Andrea D. Sims: Inflectional defectiveness

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Abstract

The Russian verb pobedit’ ‘conquer’ shows what Sims calls canonical defectiveness, “the complete lack of any word-form filling a given paradigm cell […] in the context of a maximal expectation that there should be some form corresponding to that cell” (250). That cell is the first-person singular nonpast, in which *pobežu is bad and so are *pobedju and *pobeždu. In this wide-ranging study she cites data from two dozen languages and employs a variety of tools like statistical analysis and information theory in order to provide a context for understanding the defectiveness of pobedit’.

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Published

2017-06-01

How to Cite

Gladney, F. Y. “Andrea D. Sims: Inflectional Defectiveness”. Journal of Slavic Linguistics, vol. 25, no. 1, June 2017, pp. 141-45, https://ojs.ung.si/index.php/JSL/article/view/389.

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Book Reviews