Balari, Sergi (2026). The philosophy of biolinguistics: a perspectival approach

22 setembre, 2026

european journal for philosophy of science

Autors:

Sergi Balari

Títol:

The philosophy of biolinguistics: a perspectival approach

Editorial: European Journal for Philosophy of Science
Data de publicació: 2026

Més informació
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Abstract

In this paper, I present a philosophical analysis of Biolinguistics, including a number of proposals that point in the direction of its recognition as a full-fledged discipline or, perhaps, an interfield theory. My approach shall be a perspectival one, both in the spirit of Michela Massimi’s perspectival realism, but also following William Wimsatt’s investigation of complexity, where perspectivism also plays a key role, sometimes overlapping Massimi’s view. In doing so, I will focus on what today may be considered to be the two mainstream frameworks within Biolinguistics, namely Chomsky’s Minimalist Program and Kirby’s culturalist approach, in order to illustrate how an analysis in terms of perspectives seems to better carve the geography of the issues than other proposals. This will allow me to identify a number of additional perspectives that may concern anyone interested in the biolinguistic enterprise, which I put forth here to complement, qualify and, in some cases, replace the traditional questions that have so far driven research in linguistics and biolinguistics.

Bonet (2023). Phonologically conditioned allomorphy (The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Morphology, ed.)

24 novembre, 2023

Autors:

Eulàlia Bonet

Títol:

Phonologically conditioned allomorphy (dins P.Ackema, S.Bendjaballah, E.Bonet & A.Fábregas (eds.). The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Morphology)

Editorial: Wiley-Blackwell
Data de publicació: 22 de setembre del 2023
ISBN13: 9781119693574

Text complet

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology is an authoritative, state-of-the-art overview the data that have been central to the development of morphological theory in the past decades. Featuring contributions from an international panel of linguists, this unparalleled collection brings together both seminal work and recent morphological research on topics including derivational and inflectional processes, concatenative and non-concatenative types of morphology, and the interfaces of morphology with syntax, phonology, and semantics.

In-depth case studies describe important morphological phenomena, discuss how they have shaped different theoretical proposals, and analyze and contextualize the data behind well-established empirical studies. Organized alphabetically, each chapter explores a specific set of empirical data relating to a morphological problem or issue central to both past and current theoretical debates.

· Provides detailed and comprehensive information about morphology and its interfaces
· Describes main morphological phenomena based on a large, cross-linguistically varied body of data
· Offers a balanced presentation of different morphological approaches, analytical proposals, and academic perspectives
· Covers a wide range of topics and a large number of subdomains of morphology

Available both as a five-volume set and as an online resource, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology is an essential reference tool for scholars in the field of morphology and linguistics more generally , and will also be a very useful tool in advanced undergraduate as well as graduate courses in these fields.

Bonet, Eulàlia (2026). “Zero morphemes in the morphophonology of Catalan”.

22 abril, 2026

Autors:

Bonet, Eulàlia

Títol:

Zero morphemes in the morphophonology of Catalan

Editorial: Peter Herbeck & Natascha Pomino (eds.), Null or Nothing: Zero elements in Romance morphology and syntax, John Benjamins (Linguistik Aktuell)
Col·lecció:
Data de publicació: 2026

Més informació

In insular varieties of Catalan, the first person singular of the Present Indicative surfaces, for some verbs, with a final consonant cluster with rising sonority, a configuration never found in any other context or in any other dialect of Catalan. This case is compared to nominal morphology, for which phonological epenthesis has been argued to apply with masculine stems ending in the same type of cluster. I propose an alternative view, within Optimality Theory, in which the unusual sonority profile arises because no exponent is available and phonological epenthesis is ruled out by the constraint ranking. Under this view, alleged final epenthetic vowels in nominals are reinterpreted as less preferred exponents, the preferred option being the absence of an exponent.