Inflection and Word Identity

By November 17, 2016,
Page 1319-1326
Author Maarten Janssen
Title Inflection and Word Identity
Abstract This article argues that inflection should be seen as a (partial) criterion that defines homonymy: when two word meanings have different inflected forms, they have to belong to different lexical entries. If this were not the case, it could not be maintained that inflection is a property of lexical entries, but we have to rather say that each word sense has its own inflectional paradigm, even though in most cases all senses of a word inflect in the same way. Although there are apparent cases where it looks like inflection might be in fact dependent on word meaning, none of these cases really goes against the hypothesis that inflection is a property of lexical entries, and not of word senses.
Session Lexicological Issues of Lexicographical Relevance
Keywords
BibTex
@InProceedings{ELX10-130,
author = {Maarten Janssen},
title = {Inflection and Word Identity},
pages = {1319-1326},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 14th EURALEX International Congress},
year = {2010},
month = {jul},
date = {6-10},
address = {Leeuwarden/Ljouwert, The Netherlands},
editor = {Anne Dykstra and Tanneke Schoonheim},
publisher = {Fryske Akademy},
isbn = {978-90-6273-850-3},
}
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