their compon-
ents. We can illustrate the form question with English berries. It is often
stated in introductory texts that English has a variety of berry names
headed by the lexeme BERRY but modied by idiosyncratic or even mean-
ingless elements such as straw-, logan-, goose-, rasp- and most famously cran-.
What is less often pointed out is that the pronunciation of the BERRY
element in such compounds is usually different from that found when
the lexeme is used in isolation or when it is the head of a less lexicalized
compound. In strawberry, cranberry and so on the rst vowel is reduced to //
or even deleted entirely (/kranbr/, but such reduction never takes place
otherwise, even if berry fails to receive primary stress: winter berries /wnt
brz, *wnt brz/. The question now arises, to what extent do such com-
pounds really contain the lexeme berry if the pronunciation is no longer
that of the actual lexeme berry? Or do we have to say that some lexemes
have a special combining form when used in compounds (not a general
feature of English compounding)?
As is well known, by gradual semantic bleaching a compounded element
often gets grammaticalized as an afx (usually derivational), just as func-
tion words often become clitics and then inections. In words such as
printable we see an afx that is clearly homophonous with the adjective
ABLE (they even share idiosyncratic allomorphy with the sufx -ity). How-
ever, the -able sufx behaves exactly like a sufx. For instance, it cannot
take wide scope over conjoined bases: *copy- or print-able.2 On the other
hand, the similitudinal adjective formative -like in cat-like, child-like may
have more freedom of occurrence for many speakers. I nd the expression
prex- or sufx-like formatives perfectly acceptable, for instance. Bauer et al.
(2013: 441) explicitly say they treat -like as a compound element. They do
this on the grounds that it means the same as the adjective LIKE. However,
even that judgment is not entirely clear. When used as an adjective (almost
always in predicate position rather than attribute position in Modern
2
I can say cut-and-pastable, but this is an exception that proves the rule, because it is only possible by virtue of the
fact that cut-and-paste has been reanalyzed (from a syntactically constructed coordination of verbs) as a composite
verb (hence the hyphens).
36 ANDREW SPENCER
English) LIKE establishes a direct relation of similarity between two objects:

This dog is like a cat. This certainly corresponds to the favored interpretation
of the expression a cat-like dog. But in a phrase such as cat-like gait/smile/
cunning we are not equating the cat with gaits, smiles, or cognitive func-
tioning and we cannot say This gait/smile/cunning is like a cat. Rather, the
interpretation is This gait/smile/cunning is like the gait/smile/cunning of a cat.
So it is wrong to say that -like means exactly the same as LIKE. In fact,
semantically speaking, N-like constructions behave exactly like afxally
derived similitudinal adjectives found in other languages.3 (See also
Keneseis 2007 distinction between semiword and afxoid.)
5 Distinguishing Inection and Derivation
It is a commonplace in introductory texts on morphology as well as in

monographs to list two sets of contrasting properties characterizing inec-
tion and derivation and then to point out that none of those properties can
be considered criterial for either type of lexical relatedness. From this we
could conclude that the distinction is illusory or has at best heuristic value.
This is the approach taken by American Structuralism and its descendants
(especially Distributed Morphology)that is, models based on the notion of
the morpheme (see Chapter 3). A morpheme is a root or afx (possibly
without any phonological substance) which has a meaning, for instance
<-(e)s, plural> for the (regular) English plural morpheme or <cat, furry
quadruped that meows>. Utterances are combinations of morphemes. But
this means that inectional and derivational afxes are no different in their
overall shape from the things we have called lexemes. Hence, all inection/
derivation is really a subtype of compounding.
Diametrically opposed to the morpheme-based architecture is the so-
called inferential-realizational class of models (see for instance, Chapters 11,
17, 18). In these models, inection is the result of applying morphological
process to the (root of the) lexeme so as to realize particular properties.
Thus, while the lexical entry for cat might be similar to <cat, furry
quadruped that meows>, the plural form is dened as the output of a
morphological rule which alters the form cat by adding (e)s to it (and which
alters the form man by changing the vowel to e). It is these inectional
rules which dene a lexemes inectional paradigm. In such models it is
important to maintain the architectural distinction between inection and
derivation, and so it is necessary to address the problems posed by the lack
of criterial properties. There are two ways of approaching this. The more
traditional approach is to characterize the different properties associated
3
Bauer et al. (2013: 312) cite the attested example a cool iPod-like handheld controller. Here the interpretation has
to be a handheld controller similar to the controller of an iPod and not the nonsensical (or at least uncool) a handheld
controller similar to an iPod.
Table 2.4. Inection versus derivation
Parameter Inection Derivation
1. Purpose build the form of a lexeme required build a new lexeme from
by a given syntactic context an existing lexeme
2. Syntactic determined by syntax not determined by syntax
determinism
3. Obligatoriness function is obligatory function is not obligatory
4. Productivity fully productive not fully productive
5. Transparency transparent not always transparent
6. Base inheritance all base features are inherited base features that are inherited
are limited
7. Exponence order after derivational exponent; before inectional exponent;
closes word need not close word
Source: Brown and Hippisley (2012: 37)
with inection and derivation as (proto)typical properties and concentrate

