Dispersion Theory concerns the constraints that govern contrasts, the phonetic differences that can distinguish words in a language. Specifically it posits that there are distinctiveness constraints that favor contrasts that are more perceptually distinct over less distinct contrasts. The preference for distinct contrasts is hypothesized to follow from a preference to minimize perceptual confusion: In order to recover what a speaker is saying, a listener must identify the words in the utterance. The more confusable words are, the more likely a listener is to make errors. Because contrasts are the minimal permissible differences between words in a language, banning indistinct contrasts reduces the likelihood of misperception.
The term ‘dispersion’ refers to the separation of sounds in perceptual space that results from maximizing the perceptual distinctiveness of the contrasts between those sounds, and is adopted from Lindblom’s Theory of Adaptive Dispersion, a theory of phoneme inventories according to which inventories are selected so as to maximize the perceptual differences between phonemes. These proposals follow a long tradition of explaining cross-linguistic tendencies in the phonetic and phonological form of languages in terms of a preference for perceptually distinct contrasts.
Flemming proposes that distinctiveness constraints constitute one class of constraints in an Optimality Theoretic model of phonology. In this context, distinctiveness constraints predict several basic phenomena, the first of which is the preference for maximal dispersion in inventories of contrasting sounds that first motivated the development of the Theory of Adaptive Dispersion. But distinctiveness constraints are formulated as constraints on the surface forms of possible words that interact with other phonological constraints, so they evaluate the distinctiveness of contrasts in context. As a result, Dispersion Theory predicts that contrasts can be neutralized or enhanced in particular phonological contexts. This prediction arises because the phonetic realization of sounds depends on their context, so the perceptual differences between contrasting sounds also depend on context. If the realization of a contrast in a particular context would be insufficiently distinct (i.e., it would violate a high-ranked distinctiveness constraint), there are two options: the offending contrast can be neutralized, or it can be modified (‘enhanced’) to make it more distinct.
A basic open question regarding Dispersion Theory concerns the proper formulation of distinctiveness constraints and the extent of variation in their rankings across languages, issues that are tied up with the questions about the nature of perceptual distinctiveness. Another concerns the size and nature of the comparison set of contrasting word-forms required to be able to evaluate whether a candidate output satisfies distinctiveness constraints.
121-140 of 475 Results
Article
Klaus Abels
Displacement is a ubiquitous phenomenon in natural languages. Grammarians often speak of displacement in cases where the rules for the canonical word order of a language lead to the expectation of finding a word or phrase in a particular position in the sentence whereas it surfaces instead in a different position and the canonical position remains empty: ‘Which book did you buy?’ is an example of displacement because the noun phrase ‘which book’, which acts as the grammatical object in the question, does not occur in the canonical object position, which in English is after the verb. Instead, it surfaces at the beginning of the sentence and the object position remains empty. Displacement is often used as a diagnostic for constituent structure because it affects only (but not all) constituents. In the clear cases, displaced constituents show properties associated with two distinct linear and hierarchical positions. Typically, one of these two positions c-commands the other and the displaced element is pronounced in the c-commanding position. Displacement also shows strong interactions with the path between the empty canonical position and the position where the element is pronounced: one often encounters morphological changes along this path and evidence for structural placement of the displaced constituent, as well as constraints on displacement induced by the path.
The exact scope of displacement as an analytically unified phenomenon varies from theory to theory. If more then one type of syntactic displacement is recognized, the question of the interaction between movement types arises. Displacement phenomena are extensively studied by syntacticians. Their enduring interest derives from the fact that the complex interactions between displacement and other aspects of syntax offer a powerful probe into the inner workings and architecture of the human syntactic faculty.
Article
Jonathan David Bobaljik
Distributed Morphology (DM) is a framework in theoretical morphology, characterized by two core tenets: (i) that the internal hierarchical structure of words is, in the first instance, syntactic (complex words are derived syntactically), and (ii) that the syntax operates on abstract morphemes, defined in terms of morphosyntactic features, and that the spell-out (realization, exponence) of these abstract morphemes occurs after the syntax. Distributing the functions of the classical morpheme in this way allows for analysis of mismatches between the minimal units of grammatical combination and the minimal units of sound. Much work within the framework is nevertheless guided by seeking to understand restrictions on such mismatches, balancing the need for the detailed description of complex morphological data in individual languages against an attempt to explain broad patterns in terms of restrictions imposed by grammatical principles.
