1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”
  4. Volume 43, Issue 1
  5. Article
Volume 43, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0378-4177
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

Regularity and irregularity are among the most widely invoked notions in linguistics. The terms are backed up by a long and venerable tradition, and yet (or maybe therefore) different disciplines and authors seem to be using them for very different phenomena and in very different ways. The most frequent usage conflates or replaces other notions such as type frequency, productivity, (non-)concatenative morphology, storage vs. computation, predictability, etc. An assessment of these and other variables in Icelandic verbal inflection reveals that most of them are in practice strongly correlated. I conclude, however, that this is largely unsurprising by virtue of the definitional dependencies holding between those notions. It is empirically doubtful whether there exists a single underlying phenomenon or category which the terms designate. In addition, given their multiple and overlapping senses, and the existence of separate, unambiguous labels for the relevant underlying notions, I contend that the terms ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ should be ideally abandoned in scientific literature in order to avoid ambiguity, sloppy reasoning and misunderstandings and to facilitate cross-linguistic comparison and interdisciplinary dialogue.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/sl.17042.her
2019-06-12
2025-05-18

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/sl.17042.her
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Ackerman, Farrell & Robert Malouf
    2013 Morphological organization: The low conditional entropy conjecture. Language89(3). 429–464. 10.1353/lan.2013.0054
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0054 [Google Scholar]
  2. Anderson, Stephen R.
    1992 A-morphous morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511586262
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511586262 [Google Scholar]
  3. Baayen, R. Harald
    1993 On frequency, transparency and productivity. Yearbook of morphology 1992 181–208. 10.1007/978‑94‑017‑3710‑4_7
     https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3710-4_7 [Google Scholar]
  4. 2003 Probabilistic approaches to morphology. In Rens Bod , Jennifer Hay & Stefanie Jannedy (eds.), Probabilistic linguistics, 229–287. Cambridge: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Baerman, Matthew
    2017 Seri verb classes: morphosyntactic motivation and morphological autonomy. Language92. 4.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Baerman, Matthew , Greville Corbett & Dunstan Brown
    2010 Defective paradigms: Missing forms and what they tell us. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.5871/bacad/9780197264607.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197264607.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  7. Barðdal, Jóhanna
    2008 Productivity: Evidence from Case and Argument Structure in Icelandic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/cal.8
     https://doi.org/10.1075/cal.8 [Google Scholar]
  8. Bauer, Laurie
    2001 Morphological Productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511486210
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486210 [Google Scholar]
  9. Bickel, Balthasar
    2010 Capturing particulars and universals in clause linkage. In Isabelle Bril (ed.), Clause-hierarchy and clause-linking: the syntax and pragmatics interface, 51–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/slcs.121.03bic
     https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.121.03bic [Google Scholar]
  10. Bittner, Andreas & Klaus-Michael Köpcke
    (eds.) 2016 Regularität und Irregularität in Phonologie und Morphologie: diachron, kontrastiv, typologisch. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110486094
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110486094 [Google Scholar]
  11. Blevins, James P.
    2005 Word-based declensions in Estonian. Yearbook of morphology 2005 1–25.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Blevins, James P. , Petar Milin & Michael Ramscar
    2017 The Zipfian Paradigm Cell Filling Problem. In F. Kiefer , J. P. Blevins & H. Bartos (eds.), Perspectives on Morphological Organization: Data and Analyses, 139–158. Leiden: Brill. 10.1163/9789004342934_008
     https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004342934_008 [Google Scholar]
  13. Bloomfield, Leonard
    1935. [1933] Language. London: Allen & Unwin.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Bonami, Olivier , & Gilles Boyé
    2006 Deriving Inflectional Irregularity. In Stefan Müller (ed.), Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Varna, 361–380. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Bonami, Olivier , Gilles Boyé , Hélène Giraudo & Madeleine Voga
    2008 Quels verbes sont réguliers en français?In J. Durand , B. Habert & B. Laks (eds.), Congrès Mondial de Linguistique Française, 1511–1523. EDP Sciences.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Booij, Geert
    1999 Lexical storage and regular processes. Behavioural and brain sciences22(6). 1016. 10.1017/S0140525X99242227
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X99242227 [Google Scholar]
  17. Brown, Dunstan & Andrew Hippisley
    2012 Network morphology: A defaults-based theory of word structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511794346
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511794346 [Google Scholar]
  18. Bybee, Joan
    1995 Regular morphology and the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes10. 425–455. 10.1080/01690969508407111
     https://doi.org/10.1080/01690969508407111 [Google Scholar]
  19. 1996 Productivity, regularity and fusion: how language use affects the lexicon. In Rajendra Singh (ed.), Trubetzkoy’s orphan. Proceedings of the Montréal roundtable morphonology: contemporary responses, 247–269. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/cilt.144.29byb
     https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.144.29byb [Google Scholar]
  20. Clahsen, Harald , Monika Rothweiler , Andreas Woest & Gary F. Marcus
    1992 Regular and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun plurals. Cognition45(3). 225–255. 10.1016/0010‑0277(92)90018‑D
     https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(92)90018-D [Google Scholar]
