2021/11/16 by Erich R. Round, Round, Erich R., Sacha Beniamine +3 · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Action (physics) #Artificial intelligence #Attraction #Biology #Class (philosophy) #Competition (biology) #Computer science #Diversity (politics) #Dynamics (music) #Ecology #Inflection #Language and cultural evolution #Linguistics #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Philosophy #Physics #Psychology #Sociology #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation #cs.CL
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.08465
published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University) · International Symposium of Morphology 2021
arxiv created 2021/11/16 · openalex publication_date 2021/11/16 · arxiv updated 2021/11/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/08
Dynamic models of paradigm change can elucidate how the simplest of processes may lead to unexpected outcomes, and thereby can reveal new potential explanations for observed linguistic phenomena. Ackerman & Malouf (2015) present a model in which inflectional systems reduce in disorder through the action of an attraction-only dynamic, in which lexemes only ever grow more similar to one another over time. Here we emphasise that: (1) Attraction-only models cannot evolve the structured diversity which characterises true inflectional systems, because they inevitably remove all variation; and (2) Models with both attraction and repulsion enable the emergence of systems that are strikingly reminiscent of morphomic structure such as inflection classes. Thus, just one small ingredient -- change based on dissimilarity -- separates models that tend inexorably to uniformity, and which therefore are implausible for inflectional morphology, from those which evolve stable, morphome-like structure. These models have the potential to alter how we attempt to account for morphological complexity.