on core exemplars of the two relatedness types. The troublesome cases are
then handled by ad hoc expedients. A recent variant of this approach is
that proposed by Corbett (2010) within the context of Canonical Typology.
On that approach we dene canonical properties or criteria for a given
phenomenon and then assess the extent to which attested phenomena
conform to that canon (see also Spencer 2013: 5863, 21949 for discus-
sion). In Section 7 I will propose an alternative way of maintaining the
distinction but within the framework of an inferential-realizational model.
In this section, however, I will run through the main difculties in drawing
a clear-cut distinction between inection and derivation.
A useful checklist of properties has been proposed by Brown and
Hippisley (2012: 37), summarized in Table 2.4.
Brown and Hippisleys rst criterion is the central distinction in lexical
relatedness and the one that raises the most serious questions. The problem
here is simply how do know when we have two distinct lexemes rather
than two forms of one and the same lexeme? I will call this the Lexeme
Individuation Problem.
For instance, the form cuttings in grass cuttings presumably realizes a
lexeme CUTTING1, distinct from any of the verb lexemes TO CUT, whereas
the form cutting in They are cutting the grass presumably realizes an inected
form of (one of the lexemes) TO CUT. But what about the form cutting
in The cutting of the grass (took two hours) or Harriets cutting the grass?
How do we decide whether these are forms of the verb lexeme as opposed
to a related nominal lexeme CUTTING2 (distinct from CUTTING1)?
The problem posed by Property 2, syntactic determinism, is that most
inection is what Booij (1996, 2012) calls inherent inection, and
this typically expresses some sort of inectional meaning which is not
(necessarily) mandated by the syntax.
38 ANDREW SPENCER
Obligatoriness (Property 3) seems to be neither necessary nor sufcient

for inectional exponence. First, there is the well-known property of
defectiveness: some lexemes simply lack certain forms in their paradigms
(Sims 2015). On the other hand, other types of relatedness that we might
want to call derivational seem to be extremely productive and transparent,
like inection. A well-known case is that of the -ly manner adverb in
English, which has sometimes even been claimed to be inectional (see
Bauer et al. 2013: 3234, for discussion).
The problem of dening productivity (Property 4) in morphology is a
complex one, with several distinct aspects (Bauer 2001; Chapter 4). I will
take productivity to refer to the more abstract property of lexical related-
ness, independent of the morphological means used to express it. Thus, we
can speak of a productive process deriving property nominalizations from
adjectives, independent of the morphology (good~goodness, sincere~sincerity,
warm~warmth). This denition allows us to dene inection as maximally
productive because it is (usually) obligatory for a given lexeme class. But as
is well known, some derivation appears to be extremely productive, includ-
ing English de-adjectival property nominalization, de-verbal -able adjectives,
and others. When we consider transpositions such as de-verbal participles
in Latin or Russian we nd that these are no less productive than any
inectional relation, though they are clearly not canonical inection (or
canonical derivation).
Transparent relatedness (Property 5) gives rise to words which are sys-
tematically related in meaning to their bases. Often, derived lexemes
undergo semantic shift and become semantically opaque, but this can
happen to inected forms, too. Halle (1973) drew attention to an instance
in Russian in which the instrumental case of nouns denoting the four
seasons means during N, leto summer, letom in the summer. The same
pattern is followed by names for parts of the day: utrom in the morning,
dnjom during the day. However, names for days, months, festivals or other
time periods express during in other ways. Inectional case usage here is
idiosyncratic, just like preposition selection for comparable expressions in
languages such as English.
Property 6, base inheritance, is linked to the property of paradigmati-
city together with a further property that typically serves to distinguish
inection from derivation but which isnt specically mentioned by
Brown and Hippisley, which I shall call feature intersection. In a typical
inectional system we see a variety of dimensions of inection, all of
which can be freely combined. Thus, a typical verb in an Indo-European
language might inect for person/number subject agreement, past/
present/future tense, indicative/subjunctive mood, active/passive voice,
and other categories. The paradigms implied by canonical derivational
morphology are very different, in that they can be represented as max-
imally simple arrays comprising just two cells, the base lexeme and
the derived lexeme. This means that there is no feature intersection in
derivation, and so it is only trivially paradigmatic, while canonical inec-