  21. Corbett, Greville G.
    2007 Canonical Typology, Suppletion, and Possible Words. Language83(1). 8–42. 10.1353/lan.2007.0006
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2007.0006 [Google Scholar]
  22. 2011 Higher order exceptionality in inflectional morphology. In Horst Simon & Heike Wiese (eds.), Expecting the unexpected: exceptions in grammar, 107–126. Berin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110219098.107
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110219098.107 [Google Scholar]
  23. Corbett, Greville , Andrew Hippisley , Dunstan Brown & Paul Marriot
    2009 Frequency, regularity and the paradigm: A perspective from Russian on a complex relation. In Joan Bybee & Paul Hopper (eds.), Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, 201–227. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Croft, William & D. Alan Cruse
    2004 Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511803864
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803864 [Google Scholar]
  25. Dammel, Antje
    2008 Flexionsmorphologische Irregularität – ein graduelles Phänomen. Doch wie lassen sich Grade bestimmen?In Cornelia Stroh & Aina Urdze (eds.), Morphologische Irregularität: neue Ansätze, Sichtweisen und Daten, 1–28. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Di Sciullo, Anna Maria & Edwin Williams
    1987 On the definition of word. Cambridge: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Dressler, Wolfgang U.
    (ed.) 1987 Leitmotifs in natural morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/slcs.10
     https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.10 [Google Scholar]
  28. Frank, Wright Jay
    1999 Nuer noun morphology. Buffalo: State University of New York at Buffalo PhD dissertation.
  29. Fratini, Viviana , Joana Acha & Itziar Laka
    2014 Frequency and morphological irregularity are independent variables. Evidence from a corpus study of Spanish verbs. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory10(2). 289–314.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Gisborne, Nikolas & Andrew Hippisley
    (eds.) 2017 Defaults in Morphological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780198712329.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198712329.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  31. Glück, Helmut
    (ed.) 2010 Metzler Lexikon der Sprache. Stuttgart: Metzler. 10.1007/978‑3‑476‑00496‑3
     https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-00496-3 [Google Scholar]
  32. Görlach, Manfred
    (ed.) 2001 A Dictionary of European Anglicisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Halle, Morris & Alex Marantz
    1993 Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building20, 111–176. Cambridge: MIT Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Haspelmath, Martin
    1989 Schemas in Hausa plural formation: Product-orientation and motivation vs. source-orientation and generation. Buffalo Working Papers in Linguistics89(1). 32–74.
     [Google Scholar]
  35. 2002 Understanding Morphology. London: Arnold.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. 2006 Against markedness (and what to replace it with). Journal of Linguistics42. 25–70. 10.1017/S0022226705003683
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226705003683 [Google Scholar]
  37. 2010 Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic studies. Language86(3). 663–687. 10.1353/lan.2010.0021
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2010.0021 [Google Scholar]
  38. Herce Calleja, Borja
    2016 Why frequency and irregularity are not independent variables in Spanish: a response to Fratini et al. (2014). Journal of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory12(2). 389–406.
     [Google Scholar]
  39. Hockett, Charles F.
    1987 Refurbishing our foundations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/cilt.56
     https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.56 [Google Scholar]
  40. Hopper, Paul J.
    1991 On some properties of Grammaticalization. In Elizabeth Traugott & Bernd Heine (eds.), Approaches to Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/tsl.19.1.04hop
     https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.19.1.04hop [Google Scholar]
  41. Idris, Hélène Fatima
    2004 Modern developments in the Dinka language. University of Göteborg.
     [Google Scholar]
  42. Iva, Sulev
    2007 Võru kirjakeele sõnamuutmissüsteem. Tartu, Estonia: University of Tartu PhD thesis.
  43. Jaeger, Jeri J. , Alan H. Lockwood , David L. Kemmerer , Robert D. Van Valin Jr , Brian W. Murphy & Hanif G. Khalak
    1996 A positron emission tomographic study of regular and irregular verb morphology in English. Language, 451–497. 10.2307/416276
     https://doi.org/10.2307/416276 [Google Scholar]
  44. Jörg, Christina
    1989 Isländische Konjugationstabellen: Icelandic Conjugation Tables-Tableaux de Conjugaison Islandaise-Beygingatöflur Islenskra Sagna. Hambrg: Buske.
