Re: [Conlangs-Conf] Conference Overview

David J. Peterson, On 06/05/2006 22:39:
> And wrote:
> <<
> And after reading John Q's summary of the talks, I was wondering whether
> yours, David, was just espousing a Word-and-Paradigm model of
> inflection, or whether it went further and somehow advocated radical
> suppletion... Perhaps you'd give a short summary?
>  >>
>
> First, it's a cohesive model for inflection and derivaton (and, with
> appropriate tweaking, I think the model could handle phonology
> *and* syntax.  Unfortunately, I can count on two fingers the number
> of people seriously working with Bochner's Lexical Relatedness
> Morphology, and neither of them have left the morphological
> realm, yet).
[...]
> Darn, I went on much longer than I intended to.  And what's even
> more perplexing, is that I don't even know if I answered your
> question.  Is this close?
Thanks. To me, it seems obvious that you've answered my question!

It sounds like classical Word-and-Paradigm morphology (which I've long been
persuaded by for inflection, though for English not for derivation), except
maybe extended to cover all morphology, not just inflection. I'd never heard of
LRM (my excuse: I'm not a morphologist), but a quick desultory google, coupled
with the powerpoint for your talk (which shows up prominently on a google for
LRM), confirms this.

For those interested: http://conlangs.berkeley.edu/Peterson-DownWithMorphemes.ppt.
It's a very elegantly constructed presentation. Evidently conlangers are that
exceedingly rare species possessed of the ability to compose unshite powerpoint
presentations...

(One question, though: What does "the language is indestructible" mean, and why is it a problem?)

It'd be interesting to hear how the model might extend to handle syntax and
phonology, though. I have certain inklings how it could apply to them, but
can't imagine how it would handle them in their entirety.

--And.

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