Article
Marcello Barbato
Strictly speaking, palatalization is a phonetic process of assimilation which can generate new palatal phonemes. However, in Romance linguistics, the term is traditionally used to describe any evolution (1) of velar stops preceding a front vowel, (2) of the palatal approximant (also known as “yod”) and clusters involving yod. Therefore, not only does “Romance palatalization” involve a segment which is already palatal, [j], but the result is also not always a palatal consonant: Sometimes it is a dental/alveolar (firstly an affricate, then in some cases a fricative).
The article proposes a two-phase chronology for the early Romance palatalization, with the first phase affecting /kj/, /tj/ and in some cases /k/ and /g/ before front vowels, while the second phase affects other clusters involving /j/. It also draws a distinction between the varieties which show palatalization of velar consonants before front vowels (western Romània, central Italy) and varieties which do not show it or only show it at a late stage (Sardinia, southern Italy, the Balkans).
The Romance data confirm some trends identified in typological literature and in some cases enable more precise descriptions. The consonants most susceptible to palatalization are: regarding the manner of articulation, stops (the most resistant are rhotics); regarding the place of articulation, velars (labials are the most resistant). Geminate segments are also more susceptible to palatalization.
Article
Terttu Nevalainen
In the Early Modern English period (1500–1700), steps were taken toward Standard English, and this was also the time when Shakespeare wrote, but these perspectives are only part of the bigger picture. This chapter looks at Early Modern English as a variable and changing language not unlike English today. Standardization is found particularly in spelling, and new vocabulary was created as a result of the spread of English into various professional and occupational specializations. New research using digital corpora, dictionaries, and databases reveals the gradual nature of these processes. Ongoing developments were no less gradual in pronunciation, with processes such as the Great Vowel Shift, or in grammar, where many changes resulted in new means of expression and greater transparency. Word order was also subject to gradual change, becoming more fixed over time.
Article
The Early Modern interest taken in language was intense and versatile. In this period, language education gradually no longer centered solely on Latin. The linguistic scope widened considerably, partly as a result of scholarly curiosity, although religious and missionary zeal, commercial considerations, and political motives were also of decisive significance. Statesmen discovered the political power of standardized vernaculars in the typically Early Modern process of state formation. The widening of the linguistic horizon was, first and foremost, reflected in a steadily increasing production of grammars and dictionaries, along with pocket textbooks, conversational manuals, and spelling treatises. One strategy of coping with the stunning linguistic diversity consisted of first collecting data on as many languages as possible and then tracing elements that were common to all or to certain groups of languages. Language comparison was not limited to historical and genealogical endeavors, as scholars started also to compare a number of languages in terms of their alleged vices and qualities. Another way of dealing with the flood of linguistic data consisted of focusing on what the different languages had in common, which led to the development of general grammars, of which the 17th-century Port-Royal grammar is the most well-known. During the Enlightenment, the nature of language and its cognitive merits or vices became also a central theme in philosophical debates in which major thinkers were actively engaged.
Article
Chris Rogers and Lyle Campbell
The reduction of the world’s linguistic diversity has accelerated over the last century and correlates to a loss of knowledge, collective and individual identity, and social value. Often a language is pushed out of use before scholars and language communities have a chance to document or preserve this linguistic heritage. Many are concerned for this loss, believing it to be one of the most serious issues facing humanity today. To address the issues concomitant with an endangered language, we must know how to define “endangerment,” how different situations of endangerment can be compared, and how each language fits into the cultural practices of individuals. The discussion about endangered languages focuses on addressing the needs, causes, and consequences of this loss.
Concern over endangered languages is not just an academic catch phrase. It involves real people and communities struggling with real social, political, and economic issues. To understand the causes and consequence of language endangerment for these individuals and communities requires a multifaceted perspective on the place of each language in the lives of their users. The loss of a language affects not only the world’s linguistic diversity but also an individual’s social identity, and a community’s sense of itself and its history.