     [Google Scholar]
  45. Kendall, Maurice G.
    1938 A new measure of rank correlation. Biometrika30. 81–93. 10.1093/biomet/30.1‑2.81
     https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/30.1-2.81 [Google Scholar]
  46. Kiefer, Ferenc
    2000 Regularity. In Geert Booij (eds.), Morphologie: ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung, 296–302. Berlin: de Gruyter.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Ladd, D. Robert , Bert Remijsen & Caguor Adong Manyang
    2009 On the distinction between regular and irregular inflectional morphology: Evidence from Dinka. Language85(3). 659–670. 10.1353/lan.0.0136
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0136 [Google Scholar]
  48. MacCallum, Robert C. , Shaobo Zhang , Kristopher J. Preacher & Derek D. Rucker
    2002 On the practice of dichotomization of quantitative variables. Psychological Methods7. 19–40. 10.1037/1082‑989X.7.1.19
     https://doi.org/10.1037/1082-989X.7.1.19 [Google Scholar]
  49. Mansfield, John
    2016 Intersecting formatives and inflectional predictability: How do speakers and learners predict the correct form of Murrinhpatha verbs?Word Structure9(2). 183–214. 10.3366/word.2016.0093
     https://doi.org/10.3366/word.2016.0093 [Google Scholar]
  50. Marslen-Wilson, William & Lorraine K. Tyler
    1998 Rules, representations, and the English past tense. Trends in cognitive sciences2(11). 428–435. 10.1016/S1364‑6613(98)01239‑X
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(98)01239-X [Google Scholar]
  51. Matthews, Peter Hugoe
    1972 Inflectional morphology: A theoretical study based on aspects of Latin verb conjugation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  52. Mithun, Marianne
    2012 The deeper regularities behing irregularities. In Thomas Stolz , Hitomi Otsuka , Aina Urdze & Johan van der Auwera (eds.), Irregularity in Morphology (and beyond), 1–21. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  53. Mörkuð íslensk málheild. [The Tagged Icelandic Corpus.]
    Mörkuð íslensk málheild. [The Tagged Icelandic Corpus.] (n.d.) Sigrún Helgadóttir ed. The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies. Accessed [January 2017] from malfong.is.
  54. Nübling, Damaris
    2000 Prinzipien der Irregularisierung: eine kontrastive Analyse von zehn Verben in zehn Germanischen Sprachen. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110915082
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110915082 [Google Scholar]
  55. 2011a How do exceptions arise? On different paths to morphological irregularity. In Horst Simon & Heike Wiese (eds.), Expecting the unexpected: exceptions in grammar, 139–162. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110219098.139
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110219098.139 [Google Scholar]
  56. 2011b Statement on the commentary by Wolfgang U. Dressler. In Horst Simon & Heike Wiese (eds.), Expecting the unexpected: exceptions in grammar, 169–172. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110219098.169
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110219098.169 [Google Scholar]
  57. Oxford Dictionary of English
    Oxford Dictionary of English 2010. [1998] Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  58. Pearson, Karl
    1900 On the criterion that a given system of deviations from the probable in the case of a correlated system of variables is such that it can be reasonably supposed to have arisen from random sampling. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science50(302). 157–175. 10.1080/14786440009463897
     https://doi.org/10.1080/14786440009463897 [Google Scholar]
  59. Pinker, Steven
    1991 Rules of language. Science253(5019). 530–535. 10.1126/science.1857983
     https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1857983 [Google Scholar]
  60. 1997 Words and rules in the human brain. Nature387. 547–548. 10.1038/42347
     https://doi.org/10.1038/42347 [Google Scholar]
  61. 1999 Words and Rules. New York: Harper Perennial.
     [Google Scholar]
  62. Pinker, Steven & Allan Prince
    1988 On language and connectionism: analysis of a parallel distributed processing model of language acquisition. Cognition28. 73–193. 10.1016/0010‑0277(88)90032‑7
     https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(88)90032-7 [Google Scholar]
  63. Pinker, Steven & Michael T. Ullman
    2002 The past and future of the past tense. Trends in Cognitive Sciences6(11). 456–463. 10.1016/S1364‑6613(02)01990‑3
     https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(02)01990-3 [Google Scholar]
  64. Plag, Ingo & Harald Baayen
    2009 Suffix ordering and morphological processing. Language85(1). 109–152. 10.1353/lan.0.0087
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0087 [Google Scholar]
  65. Plank, Frans
    1981 Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten. Aspekte der Wortstrukturtheorie. Tübingen: Narr.