tion is radically paradigmatic.
On the other hand, we do not see one inectional process feeding another
to give rise to recursive (or recursive-like) structures. By contrast, it is
commonplace to see one derivational process feeding another, as when
we derive the word INDECIPHERABILITY from the word CIPHER by apply-
ing four consecutive derivational processes. Thus, derivational morphology
exhibits a syntagmatic structure which is (typically) lacking in inection.
The syntagmatic dimension of derivational morphology is what gives rise
to failure of base inheritance. By dening a new lexical class the word
formation rule denes a new inectional class, rendering the base
lexemes inectional properties opaque. But when we compare two inected
forms of a lexeme there is (usually!) no question of one form rendering
another form opaque because both belong to an intersective array of feature
specications.
There is another important sense in which an inected form of a lexeme
can be said to show inheritance of features or properties, however.
Factoring out argument agreement, we typically nd that any nite form
of a verb can collocate its arguments, adjuncts, and modiers in exactly the
same way as any other nite form. Similarly, a noun in any case, number,
or possessor agreement form might be modied by an attributive modier
in exactly the same way as a noun in any other inected form. We can say
therefore that, in the typical or canonical case, inected words are syntag-
matically transparent.
Derivational morphology is very different from inectional morphology
with respect to syntagmatic transparency. The syntactic privileges of
occurrence associated with a noun are usually very different from those
associated with a verb. However, Brown and Hippisley hedge their
characterization of transparency by saying that it is limited in the case of
derivation, not that it is impossible. There are two reasons for such a hedge.
First, there is the practical problem of deciding when we have inection
and when we have derivation, as in the case of transpositions. The present
participle driving, when used as an attributive adjective or as a noun, has
rather different syntax from the participle used in nite progressive
clauses. So we can only really talk about a criterion of transparency in
unequivocal cases of inection. Second, semantic predicates can often be
treated as having an argument structurethat is, an array of category types
that the predicate can or must collocate with in certain ways. In the case
of agent nominalizations, we might wish to say that the object argument of
the verb is, in part, preserved by the nominalization process, giving rise
to so-called argument inheritance (Booij 1988; Randall 1989, 2010): the driver
of the car, a car driver. Although transpositions typically have very different
syntax from their bases, they regularly preserve a good deal of the base
lexemes syntax. Thus, in a language in which adjectives agree with nouns,
such as Latin or Russian, a present participle used as an attributive modier
40 ANDREW SPENCER
has the external syntax of an adjective, but retains the ability to express the
verbs internal arguments and may even retain idiosyncratic properties
such as assigning lexical case to its direct object (Haspelmath 1996;
Spencer 1999).
When we consider Brown and Hippisleys transparency criterion from
this vantage point, it seems that what looked strikingly obvious at rst is
actually far from clear. The problem is to avoid comparing unlikes. When
we say that an agent nominal is opaque to the inectional properties of the
base what we really mean is that there is a considerable distance between
certain typical inected forms of the base lexeme and certain typical
inected forms of the derived lexeme. But we have to be rather careful
with such comparisons. It isnt clear, for instance, that the form driving in,
say, the driving of fast cars is more transparently related to the 3sg form drives
than it is to the agent nominal driver, in say a driver of fast cars.
Property 7, exponence order, reects the undeniably very strong ten-
dency for inections to appear external to derivational markers. However,
there are well-known (and some less well-known) problems in establishing
afx ordering as a hard-and-fast principle. Stump (2001, 2005) draws atten-
tion to the phenomenon of head-application in inection. A simple example
of head-application is afforded by English prexed verbs such as under-
stand. In order to inect this verb properly we effectively have to ignore
the prex, because the lexeme inherits the irregular morphology of STAND:
stood~under-stood. However this is coded in a grammar, it essentially boils
down to the fact that we rst inect the stem for tense and then attach
the prex, contrary to Principle 7.
A less frequently discussed problem for a thoroughgoing application of
Principle 7 is that posed by discontinuous stems. It is not uncommon for a
language to have lexemes (typically verbs) whose inected stems are com-
plex, consisting of, say, a verbal root and a preverb. In a number of language
groups that preverb might be separated from the root by a string of afxes,
some of which, at least, are typical inections (for instance, subject agree-
ment markers). The Athabaskan group and its distant kin the Yenisseian
group (now represented by the isolate Ket, spoken in Siberia) are well-
known instances (see Rice 2000 for a detailed discussion of Athabaskan,
and Vajda 2004 for Ket).
6 Intermediate Categories
One of the reasons why it is difcult to distinguish inection from deriv-

