Morphology in Integrated Lexicon Theory

 

Integrated Lexicon Theory, ILT, is characterised by the following properties.

1. A lexical lemma is a sign with two dimensions of compositionality and interpretativity. Lemmata have, in the general case, both compositional and interpretative properties.
2. Each dimension of sign structure has two poles: compositionality covers internal structure, constituency, and external context distribution, while interpretativity covers surface interpretation (phonetic and orthographic interpretation), and semantic interpretation. The smallest lemmata on the lexical rank scale have no internal linguistic structure, and the largest have no linguistic external distribution. Meaningless items, such as words heard but incompletely understood (perhaps Jabberwocky, or pharalogous, or unique morphemes like rasp-/ra:z/ in raspberry), have no semantic interpretation, and semantically reconstructed elliptical items in utterances have no phonetic or orthographic interpretation.
3. The compositionality dimension is formulated functionally in terms of attribute-named Immediate Dominance (ID) relations, such as those of case, frame, or theta theories, which apply at every structural level, from morphophonological structure, through morphotactic structure to phrasal idiom structure. The lexically identifiable ranks in ID structure are near-universal, though different selections of the ranks of ID structure may be made in different languages. For languages like English or German, the ID ranks are:
   • Discourse (e.g. lexicalised discourses such as greeting sequences, institutional procedures)
   • Text (e.g. formulaic texts such as monologues in institutional procedures)
   • Sentence (e.g. proverbs)
   • Phrase (e.g. turns of phrase, idioms)
   • Compound words
   • Inflected derived or simplex words
   • Derivational stems
   • Simple stems (roots, lexical morphemes) and affixes
   • Morphophonemes (and graphemes)
4. Fuzzy compositionality is found between ID rank levels, such as the phonaesthetic onsets (English glow, glimmer, glisten, gleam, glitter; slip, slop, slime, sludge, slut, slink) between the morphophonemic and the morphemic levels, and the functional sequence or clitic sets (as in English isn't, German (il) m'a (dit), German mi'm (Rad gekommen)). Differing degrees of lexicalisation between individuals also lead to fuzzy areas, for example with word prosody (as in the `CONtroversy conTROversy', variation in hyphenation practice in English, or capitalisation in German deadjectival nominals, or innovative current tendencies in the spelling of compounds, such as `InterCity', `Winchester Festplatte').
5. The interpretativity dimension is formulated as an interpretation function from signs to semantic and phonetic models, yielding the possibility that denotations and tokens are in the same domain (as required for the semantics of token-reflexive utterances such as This sentence has five words, or certain types of contrastive stress such as This whisky was DEported, not EXported, or for metalinguistic discourse about the sounds of language). The formal properties of these models may in part be the same, as the use of Event Logic in both phonology and in the semantics of verbs shows.
6. Temporal ordering of complex forms is a property of the phonetic model, and is assigned by the phonetic interpretation function. Temporal ordering fundamentally relates to two relations: linear precedence of units in time, and prosodic overlap of feature tiers, for intonation patterns, tonal morphemes, or allophonic coarticulations. Between temporal ordering relations at different levels there are hierarchical rhythmic relations, which

These underlying assumptions of ILT permit the formulation of a clearly structured model for integrated lexica, the ILEX model; the broad lines of the ILEX model are shown in Figure .