Latest Morphology Stories

A new study of how compound word formation is influenced by subtle forms of linguistic pressure demonstrates that words which "sound better" to the speakers of a language have a higher chance of being created, suggesting that, like biological organisms, words are subject to selection pressures that play a role in deciding which words become part of a language over time. The study, "Grammars leak: Modeling how phonotactic generalizations interact within the grammar," to be published in the...