ParaDis: a family and paradigm model

Abstract

AbstractThe unification of inflectional and derivational morphology is an issue that is often debated but on which there is no consensus. On the other hand, it is well known that inflectional morphology is organized into paradigms. This paper contributes to the convergence between inflection and derivation by offering a new paradigmatic model of derivational morphology. This model, called ParaDis, is based on two types of objects, families and paradigms, and on an architecture made up of three levels of representation (formal, categorical and semantic) and a morphological level, which connects the other three. Morphological descriptions are distributed at three levels, where they organize into formal, categorical and semantic families and paradigms. In this way, the analysis of a phenomenon adjusts closely to its level-specific regularities. The paper describes ParaDis and shows how it can be used to analyze a wide range of canonical and non-canonical derivational constructions in a simple and intuitive way. It compares ParaDis to five frameworks (Bochner, 1993; Bonami & Strnadová, 2019; Booij, 2010; Jackendoff & Audring, 2020b; Koenig, 1999) and illustrates its contributions through the analysis of parasynthetic derivatives.