British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Defective Paradigms: Missing forms and what they tell us
Convenor: Dr Matthew Baerman, University of Surrey
The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH
Thursday, 10 April 2008 – Friday, 11 April 2008
About this Event
An important design feature of language is the use of productive patterns. We have 'enjoy' ~ 'enjoyed', 'agree' ~ 'agreed', and many others. On the basis of this productive pattern, if we meet a new verb 'transduce' we know that there will be the form 'transduced'. Even if the pattern is not fully regular, there will be a form available, as in 'understand' ~ 'understood'. Surprisingly, this principle is sometimes violated, a phenomenon known as defectiveness, which means there a gap in a word's set of forms. The missing singular form of English 'scissors' is one example, and more striking instances can be found in languages with more complex systems of inflection (for example, Russian has nouns that lack a genitive plural, or verbs which lack a first person singular form). Although such gaps have been known to us since the days of Classical grammarians, they remain one of the most poorly understood aspects of grammar, and challenge reigning models of the acquisition and application of inflectional rules. This conference, organized by the Surrey Morphology Group as part of research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, brings together leading scholars to assess the implications of defectiveness for our understanding of language.
Papers published in 2010 as Defective Paradigms: Missing forms and what they tell us, edited by Matthew Baerman, Greville G Corbett & Dunstan Brown (Proceedings of the British Academy, 163)
Student bursaries
The British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council have made available five bursaries of £100 each for postgraduate students who wish to attend this conference. Those wishing to apply should do so using the online form by 10 March 2008.