DEFAULTNESS PATTERNS: A DIACHRONIC ACCOUNT
Sabri Alshboul
The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan Department of English Language, Literature and Cultural StudiesYousef Al Shaboul
The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan Department of English Language, Literature and Cultural StudiesAbstract
Most approaches to inflectional morphology propose a synchronic account for the
establishment of defaultness in the plural inflection. The current research aims at exploring
the representation of the default system in JA at a diachronic level. The grammar of JA
displays two default plural forms: the sound feminine plural marked with the suffix -aat
(e.g. mataar/matar-aat ‘an airport/airports’) where a suffixation rule predicts the occurrence
of the default plural. The second default plural is the iambic broken plural marked with an
internal vowel change (short – long vowel) (kursi/karaasi ‘a seat/seats’). Our diachronic
analysis would take into account the default shift that occurred in the grammar of JA in
two different periods: the Turkish period and the British period. The findings reveal the
importance of the diachronic factors in determining the status of ‘defaultness’ in terms
of the ability of the lexicon to accept two default inflections. So, JA consists a hierarchy
that contains two defaults: the iambic broken plural and the sound feminine plural. This
mechanism of accepting two defaults gives insights into applying this multiple default format
crosslinguistically in which a grammar of a language can host a multiple default system.
Schlagworte:
defaultness, Jordanian Arabic, diachronic default, sound feminine plural, iambic broken pluralLiteraturhinweise
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The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan Department of English Language, Literature and Cultural Studies
The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan Department of English Language, Literature and Cultural Studies
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