Article
Geoffrey K. Pullum
English is both the most studied of the world’s languages and the most widely used. It comes closer than any other language to functioning as a world communication medium and is very widely used for governmental purposes. This situation is the result of a number of historical accidents of different magnitudes. The linguistic properties of the language itself would not have motivated its choice (contra the talk of prescriptive usage writers who stress the clarity and logic that they believe English to have). Divided into multiple dialects, English has a phonological system involving remarkably complex consonant clusters and a large inventory of distinct vowel nuclei; a bad, confusing, and hard-to-learn alphabetic orthography riddled with exceptions, ambiguities, and failures of the spelling to correspond to the pronunciation; a morphology that is rather more complex than is generally appreciated, with seven or eight paradigm patterns and a couple of hundred irregular verbs; a large multilayered lexicon containing roots of several quite distinct historical sources; and a syntax that despite its very widespread SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) basic order in the clause is replete with tricky details. For example, there are crucial restrictions on government of prepositions, many verb-preposition idioms, subtle constraints on the intransitive prepositions known as “particles,” an important distinction between two (or under a better analysis, three) classes of verb that actually have different syntax, and a host of restrictions on the use of its crucial “wh-words.” It is only geopolitical and historical accidents that have given English its enormous importance and prestige in the world, not its inherent suitability for its role.
Article
Raymond Hickey
The differentiation of English into separate varieties in the regions of Britain and Ireland has a long history. This is connected with the separate but related identities of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. In this chapter the main linguistic traits of the regions are described and discussed within the framework of language variation and change, an approach to linguistic differentiation that attempts to identify patterns of speaker social behavior and trajectories along which varieties develop.
The section on England is subdivided into rural and urban forms of English, the former associated with the broad regions of the North, the Midlands, East Anglia, the Southeast and South, and the West Country. For urban varieties English in the cities of London, Norwich, Milton Keynes, Bristol, Liverpool, and Newcastle upon Tyne is discussed in the light of the available data and existing scholarship. English in the Celtic regions of Britain and Ireland is examined in dedicated sections on Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Finally, varieties of English found on the smaller islands around Britain form the focus, i.e., English on the Orkney and Shetland islands, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands.
Article
Kirk Hazen
English in the U.S. South contains a wide range of variation, encompassing ethnic, social class, and subregional variations all within the umbrella term of Southern English. Although it has been a socially distinct variety since at least the mid-19th century, many of the modern features it is nationally known for developed only after 1875. Lexical variation has long distinguished the U.S. South, but new vocabulary has replaced the old, and subregional variation in the U.S. South is no longer important for lexical variation. Social class still plays an important role in grammatical variation, but the rise of compulsory education limited previously wider ranges of dialect features. Despite traditional scholarship’s primary focus on lexical and grammatical language variation in the U.S. South, phonological variation has been the main area of scholarship since 1990s. Within phonological variation, the production of vowels, the most socially salient features of the U.S. South, has been a heavily studied realm of scholarship. Prosodic, consonant, and perception studies have been on the rise and have provided numerous insights into this highly diverse dialect region.
Article
Pritty Patel-Grosz
Case and agreement patterns that are present in Old, Middle, and New Indo-Aryan languages have been argued to require the following perspective: since ergative case marking and ergative (object) agreement in these languages are historically tied to having originated from the past perfective morphological marker ta, they can only be fully understood from a perspective that factors in this development. Particular attention is given to the waxing and waning of ergative properties in Late Middle Indo-Aryan and New Indo-Aryan, which give rise to recurring dissociation of case and agreement; specifically, object agreement in the absence of ergative case marking is attested in Kutchi Gujarati and Marwari, whereas ergative case marking without object agreement is present in Nepali. With regard to case, recent insights show that “ergative/accusative” may be regularly semantically/pragmatically conditioned in Indo-Aryan (so-called differential case marking). Pertaining to agreement, a central theoretical question is whether “ergative” object agreement should be analyzed uniformly with subject agreement or, alternatively, as a type of participle agreement—drawing on synchronic parallels between Indo-Aryan and Romance.
