Abstract
The No Blur Principle (NBP) or Vocabulary Clarity (VC) approach (CarstairsMcCarthy 1994, 2010) is a possible restriction on the behaviour of inflectional
affixes (grammatical units), originally motivated by an analogy with words (lexical
units). The restriction is grounded in synonymy avoidance, in the observation that
“Every two forms contrast in meaning” (Clark 1993) and in behaviour in multivocabular situations, where speakers have more than one vocabulary although
they have only one grammar (e.g. Dyirbal, Javanese). There have not been many
suggestions for restrictions on the behaviour of affixes in the morphological literature, so the approach deserves attention. In this article, the NBP or VC-approach is
applied to Faroese noun declensions. While these Faroese data seem problematic
at first, it is argued that they can be perfectly accommodated within the NBP/
VC-aproach
affixes (grammatical units), originally motivated by an analogy with words (lexical
units). The restriction is grounded in synonymy avoidance, in the observation that
“Every two forms contrast in meaning” (Clark 1993) and in behaviour in multivocabular situations, where speakers have more than one vocabulary although
they have only one grammar (e.g. Dyirbal, Javanese). There have not been many
suggestions for restrictions on the behaviour of affixes in the morphological literature, so the approach deserves attention. In this article, the NBP or VC-approach is
applied to Faroese noun declensions. While these Faroese data seem problematic
at first, it is argued that they can be perfectly accommodated within the NBP/
VC-aproach
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 345-373 |
| Number of pages | 30 |
| Journal | Folia Linguistica |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Publication status | Published - 2013 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Vocabular Clarity
- Faroese language
- inflection
- morphology