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16 November 2004, MPI Colloquium Series, Ingo Plag

Speaker: Ingo Plag (Siegen, Germany)
Title: What constrains possible suffix combinations?
The role of grammatical and processing restrictions
in derivational morphology
Date: Tuesday 16 November 2004
Time: 15:45
Location: Room 1.63, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Wundtlaan 1,
Nijmegen

There is a long-standing debate about the principles and mechanisms that constrain the combinatorial properties of affixes, in particular of English suffixes. Most recently, Hay has proposed a psycholinguistic model of morphological complexity, according to which an affix which can be easily parsed out in processing should not occur inside an affix which cannot. This model has been called 'complexity based ordering'. The general claim is that affixes can be approximately ordered along a hierarchy of complexity, with more separable affixes at one end, and less separable affixes at the other end. More separable affixes can attach outside less separable affixes, but not vice-versa.

In this talk, Ingo Plag presents research that tested the predictions of complexity based ordering through an investigation of 30 English suffixes and their potential combinations.

For abstracts and more information, see http://www.mpi.nl/world/colloquia/col-program.html .

Please note that this newsitem has been archived, and may contain outdated information or links.