Analogy in Contact: Modeling Maltese Plural Inflection
- Sara Court (The Ohio State University)
- Andrea D Sims (The Ohio State University)
- Micha Elsner (The Ohio State University)
Abstract
Maltese is often described as having a hybrid morphological system resulting from extensive contact between Semitic and Romance language varieties. Such a designation reflects an etymological divide as much as it does a larger tradition in the literature to consider concatenative and non-concatenative morphological patterns as distinct in the language architecture. Using a combination of computational modeling and information theoretic methods, we quantify the extent to which the phonology and etymology of a Maltese singular noun may predict the morphological process (affixal vs. templatic) as well as the specific plural allomorph (affix or template) relating a singular noun to its associated plural form(s) in the lexicon. The results indicate phonological pressures shape the organization of the Maltese lexicon with predictive power that extends beyond that of a word\'s etymology, in line with analogical theories of language change in contact.
Keywords: Morphology, Maltese, Contact Linguistics, Information Theory, PCFP, Analogy
How to Cite:
Court, S., Sims, A. D. & Elsner, M., (2023) “Analogy in Contact: Modeling Maltese Plural Inflection”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 6(1), 35-46. doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/y45e-k264
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