ation is that there are a number of types of lexical relatedness which lie
between the two. Spencer (2013) explores these issues in detail. Here
I present a brief synopsis of the description given there.
We have already seen one example of such an intermediate category
namely, transpositions such as de-verbal participles. This is a type of
Table 2.5. Lexical relatedness schema for transposition
base derivate
hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {prs.ptcp}i

FORM STEM0(PRINT)=/print/ STEM0(PRINT)=/print/+i
SYN VERB(SUBJ*, OBJ) ADJECTIVE(HEAD*)
ARG-ST(SUBJ*, OBJ)
SEM print(x,y) _____
LI PRINT _____
relatedness characterized by a shift in morphological and syntactic

category, much like derivation, but it does not add a semantic component
to the lexical representation and it does not create a new lexeme, making
it like inection (Haspelmath, 1996, refers to it as category-changing inec-
tion). Spencer (2013) shows that cross-linguistically each of the three major
lexical categories noun, verb, adjective can be transposed into each of the
others. The lexical relatedness schema for a typical present participle is
shown in Table 2.5.
The syn representation indicates that the participle is an adjective, modi-
fying a nominal phrase which corresponds to the subject role of the base
verb lexeme. The participle retains the argument structure (arg-st) of the
verb, however, in that it can take a direct object; compare The girl is printing
the le ~ the girl* [subj* printing the le]. In a language such as Russian or Latin
the form attribute of the derivate will also specify the participles inec-
tional class.
Certain types of inection-like relatedness seem to add a meaning
component to the lexical representation, much like canonical derivation.
Examples of such meaning-bearing inection include aspectual and aktionsart
marking on verbs (as opposed to more grammaticalized tense/aspect/mood
marking), semantic case marking (as opposed to structural case marking),
and comparative and superlative marking on adjectives. In Table 2.6 we see the
lexical relatedness schema relating the root form of a Hungarian noun ha z
house to the inessive case form of that noun, hzban in (a) house. 4
In Table 2.6 the sem representation for hzban adds a semantic predicate
corresponding to the notion (be) in, but the LI representation remains
unchanged, showing that we are dealing with an inected form of the noun
lexeme.
Another type of relatedness which is difcult to classify as inection or
derivation is seen in argument structure alternations. Many language
groups have a family of alternations including passive (or antipassive),
applicative, causative, reexive/reciprocal alternations among others.
The terminological quandary posed by argument structure alternations
4
The SEM representation for the inessive can be read as the property of being some P such that the relation P is
in x holds of P and a house, x.
42 ANDREW SPENCER
Table 2.6. Hungarian inessive case
base derivate
hHOUSE, ui hHOUSE, {inessive, sg, non-possessed}i
FORM STEM0(HOUSE)=/hz/ STEM0(HOUSE)=/hz/+ban

SEM x[house(x)] Pyx[P(y) ^ house(x) ^ in(y,x)]
LI HOUSE __________
can be seen by perusing a range of grammatical descriptions for languages