     [Google Scholar]
  66. RAE-ASALE (= Real Academia Española / Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española)
    RAE-ASALE (= Real Academia Española / Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española) 2009 Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.
     [Google Scholar]
  67. Rovai, Francesco
    2012 On some Latin morphological (ir)regularities. In Thomas Stolz , Hitomi Otsuka , Aina Urdze & Johan van der Auwera (eds.). Irregularity in Morphology (and beyond), 187–212. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  68. Royle, Phaedra , Gustavo Beritognolo & Eve Bergeron
    2012 Regularity, sub-regularity and irregularity in French acquisition. In Thomas Stolz , Hitomi Otsuka , Aina Urdze & Johan van der Auwera (eds.). Irregularity in Morphology (and beyond), 227–250. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
     [Google Scholar]
  69. Stolz, Thomas , Hitomi Otsuka , Aina Urdze & Johan van der Auwera
    2012 Introduction: Irregularity – glimpses of a ubiquitous phenomenon. In Thomas Stolz , Hitomi Otsuka , Aina Urdze & Johan van der Auwera (eds.), Irregularity in Morphology (and beyond), 7–38. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 10.1524/9783050059587.7
     https://doi.org/10.1524/9783050059587.7 [Google Scholar]
  70. Stroh, Cornelia & Aina Urdze
    (eds.) 2008 Morphologische Irregularität: neue Ansätze, Sichtweisen und Daten. Bochum: Universitätsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.
     [Google Scholar]
  71. Stump, Gregory & Raphael A. Finkel
    2013 Morphological typology: From word to paradigm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139248860
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139248860 [Google Scholar]
  72. Stump, Gregory
    2016 Paradigms at the interface of a lexeme’s syntax and semantics with its inflectional morphology. In Daniel Siddiqi & Heidi Harley (eds.), Morphological Metatheory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/la.229.02stu
     https://doi.org/10.1075/la.229.02stu [Google Scholar]
  73. Tamariz, Monica & Andrew D. Smith
    2008 Regularity in mappings between signals and meanings. In Andrew D. Smith & Kenny Smith (eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference (EVOLANG7), 315–322. 10.1142/9789812776129_0040
     https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812776129_0040 [Google Scholar]
  74. Thornton, Anna M.
    2012 Reduction and maintenance of overabundance. A case study on Italian verb paradigms. Word Structure5(2). 183–207. 10.3366/word.2012.0026
     https://doi.org/10.3366/word.2012.0026 [Google Scholar]
  75. Ullman, Michael T.
    2001 The declarative/procedural model of lexicon and grammar. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research30. 37–69. 10.1023/A:1005204207369
     https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005204207369 [Google Scholar]
  76. Uspenskaja, I. D.
    2009 Sovremennyj slovar’ nesklonjaemyx slov russkogo jazyka. Moscow: Astrel’.
     [Google Scholar]
  77. Wang, Qiang
    2014 Gender Assignment of Russian Indeclinable Nouns. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon MA Thesis.
  78. Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich
    1989 Inflectional morphology and naturalness. Vol.9. Springer.
     [Google Scholar]
  79. Yang, Charles
    2005 On productivity. Linguistic Variation Yearbook5. 265–302. 10.1075/livy.5.09yan
     https://doi.org/10.1075/livy.5.09yan [Google Scholar]
  80. 2017 How to wake up irregular (and speechless). In Claire Bowern , Laurence Horn & Raffaella Zanuttini (eds.), On looking into words (and beyond): Structures, Relations, Analyses. Language Science Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  81. Zadok, Gila & Outi Bat-El
    2015 Inter-paradigm leveling in Hebrew verbal system. Morphology25(3). 271–297. 10.1007/s11525‑015‑9264‑1
     https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-015-9264-1 [Google Scholar]
  82. Zaliznjak, Andrej A.
    1977 Grammaticheskij slovar’ russkogo jazyka [Grammatical dictionary of the Russian language]. Moscow: Russkije Slovari.
     [Google Scholar]
  83. Zipf, George Kingsley
    1935 The psycho-biology of language. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/sl.17042.her
Loading
Deconstructing (ir)regularity
Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” 43, 44 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.17042.her
/content/journals/10.1075/sl.17042.her
/content/journals/10.1075/sl.17042.her
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): empirical research; Icelandic; inflection; irregularity; morphology; regularity; terminology; theory

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error