Where: Room 52.737 or online on zoom (Passcode: 011358)

Description: 

Languages are expected to favour one-to-one form-meaning mappings, using for example the same affix form (e.g., -s in English) every time a particular meaning is intended (e.g., plural number), and placing affixes with the same meaning consistently in the same position (e.g., always suffixal). Forms extending over contexts with a common meaning (e.g., plural in 1pl, 2pl, 3pl) are thus considered natural, and those extending over contexts with no consistent common meaning (e.g., 1pl and 3sg) are considered unnatural. Natural patterns are most common cross-linguistically, and most learnable in experiments; however, little is yet known about differences in learnability within natural or unnatural classes. I will present two studies where I explore the learnability and cross-linguistic recurrence of most and least unnatural patterns of splits in morphological paradigms (by form in syncretic patterns, and by affix position in positional splits) in the domain of person and number verbal agreement. I will show that unnatural patterns with more person and number features in common are easier to learn and most frequent cross-linguistically, and will discuss this gradient in cross-linguistic recurrence and learnability as a general bias towards patterns with the same identity (be it of forms or position) to share higher featural similarity. Time permitting, I will also present a couple of ongoing projects using experiments as well as distributional models where I explore the cognitive and distributional biases underlying cross-linguistic tendencies in the linear order of inflectional morphology.