with such alternations. Typically, the passive alternation is described as
inectional, no doubt because it generally has no semantic import, but
simply serves to detransitivize a predicate. On the other hand, a causative
alternation will frequently be described as derivational, presumably
because it adds meaning. And yet we frequently nd these alternations
co-occurring within the same morphological system. Moreover, these alter-
nations are often extemely productive, so that grammarians speak of the
passive/causative/applicative form of the verb V rather than speaking of a
new lexeme or dictionary entry.
Spencer (2013) follows many authors in taking argument structure to be
a separate level of syntactic representation. This means that systematic
lexical relatedness can be dened exclusively at that level, in principle
independently of other properties of the representation, in accordance with
the Principle of Representational Independence.
Evaluative or expressive morphology refers to the type of morphology
that adds evaluative connotations without changing lexical meaning. In
many languages regular morphological processes dene diminutives and
augmentatives. Such forms have as their main semantic contribution the
meaning little/big N but these frequently turn into evaluative forms
(dear little N, horrible great N). The morphology of evaluative forms
sometimes resembles derivation and in other cases seems to be part of the
inectional system (Stump 1993; Spencer 2013: 11322; see also Brown and
Hippisley 2012: 2659). In some languages, evaluative morphology denes
its own set of properties, such as inectional class and gender of nouns,
much like derivation. Thus, the diminutive sufxes -chen in German and -ki
in Greek create neuter gender nouns and dene the inectional class,
whatever the gender/class of the base lexeme. On the other hand, in other
languages evaluative morphology is transparent to (some) of the base
lexemes properties. Thus, in Romance and Slavic languages the gender of
the base lexeme is preserved in evaluative morphology.
I have characterized a transposition as being a meaning-preserving type
of relatedness and this is what principally distinguishes transpositions from
canonical derivation. However, Spencer (2013: Chapter 10) discusses a
remarkable instance of a transpositional type in the Samoyedic language
Selkup in which a transpositional denominal adjective acquires an add-
itional semantic predicate.
Selkup has a very regular process of relational adjective formation, real-

ized by the sufx -. However, it also has two further denominal adjectivi-
zation processes, giving rise to similitudinal adjectives (similar to a wolf)
and locational adjectives (located in a house) (Helimski 1998: 560; Spencer
2013: 397). The relational adjective is derived from the basic (unsufxed)
nominative singular stem form, the similitudinal adjective is derived from
the coordinative case form and the locational adjective is derived from the
locative case form. Thus, from qok leader, stem qo-, we obtain qo-
pertaining to a/the leader; from the coordinative case form qoak we
obtain qoa similar to a/the leader; and from qopqin, the locative case
of qop skin, hide, we obtain qopq on a/the hide (animate nouns lack a
locative case and hence a locational adjective form).
Selkup has four numbers (singular, dual, plural, and collective) but all
three derived adjectives are neutral as to number in the sense that they are
only derivable from the unmarked (by default, singular) form. However,
Selkup also has possessor agreement morphology and the possessor agree-
ment category is preserved in all three denominal adjectives. In other words
it is possible to say pertaining to my leader, qon; similar to your (dual)
leader, qokta; or on their (3+) hide, qopoqntt. This is a clear indica-
tion that the three denominal adjectives are part of the nouns inectional
paradigm. This point is strengthened by the observation that the possessed
forms of the pure relational adjective are derived not from the nominative
case possessed form but from the genitive case: qom my leader.nom,
qon my leader.gen, qon pertaining to my leader.
Finally, there are various types of lexical relatedness which are morpho-
logically inert, in the sense that the form attributes of the base are
inherited by the derivate, contrary to default expectations. In many lan-
guages, forms of the verb paradigm arise from grammaticalization of
periphrastic constructions involving clitic pronouns, auxiliary verbs, and
nominalizations or participles. The result is that we often nd that a part of
the verb paradigm inects as though it were a noun or adjective. A clear
case of this is found with the Russian past tense, which has almost exactly
the same agreement morphology as a predicative (short form) adjective,
agreeing in gender and number but not in person (the present tense forms
agree in person/number but not gender).
A very interesting example of morphologically inert relatedness is
illustrated by what I have called Angestellte(r) nouns (Spencer 2013: 123,
273). The German verb anstellen to employ has a passive participle form
angestellt, which inects as any other adjective: m sg nom angestellter, f sg
nom angestellte, and so on. This participial form can be converted to a noun,
Angestellte(r) employee. The meaning of the converted noun is often trans-
parently derived from that of the verb via the participle. What is particu-
larly interesting about this type of relatedness is that the derived noun
preserves all of the morphology of the original adjective, including the
distinction between weak/strong declension. German adjectives take
44 ANDREW SPENCER
different inections depending (broadly speaking) on whether they are in a