Article
Anna Berge
The Eskimo-Aleut language family consists of two quite different branches, Aleut and Eskimo. The latter consists of Yupik and Inuit languages. It is spoken from the eastern coast of Russia to Greenland. The family is thought to have developed and diverged in Alaska between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, although recent findings in a variety of fields suggest a more complex prehistory than previously assumed. The language family shares certain characteristics, including polysynthetic word formation, an originally ergative-absolutive case system (now substantially modified in Aleut), SOV word order, and more or less similar phonological systems across the language family, involving voiceless stop and voiced fricative consonant series often in alternation, and an originally four-vowel system frequently reduced to three. The languages in the family have undergone substantial postcolonial contact effects, especially evident in (although not restricted to) loanwords from the respective colonial languages. There is extensive language documentation for all languages, although not necessarily all dialects. Most languages and dialects are severely endangered today, with the exception of Eastern Canadian Inuit and Greenlandic (Kalaallisut). There are also theoretical studies of the languages in many linguistic fields, although the languages are unevenly covered, and there are still many more studies of the phonologies and syntaxes of the respective languages than other aspects of grammar.
Article
Éva Buchi and Steven N. Dworkin
Etymology is the only linguistic subdiscipline that is uniquely historical in its study of the relevant linguistic data and one of the oldest fields in Romance linguistics.
The concept of etymology as practiced by Romanists has changed over the last 100 years. At the outset, Romance etymologists took as their brief the search for and identification of individual word origins. Starting in the early 20th century, various specialists began to view etymology as the preparation of the complete history of all facets of the evolution over time and space of the words or lexical families being studied. Identification of the underlying base was only the first step in the process. From this perspective, etymology constitutes an essential element of diachronic lexicology, which covers all formal, semantic, and syntactic facets of a word’s evolution, including, if appropriate, the circumstances leading to its demise and replacement.
Article
Nicola Grandi
The vast majority of evaluative constructions are formed by means of morphological strategies. An evaluative construction must include at least the explicit expression of the standard (by means of a linguistic form that is lexically autonomous and is recognized by the speakers of the language as an actual word) and an evaluative mark. Therefore, in the Italian word gattino ‘kitten, dear little cat,’ the standard is expressed by the lexical morpheme gatt- (which occurs in masculine gatto and feminine gatta), while the evaluative mark is the suffix -ino.
A construction can be defined as evaluative if it satisfies two conditions, one relating to semantics and the other to the formal level. The first condition indicates that an evaluative construction indicates a deviation from a standard (or default) value without resorting to any parameter of reference external to the concept itself. The second condition indicates that an evaluative construction must include the explicit expression of this standard and an evaluative mark.
Among the world’s languages, evaluative morphology has a quite uneven diffusion: Eurasian languages, and Romance languages in particular, show the highest degree of evaluative morphology diffusion, considering the number of word formation processes involved, the word classes they apply to, and the semantic categories they express.
From a historical point of view, evaluative affixes reveal an unstable behavior: they are often subject to a renovation. As a matter of fact, present-day Romance evaluative affixes do not coincide with Latin evaluative affixes: they derive from affixes that in Latin had different functions from ‘evaluation’ or from non-Latin affixes.
From a synchronic point of view, Romance evaluative affixes prototypically exemplify all the cross-linguistically more frequent properties of evaluative morphology: categorial neutrality, insensitivity to the word class of the base, prefix-suffix neutrality, and so forth.
Article
Dingxu Shi
Chinese lexical items like queshi, zhende, and pianpian represent the speaker’s evaluation of or attitude toward the proposition of the clause in which they appear and form a new proposition together with the at-issue proposition. They are termed evaluative adverbs (EA) even though they do not modify the predicate or the clause in the usual sense. Theoretical and practical considerations for analyzing them as adverbs are discussed with reference to similar cases in other languages, and reasons for treating them as evaluative items are presented with reference to their discourse functions. Examples are given to illustrate their properties and functions, including EA of mirativity, EA of confirmation, and EA of probability. Examples are also selected to show the relationship between EA and expected result, as well as that between EA and refutation. The linear order of EA and other preverbal elements is discussed in detail and evidence is presented that EA is not the same as predicative adjectives. These properties and behaviors are summarized into patterns to serve as the basis for analysis within the framework of cartography of left periphery. EA is assumed to have its own maximal projection Eval(uative)P, which is a layer of Split CP and takes TP as a complement directly or indirectly. The structural relationship of EvalP and other layers of Split CP is discussed as a means to explain the behaviors and interaction of these constituents, including ModEpisP, the maximal projection of epistemic modal; NegP, the maximal projection of negator; and EmphP, the maximal projection of emphatic marker shi.
