Intersecting formatives and inflectional predictability

What is it about?

Irregular inflectional morphology may be analysed as more or less segmentable. When calculating the paradigmatic predictability of forms, we find that greater segmentation raises the entropy of predictions, i.e. makes forms more unpredictable. However a learner who does not yet command the whole paradigm may in some cases benefit by drawing implications from more fine-grained segmentation, so that the more segmented morphology may improve predictability in an acquisition phase.

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Why is it important?

This article builds on a growing body of literature that uses probability and information theory to analyse the predictability or complexity of inflectional systems. This article contributes probabilistic analysis of the effects of degree of segmentation. A case study is provided from the Murrinhpatha language of northern Australia, which has inflectional regularities at a very fine-grained level of segmentation (six independent formatives for each inflected form), but becomes completely irregular if inflected forms are taken as an indivisible exponence.