denite noun phrase or an indenite phrase. This distinction is equally
observed with Angestellte(r) nouns.
This type of adjective-to-noun shift is widespread across languages.
It raises an intriguing question, which probably has to be answered on a
case-by-case basis: is such a derived noun a distinct lexeme from the base,
and hence a de-adjectival noun, or is it a form of the base lexeme, and hence
a nominal use of the adjective? Corresponding formations in English, for
instance, preserve much of the syntax of the adjective and fail to acquire
nominal plural marking (though they usually have plural interpretation):
the very poor, the undeserving rich, the most wildly optimistic, the taller (of the two).
This suggests that they might best be thought of as adjectives-used-as-
nouns, rather than novel lexemes.
7 Two Morphologies or . . . More? Factorizing the Lexicon
The previous section has outlined some (but not most!) of the multifarious
types of lexical relatedness that can be identied, but has not yet addressed
the central problem: how can we unite the mechanism used to dene
inected forms of a lexeme and the mechanism used to dene new (and
newly inectable) lexemes?
The solution proposed by Brown and Hippisley (2012: Chapter 7) relies
on the concept of hierarchical network in Network Morphology (see
Chapter 18). That model denes lexical relatedness in terms of sets of
defaults and overrides. For inection these dene the inectional para-
digms, independently of lexeme selection. For derivation Brown and Hip-
pisley assume two hierarchies, a lexemic hierarchy and a derivational
hierarchy. The lexemic hierarchy is effectively the models lexicon. It
denes all the idiosyncratic information about each lexemes phonology,
morphology, syntax, and semantics. The derivational hierarchy consists of
lexeme-formation templates (LFTs). In essence, these are morphological
constructions, as in Booijs (2010) model of Construction Morphology
(Chapter 16), and fulll the same role as word formation rules in earlier
models. A derived lexeme such as driver therefore inherits information
from its base to drive and also from the orthogonal hierarchy which
includes the lexeme-formation template dening -er subject nominaliza-
tions. That template either adds content to the bases entry (the afx itself
and the additional semantic predicate) or overrides existing information
(e.g., the syntactic class of the derived word).
Derivational morphology of this sort largely conforms to the canonical
denition of derivation. Brown and Hippisley then provide a description of
three less canonical types of derivation. The rst is conversion, in which the
LFT overrides or modies all the base lexemes information except its
phonology. Hence, the derived lexeme inherits the form of its root directly
from the base lexeme. The second is the transposition, in which the LFT
fails to modify the semantic entry of the base, which therefore passes on its
meaning to the derived lexeme. The third deviation from canonical deriv-
ation is category-preserving derivation, as exemplied by evaluative morph-
ology such as Russian diminutives. In this case it is the syntactic
information which is inherited from the base lexeme.
Brown and Hippisleys Network Morphology treatment does not include
an explicit distinction between lexeme-preserving morphology and lexeme-
changing morphology. Thus, the three non-canonical types of relatedness
are each treated as ways of dening new lexemes and each requires, along
with canonical derivation, information-changing relations rather than just
information-specifying relations, as we nd in (canonical) inection.
Spencer (2013) proposes a similar solution to that of Brown and Hippis-
ley, in that he assumes that lexical relatedness is dened in terms of
defaults and overrides (Chapter 11). Both derivation and inection are
dened in terms of a paradigm function in the sense of Stump (2001)
(Chapter 17), but generalized so that it can dene form, syn, sem and LI
attributes, the Generalized Paradigm Function (GPF). At the same time the
form, syn, sem attributes are dened over pairings of hLexemic Index,
{feature set}i . The {feature set} for derivation is the label of the deriv-
ational relation itself. A basic uninected lexical entry is given by dening
the GPF over the pairing hLexemic Index, ui, where u is the empty feature
set. The specication of a LI for each lexeme permits a broader typology of
relatedness, as we have seen.
For standard inection, which does not introduce a semantic predicate
and does not change the syntactic category, the GPF will non-trivially
specify only the form properties. The syn, sem, LI attributes will therefore
remain unchanged by virtue of the General Default Principle. The GPF is
then effectively equivalent to the paradigm function of standard Paradigm
Function Morphology (PFM). However, for other types of intra-lexemic
relatedness, such as evaluative morphology, meaning-bearing inection,
and transpositions, non-trivial changes will be effected over the syn and/
or sem attributes by the fsyn and/or fsem components of the GPF.
With canonical derivation, however, the GPF effects non-trivial change in
all four attributes, as illustrated schematically in Table 2.2. Let AbilAdj be
the derivational feature governing -able adjective formation (as in printable).
Then, the pairing hPRINT, {AbilAdj}i will be mapped to the full lexical
representation of PRINTABLE. Assuming that this process is entirely regular
(i.e., paradigmatic) we can dene the LI for the derived word in terms of
the derivational category itself and the LI of the base lexeme. In other
words, we can say that the LI for PRINTABLE is not just some arbitrary
integer or label such as printable but is the value of a function, fli, which
maps hPRINT, {AbilAdj}i to hPRINTABLE, {AbilAdj}i. This is achieved by
dening fli (hPRINT, {AbilAdj}i) = fAbilAdj(PRINT), where fAbilAdj is a function
over LIs dened with respect to the derivational feature AbilAdj (see
46 ANDREW SPENCER
Table 2.7. Schematic representation of the SubjectNominal GPF
hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {SubjectNominal}i