Article
Nicola Grandi
Evaluative morphology is a field of linguistic studies that deals with the formation of diminutives, augmentatives, pejoratives, and amelioratives. Actually, evaluative constructions cross the boundaries of morphology, and are sometimes realized by formal strategies that cannot be numbered among word formation processes. Nevertheless, morphology plays a dominant role in the formation of evaluatives. The first attempt to draw an exhaustive account of this set of complex forms is found in the 1984 work Generative Morphology, by Sergio Scalise, who made the hypothesis that evaluatives represent a separate block of rules between inflection and derivation. This hypothesis is based on the fact that evaluatives show some properties that are derivational, others that are inflectional, and some specific properties that are neither derivational nor inflectional. After Scalise’s proposal, almost all scholars have tried to answer the question concerning the place of evaluative rules within the morphological component. What data reveal is that, in a cross-linguistic perspective, evaluatives display a uniform behavior from a semantic and functional point of view, but exhibit a wide range of formal properties. In other words, functional identity does not imply formal identity; consequently, we can expect that constructions performing the same function display different formal properties in different languages. So, if evaluatives are undoubtedly derivational in most Indo-European languages (even if they cannot be considered a typical example of derivation), they are certainly quite close to inflection in some Bantu languages. This means that the question about the place of evaluatives within the morphological component probably is not as crucial as scholars have thought, and that other issues, sometimes neglected in the literature, deserve the same attention. Among them, the role of pragmatics in the description of evaluatives is no doubt central. According to Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi, in their 1994 work, Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and Intensifiers in Italian, German and Other Languages, evaluative constructions are the more typical instantiation of morphopragmatics, which is “defined as the area of general pragmatic meanings of morphological rules, that is of the regular pragmatic effects produced when moving from the input to the output of a morphological rule.” Evaluatives include “a pragmatic variable which cannot be suppressed in the description of [their] meaning.” Another central issue in studies on evaluative morphology is the wide set of semantic nuances that usually accompany diminutives, augmentatives, pejoratives, and amelioratives. For example, a diminutive form can occasionally assume a value that is attenuative, singulative, partitive, appreciative, affectionate, etc. This cluster of semantic values has often increased the idea that evaluatives are irregular in nature and that they irremediably avoid any generalization. Dan Jurafsky showed, in 1996, that these different meanings are often the outcome of regular and cross-linguistically recurrent semantic processes, both in a synchronic and in a diachronic perspective.
Article
Artemis Alexiadou
This article revisits Grimshaw's (1990) tripartition of nominalization, which introduced an important correlation between particular types of nominalization and the readings associated with these nominal forms, Event and Referential. The article discusses criteria that may be used to distinguish between the two readings and the limitations of these criteria. It further offers a selective discussion of how different approaches to nominalization implement Event and Referential readings.
Article
Existential and locative constructions form an interesting cluster of copular structures in Romance. They are clearly related, and yet there are theoretical reasons to keep them apart. In-depth analysis of the Romance languages lends empirical support to their differentiation. In semantic terms, existentials express propositions about existence or presence in an implicit contextual domain, whereas locatives express propositions about the location of an entity. In terms of information structure, existentials are typically all new or broad focus constructions. Locatives are normally characterized by focus on the location, although this can also be a presupposed topic.
Romance existentials are formed with a copula and a postcopular phrase (the pivot). A wide range of variation is found in copula selection, copula-pivot agreement, expletive subjects, the presence and function of an etymologically locative precopular proform, and, finally, the categorial status of the pivot, which is normally a noun phrase, but can also be an adjective (Calabrian, Sicilian). As for Romance locatives, a distinction must be drawn between, on the one hand, a construction with canonical SV order and S-V agreement and, on the other hand, another construction, with VS order and, in some languages, lack of V-S agreement. This latter structure has been named inverse locative.
Both existentials and locatives have a nonverbal predicate: the locative phrase in locatives and the postcopular noun or adjectival phrase in existentials. In locatives the predicate selects a thematic argument (i.e., an argument endowed with a thematic role), which serves as the syntactic subject, exception being made for inverse locatives in some languages. Contrastingly, in existentials, there is no thematic argument. In some languages the copula turns to the pivot for agreement, as this is the only overt noun phrase endowed with person and number features (Italian, Friulian, Romanian, etc.). In other languages this non-canonical agreement is not licensed (French, some Calabrian dialects, Brazilian Portuguese, etc.). In others still (Spanish, Sardinian, European Portuguese, Catalan, Gallo-Italian, etc.), it is only admitted with pivot classes that can be defined in terms of specificity. When the copula does not agree with the pivot, an expletive subject form may figure in precopular position. The cross-linguistic variation in copula-pivot agreement has been claimed to depend on language-specific constraints on subjecthood.
