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SUMMARY:Inflectional Economy - Dr James Blevins (RCEAL\, University of Cam
 bridge)
DTSTART:20071115T173000Z
DTEND:20071115T190000Z
UID:TALK7829@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Christopher Lucas
DESCRIPTION:Traditional grammars tend to treat inflectional systems as str
 uctured networks of elements\, not as unstructured sets of forms with shar
 ed stems or roots. Although the exemplary patterns and leading forms of th
 ese descriptions bring out the structure of inflectional systems\, traditi
 onal accounts are incomplete in some important respects. In particular\, t
 here is no method for measuring the implicational structure of a set of fo
 rms\, no means of gauging the diagnostic value of specific forms within a 
 set\, and no generally accepted way of identifying the leading forms of a 
 system. The problem of measuring this kind of inflectional structure can\,
  however\, be recast in a form that is susceptible to well-established tec
 hniques of analysis. The approach outlined in this talk proceeds from the 
 observation that the relevant structure involves information that one form
  conveys about other forms. This information correlates with various of th
 e entropy\nmeasures proposed initially in Shannon (1948). For example\, th
 e diagnostic value of a paradigm cell C correlates with the difference bet
 ween the baseline entropy of a system and the conditional entropy of the s
 ystem given knowledge of C. Entropy-based measures also\ndiagnose the anom
 aly of a fully suppletive class system or the pathologically ‘uneconomic
 al’ classes of Carstairs (1983)\, since in neither type of system does k
 nowledge about any form reduce the uncertainty of other forms.\n
LOCATION:LG17\, Law Faculty\, 10 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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