Letters to Language
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Language accepts letters from readers that briefly and succinctly respond to or comment upon either material published previously in the journal or issues deemed of importance to the field. The editor reserves the right to edit letters as needed.
June 27, 2003
To the Editor:
In a book notice (Language 79.1.224–25) on Gregory Stump’s Inflectional morphology: A theory of paradigm structure (CUP, 2001), Edward Vajda correctly notes that Stump’s paradigm function morphology (PFM) is to be contrasted with Stephen R. Anderson’s A-morphous morphology (CUP, 1992) with respect to rule ordering within morphological rule blocks. Vajda states that according to the assumptions of PFM, ‘realization rules belonging to the same rule block are resolved by Panini’s Principle and need not be intrinsically ordered’ (224, emphasis added). ‘Intrinsically’ here ought to be rather ‘extrinsically’. It may well be that this discrepancy represents merely a typographical error, since intrinsic ordering is not something to be deliberately imposed or performed, and therefore the statement ‘rules need not be intrinsically ordered’ is semantically anomalous in this context. Whatever the source, however, some clarification about ordering in this theory and others may nevertheless be worthwhile.
Stump’s position (see pp. 21–24, 52ff., and esp. 73–75) is rather that ordering within rule blocks is solely intrinsically ordered (his Pāṇinian determinism hypothesis, PDH), and that recourse need never be made to extrinsic ordering to decide which one of the competing rules within the same block is to apply first, and to the exclusion of the other applicable rules in the block. PFM formalism allows for a rigorous definition of ‘narrowest applicable rule’ in a rule block, the concept on which the PDH turns.
Anderson has claimed (1992, also NLLT 4, 1986) that although some version of the Paninian principle does account for much of the work of disjunction among competing word formation rules, stipulative ordering is inevitable, even given the notion of disjunctive rule blocks. Anderson’s rule blocks tend to be organized by linear position, but need not be; ultimately it is disjunctivity alone that unites each block, even if a single block contains both prefixing and suffixing rules (Anderson 1986: 10).
Extrinsic ordering is invoked in other morphological theories as well, such as distributed morphology (DM; see Halle & Marantz 1993: 120 (in The view from building 20, MIT Press); Halle 1990 (in NELS 20); but cf. Pullum & Zwicky 1991:393–95 (in WCCFL 10)). In DM, however, the rule blocks are organized according to the features realized by competing morphemes, once again independent of linear position.
PFM rule blocks, by comparison, are strictly keyed to abstract position slots with respect to a stem. Since the competing rules are united by position class, disjunctivity need not have a semantic or functional (blocking) aspect. Featural coherence within a block is not entailed in PFM, and non-adjacent slots do not directly interact. Rather, Paninian determinism suffices for the evaluation of position-based rule blocks. Blocking effects, by contrast, are more functionally based, countering redundancy, but extended exponence is frequently found in natural languages. Therefore, organizing rule blocks according to rule or morpheme content rather than position, or somehow according to both content and position simultaneously clearly does require further ad hoc (extrinsic) adjustments.
Intrinsic ordering represents a check on expressive power and provides a greater measure of predictability in rule systems, compared to systems in which in principle any rule order may be stipulated. These three theories each appeal to the notion of rule blocks, but each defines the criteria for membership in a block differently. PFM alone avoids appealing to stipulated ordering within its rule blocks. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic rule ordering is therefore an important one in the context of cross-theory comparison.
Thomas W. Stewart, Jr.
[tstewart@ling.ohio-state.edu]
- Author’s reply
Author’s reply: By ‘rules need not be intrinsically ordered’ I meant ‘there is no intrinsic need to order the rules in any particular way’ and intended no contrast with ‘extrinsic ordering’ used as a linguistic term. I fully agree with the reasoning offered here...