L
FORM STEM0(PRINT)=/print/ STEM0(PRINT)=/print/ er
Other morphological Other morphological properties = u

properties = h. . .i
SYN VERB(SUBJ, OBJ) u
SEM [Event print(x,y)] [Thing person(x) such that drive(x,y)]
LI PRINT fSubjectNominal(PRINT) (=PRINTER)
Spencer 2013: 179). We then invoke the Derived Lexical Entry Principle
(Spencer 2013: 200), according to which any GPF that introduces a non-trivial
but systematic (paradigmatic, hence productive (Chapter 4)) change in
LI of this sort gives rise to a representation which is equivalent to
hfAbilAdj(PRINT), ui . This is equivalent to saying that the label PRINTABLE is
the (derived) LI of the output lexeme, and that it is an as yet uninected lexical
representation, hence effectively the lexical entry for the derived lexeme.
Finally, we can observe that in well-behaved (that is, near-canonical) cases
of derivation we nd that the syn properties of the derived word are
projectable by default from the sem properties. To reect this Spencer
(2013: 201) proposes a principle under which the syn properties of the
output of the GPF, as well as most of the form properties, are replaced by
the empty set (i.e., effectively deleted). This representation then triggers the
operation of a general Default Cascade, under which the syn properties of
a paradigmatically derived lexeme are inherited by default from the sem
attribute (so that a word denoting a Thing is by default syntactically a noun,
while a word denoting an Event is by default a verb). Thus, the schematic
representation of the derivational GPF for er-nominalizations in English
shown in Table 2.2 can be replaced by Table 2.7.
In sum, we can individuate lexemes by means of an arbitrary (numerical)
index, LI. We can then deploy that index to dene the lexical representation
itself as well as the lexical relatedness functions that change the various
aspects of inection, derivation, and other types of relatedness. Where we
have derivational morphologythat is, where the lexical relation denes a
new lexeme and hence a new LIwe invoke the principle that the deriv-
ational paradigm function denes a representation hf(), ui, where is the
LI of the base lexeme. In this way we can unify the functions which govern
inection, derivation, and all intermediate types of relatedness, thus
addressing the question which opened this section.
8 Conclusions and Summary
Inferential models of lexical relatedness appear to require a strict separation

between principles dening the inected forms of lexemes and principles
dening new lexemes from existing base lexemes, a consequence of the
Differential Inectability Property. However, it is well known that there are

no differences in the morphological realization of inection and derivation.
This means that we would expect the same formal machinery to cover both
types of lexical relatedness, the Uniformity of Realization Principle.
For prototypical examples of inection and derivation it is easy to see
the differences. However, there are well-known problems in identifying
sets of criteria which will unambiguously pick out all and only the
inectional and the derivational processes. We can dene canonical
inection/derivation (Corbett 2010; Brown and Hippisley 2012) but there
are several intermediate types which have to be seen as non-canonical
inection, non-canonical derivation, or perhaps both at the same time.
Especially problematic is the central criterion, the principle that deriv-
ation denes new lexemes while inection denes forms of a lexeme. The
problem here is the Lexeme Individuation Problem: there is no way to
determine when two distinct words belong to the same lexeme or differ-
ent lexemes.
The separation between inection and derivation is further compromised
by intermediate categories, such as transpositions, evaluative morphology,
and several other types, which show some properties of inection and
some of derivation. Constructions such as transpositions are particularly
problematic because they deliver a word of a different lexical class from the
base, and hence a different inectional paradigm, yet they seem to be a
form of the base lexeme. This is especially problematical in case such
as the Russian past tense, in which the word class seems to change (to
predicative adjective) even though that set of word forms is realizing a set
of verb properties. Conversely, we have morphologically inert types of
relatedness, such as Angestellte(r) nouns, which unexpectedly preserve
the base lexemes word class and inectional paradigm (adjective) while
behaving in the syntax as though they belonged to a different class (noun).
I have suggested a solution to the apparent incompatibilities engendered
by the Uniformity of Realization Property on the one hand and the
Differential Inectability Property on the other. Systematic (that is, pro-
ductive; Chapter 4) lexical relatedness is paradigm-driven. It is dened over
a factorized representation of the lexical entry (Spencer 2005, 2013; Brown
and Hippisley 2012), respecting Spencers (2013) Principle of Representa-
tional Independence. Assuming a coarse-grained factorization into form,
syn, sem attributes and a Lexemic Index (LI), we dene a Generalized
Paradigm Function (GPF) which maps pairs hLexemic Index, {feature set}i
to various types of output. The GPF consists of (at least) four functions
dened over the four lexical attributes, fform, fsyn, fsem, fli. A trivial version
of the GPF is dened over the pairing hLexemic Index, ui for the empty
feature set, u, and this denes the lexical entry itself. Inection is dened
non-trivially over the form attribute leaving the other attributes
unchanged. This is essentially Stumps (2001) Paradigm Function, a special
case of the GPF. Derivation typically (and canonically) denes a non-trivial
change over all four main attributes, including the LI. If is a derivational
48 ANDREW SPENCER
feature governing a paradigm-driven derivational relationship then the

