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This is the latest addition to a group of handbooks covering the field of morphology, alongside The Oxford Handbook of Case (2008), The Oxford Handbook of Compounding (2009), and The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology (2014). It provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of work on inflection - the expression of grammatical information through changes in word forms. The volume's 24 chapters are written by experts in the field from a variety of theoretical backgrounds, with examples drawn from a wide range of languages.
The first part of the handbook covers the fundamental building blocks of inflectional form and content: morphemes, features, and means of exponence. Part 2 focuses on what is arguably the most characteristic property of inflectional systems, paradigmatic structure, and the non-trivial nature of the mapping between function and form. The third part deals with change and variation over time, and the fourth part covers computational issues from a theoretical and practical standpoint. Part 5 addresses psycholinguistic questions relating to language acquisition and neurocognitive disorders. The final part is devoted to sketches of individual inflectional systems, illustrating a range of typological possibilities across a genetically diverse set of languages from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Australia, Europe, and South America.
List of contents
- 1: Matthew Baerman: Introduction
- Part I: Building Blocks
- 2: Stephen R. Anderson: The Morpheme: Its Nature and Use
- 3: Greville G. Corbett: Features in Inflection
- 4: Jochen Trommer and Eva Zimmermann: Inflectional Exponence
- Part II: Paradigms and their Variants
- 5: James P. Blevins: Inflectional Paradigms
- 6: Gregory Stump: Inflection Classes
- 7: Matthew Baerman: Paradigmatic Deviations
- 8: Gunnar Olafur Hansson: Phonology
- 9: Andrew Spencer and Gergana Popova: Periphrasis and Inflection
- Part III: Change
- 10: Claire Bowern: Diachrony
- 11: Maarten Kossmann: Contact-Induced Change
- Part IV: Computation
- 12: Dunstan Brown: Modelling Inflectional Structure
- 13: Katya Pertsova: Machine Learning of Inflection
- 14: Ondrej Bojar: Machine Translation
- Part V: Psycholinguistics
- 15: Sabine Stoll: Inflectional Morphology in Language Acquisition
- 16: Matthew Walenski: Disorders
- Part VI: Sketches of Individual Systems
- 17: Mark Donohue: Verbal Inflection in Iha: A Multiplicity of Alignments
- 18: Fiona Mc Laughlin: Inflection in Pulaar
- 19: Axel Holvoet: Lithuanian Inflection
- 20: Thomas Stolz: Chamorro Inflection
- 21: Rachel Nordlinger: Inflection in Murrinh-Patha
- 22: Matt Coler: Aymara Inflection
- 23: Nicholas Evans: Inflection in Nen
- 24: Bert Remijsen, Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé, and Leoma G. Gilley: Stem-internal and Affixal Morphology in Shilluk
- References
- Author Index
- Language Index
- Subject Index
About the author
Matthew Baerman is a senior research fellow in the Surrey Morphology Group at the University of Surrey. His research focuses on the typology, diachrony, and formal analysis of inflectional systems, with a particular concentration on phenomena whose interpretation is problematic or controversial. His work has appeared in such journals as Language, Journal of Linguistics, Morphology, Lingua, Russian Linguistics and Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. He is co-author of The Syntax-Morphology Interface: a Study of Syncretism (CUP, 2005) and co-editor of Understanding and Measuring Morphological Complexity (OUP, 2014).
Summary
This handbook provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of work on inflection - the expression of grammatical information through changes in word forms. The volume's 24 chapters are written by experts in the field from a variety of theoretical backgrounds, with examples drawn from a wide range of languages.
Additional text
The handbook ends with a sixty-page bibliography, which is a treasure chest for anybody in-terested in inflectional morphology. There are also three indexes for authors, languages, and sub-jects that make the handbook useful as a reference tool ... the handbook under review is an extremely valuable contribution to morphology -- a resource that deserves to be widely used for many years to come.
Report
The handbook ends with a sixty-page bibliography, which is a treasure chest for anybody in-terested in inflectional morphology. There are also three indexes for authors, languages, and sub-jects that make the handbook useful as a reference tool ... the handbook under review is an extremely valuable contribution to morphology -- a resource that deserves to be widely used for many years to come. Tore Nesset, Voprosy Jazykoznanija
