Semantic and Morphosyntactic Differences among Nouns: A Template-Based and Modular Cognitive Model

Abstract

The noun category exhibits diverse dissimilarities, characterised at the semantic (e.g., countable/uncountable) or/and morphosyntactic (e.g., determined/determinerless) level, which may be more or less important depending on languages. In this paper, we would like to discuss those differences, which we named inter-word and inter-process morphosyntactic variations. The Riffian language served us as a reference in our enquiries, before referring to other languages to show how our discoveries could be applied to them. By putting in perspective those aspects, this led us to propose a formal mathematical model denoted as a Template-Based and Modular Cognitive model. The latter is able to predict the nonlinear dynamic mapping of lexical items onto morphological templates. The aims of this article are thus manifold and cover theoretical issues. We demonstrate that nouns are organised and distributed in modular cognitive sets, having their own morphological template and unmarked forms. The extent of these sets and their number as well as the template, are specific to each language. All sorts of markers can compose with the template, but some, namely countability markers, are prevalent among several languages with no relationship. This approach allows us to explain the marking discrepancies existing between different kinds of nouns (borrowed, proper, countable and uncountable nouns) for a given linguistic variety or between languages. The main assumption of this model is that these irregular markings are caused by a template shift, occurring when items undergo a process of word and meaning formation. Our contribution represents an initial stride toward understanding the fundamental patterns of morphosyntax and opens venues for applying this mathematical model with other behavioural and natural phenomena.