GPF dened over h, i for LI will include a LI function, fli, dened in
terms of a function f() which denes the LI of the derived word. By the
Derived Lexical Entry Principle, fli(h, i) = fli(hf(), ui) = 0 , the LI of
the derived lexeme. This denes a new lexical entry which in turn can
be the input to inectional instantiations of the GPF. In this way, we are
able to unify the machinery of inectional and derivational morphology
and still draw a distinction between form of lexeme and new lexeme.
The role of the LI attribute is crucial to this solution.
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2

1 Inection and Derivation as Lexical Relatedness

We traditionally distinguish two principal ways in which words can be

call a phonological word, which contracts relations with other types of

derivational. I will use these observations to argue that all systematic,

of the word serves as a complement to that functional head. The most

2 Meaningless Lexical Relatedness

There is an important distinction to be drawn between patterns of lexical

The phenomenon of meaningless derivation illustrated by UNDERTAKE

Scandinavian, and many other languages. Moreover, in contrast to Russian

Before turning to types of relatedness we need to clarify certain aspects of

Table 2.1. Lexical entry for the lexeme PRINT

hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {3sg}i L

Table 2.2. Derivation as lexical relatedness

hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {SubjectNominal}i

FORM STEM0(PRINT)=/print/ STEM0(PRINT)=/print/+ er

SYN VERB(SUBJ, OBJ) Noun

Table 2.3. Lexical entry for the lexeme print

FORM (hPRINT, ui) = /print/

SYN (hPRINT,ui) = VERB(SUBJ, OBJ)

there might be a variety of different types of relatedness intermediate

4 Distinguishing Compounding from Inection/Derivation

In principle there is a very simple way of distinguishing compounding from

lexical status of such compounds. Thus, if (as reported by Downing 1977) a

English) LIKE establishes a direct relation of similarity between two objects:

5 Distinguishing Inection and Derivation

It is a commonplace in introductory texts on morphology as well as in

Table 2.4. Inection versus derivation

Parameter Inection Derivation

Source: Brown and Hippisley (2012: 37)

with inection and derivation as (proto)typical properties and concentrate

Obligatoriness (Property 3) seems to be neither necessary nor sufcient

derivation, and so it is only trivially paradigmatic, while canonical inec-

One of the reasons why it is difcult to distinguish inection from deriv-

Table 2.5. Lexical relatedness schema for transposition

hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {prs.ptcp}i

relatedness characterized by a shift in morphological and syntactic

Table 2.6. Hungarian inessive case

hHOUSE, ui hHOUSE, {inessive, sg, non-possessed}i

FORM STEM0(HOUSE)=/hz/ STEM0(HOUSE)=/hz/+ban

can be seen by perusing a range of grammatical descriptions for languages

Selkup has a very regular process of relational adjective formation, real-

different inections depending (broadly speaking) on whether they are in a

7 Two Morphologies or . . . More? Factorizing the Lexicon

Table 2.7. Schematic representation of the SubjectNominal GPF

hPRINT, ui hPRINT, {SubjectNominal}i

Other morphological Other morphological properties = u

8 Conclusions and Summary

Inferential models of lexical relatedness appear to require a strict separation

Differential Inectability Property. However, it is well known that there are

feature governing a paradigm-driven derivational relationship then the

Anderson, Stephen R. 1992. A-morphous Morphology. Cambridge University

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