Highly specific pivots are only admitted in contextualized existentials, which express a proposition about the presence of an individual or an entity in a given and salient context. These existentials are found in all the Romance languages and would seem to defy the semantico-pragmatic constraints on the pivot that are widely known as Definiteness Effects.
Article
María Irene Moyna
The definition of exocentricity hinges on the notion of head in morphology. Exocentricity and its opposite, endocentricity, describe the two possible relationships between compound constituents and the compound lexeme they make up. In endocentric compounds, one of the constituent lexemes is the head, that is, the lexical item with the semantico-syntactic features that are passed on to the whole compound. In exocentric compounds, the features of the whole are not attributable to the constituents and must be sought elsewhere.
Exocentric compounds can be divided into two broad classes, namely, syntactic (or formal) and semantic exocentric compounds. Syntactic exocentric compounds exhibit a mismatch between the grammatical category of their constituents and that of the whole. Semantic exocentric compounds are exocentric by virtue of their meaning alone, their structure providing no clues of their nonliteral interpretation. Historically, most descriptive and theoretical analyses of exocentricity have focused on syntactic exocentric compounds. On the basis of large but non-exhaustive databases of the world languages, it has been shown that exocentric compounds are marked. With a few exceptions, exocentric compound patterns are both less frequent cross-linguistically and less likely to be used in those languages that can have them. However, some patterns recur with remarkable regularity in the world’s languages. These include possessive compounds (known by their Sanskrit name, bahuvrīhi), which combine a description of a part to denote the whole (e.g., Eng. sabretooth). Deverbal nominal compounds are also robust in many language families, such as Romance; these compounds combine a verb and its direct object to denote an agent or instrument (e.g., Fr. portefeuilles ‘briefcase,’ lit. ‘carry+papers’). A third highly frequent exocentric compounding pattern combines two constituents of the same grammatical category to create a lexeme of a different word class (e.g., Japanese daisho ‘size,’ lit. ‘small+large’). It should be noted that the basic distinction between syntactic and semantic exocentric compounds can become blurred because any lexicalized compound, regardless of its internal structure, is potentially susceptible to metaphoric meaning shifts and to formal recategorization through conversion. Although exocentricity is a syntactico-semantic feature typically attributed to compounds, other morphological structures may occasionally exhibit similar behavior, namely, phrasal chunks or “syntactic freezes.”
Exocentric compounds create interesting challenges to rule-based accounts of morphology, including both lexicalist hypotheses and also those that subsume word formation operations to those of syntax. In both types of proposals, the features of all constructions are attributable to their head, so that accounting for the mismatch exhibited by exocentric compounds requires structural adjustments. Cognitive linguistics has also focused on exocentric compounds, and has sought to account for their meanings through a combination of metaphoric and metonymic shifts.
Article
Víctor Acedo-Matellán
A fundamental difference in theoretical models of morphology and, particularly, of the syntax–morphology interface is that between endoskeletal and exoskeletal approaches. In the former, more traditional, endoskeletal approaches, open-class lexical items like cat or sing are held to be inherently endowed with a series of formal features that determine the properties of the linguistic expressions in which they appear. In the latter, more recent, exoskeletal approaches, it is rather the morphosyntactic configurations, independently produced by the combination of abstract functional elements, that determine those properties. Lexical items, in this latter approach, are part of the structure but, crucially, do not determine it.
Conceptually, although a correlation is usually made between endoskeletalism and lexicalism/projectionism, on the one hand, and between exoskeletalism and (neo)constructionism, on the other, things are actually more complicated, and some frameworks exist that seem to challenge those correlations, in particular when the difference between word and morpheme is taken into account.
Empirically, the difference between these two approaches to morphology and the morphology-syntax interface comes to light when one examines how each one treats a diversity of word-related phenomena: morphosyntactic category and category shift in derivational processes, inflectional class, nominal properties like mass or count, and verbal properties like agentivity and (a)telicity.
