Talk:Realizational morphology

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This content has been migrated from Wiktionary, where it did not belong. No attempt has been made to edit or verify it. Please remove this notice once the page has been edited appropiately. — Paul G 08:49, 9 August 2004 (UTC)

moved from article page Rich Farmbrough 21:28, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 12 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): CaylMicv.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:51, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

form of morphology

What does form mean in form of morphology? --Backinstadiums (talk) 17:44, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Phrasing Problems

"This theory also denies that morphemes are signs (form-content pairs). Instead, inflections are stem modifications which serve as exponents of morphological feature sets." is almost directly copied off of a website and needs to be rephrased. (https://www.wordsense.eu/realizational/#:~:text=realizational%20(English)&text=(linguistics)%20Of%20or%20relating%20to,(form%2Dcontent%20pairs).) I have also linked the website in the citations for now.

Phrasing could be improved in general. There is still a lot of information without sources.

CaylMicv (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

"Realizational" vs "word-and-paradigm", move request and useful sources

This article conflates realizational and word-and-paradigm (WP) morphology, but the terms have different meanings. Realizational morphology is a word-and-paradigm framework, but word-and-paradigm is a broader term that includes other theories as well. It is also worth noting that word-and-paradigm may be understood by more readers, since it's a term that is often included in general linguistic courses. Given this fact, and the broader nature of the term WP, a move might be worth considering.

The inclusion of the opposing terms realizational and incremental may be useful to define realizational morphology.

Potential sources

This is the most useful, updated source on the matter:

• Blevins, J. P. (2016). Word and Paradigm Morphology.

Other useful sources include:

• Blevins, James P., Farrell Ackerman, and Rob Malouf, 'Word and Paradigm Morphology', in Jenny Audring, and Francesca Masini (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Morphological Theory, Oxford Handbooks (2018; online edn, Oxford Academic, 8 Jan. 2019)
• Bauer, L. (2003). 11 Word-and-Paradigm Morphology. In Introducing Linguistic Morphology (pp. 196-213). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Posner R. P. H. Matthews, Morphology. An introduction to the theory of word-structure. (Cambridge Text-books in Linguistics, 1.) London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Pp. 243. Index. Journal of Linguistics. 1975;11(2):270-277.
• Stump GT. Inflectional Morphology: A Theory of Paradigm Structure. Cambridge University Press; 2001. (This is already used as a source in the current version of the article, but since it outlines a specific theory within WP, it might be worth focusing on the other sources first.)

For the history of the field:

• In Blevins (2016; see above), chapters 1 and 2 cover the history of WP.
• Robins, R.H. (1959), IN DEFENCE OF WP. Transactions of the Philological Society, 58: 116-144.
• Matthews, P. H. (1965). Some Concepts in Word-and-Paradigm Morphology. Foundations of Language, 1(4), 268–289.

IlmarisenVasara 03:28, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm going to be bold about this, while being open to reverts and further discussion. IlmarisenVasara 05:13, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Could not move, I will request the move with {{subst:Requested move}} IlmarisenVasara 05:26, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

Requested move 21 March 2026

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. No support to move and no new participation appears forthcoming. It also seems that the two participants have reached a satisfactory alternative resolution through discussion (a fine example of how things should be done if I may say so). (non-admin closure) ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley$\lor$investigateᛅ} 20:18, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

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Realizational morphology → Word-and-paradigm morphologyWord-and-paradigm morphology – Word-and-paradigm and realizational are not synonyms. Realizational is a WP theory, possibly the most influential one as of now, but it's not the only one. "WP" might also be more recognizable to people who are newer to the subject (see above). IlmarisenVasara 05:35, 21 March 2026 (UTC) — Relisting. Jeffrey34555 (talk) 18:44, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Comment (vote at bottom): I am not an expert on this, but the sources I have found seem to suggest what you are saying is backwards; WP is a type of (inferential-)realizational, not the other way around. That's not to say that this page isn't collapsing the two terms improperly, but that the hierarchy is important for determining if the title is proper; due weight should then be given to other frameworks. Here is what I found:

• Stump (2001) Inflectional Morphology: A Theory of Paradigm Structure pp 2-3
• Ackerman & Stump (2002) Paradigms and Periphrastic Expression: A Study in Realization-based Lexicalism pp. 5, 8
• Blevins (2006) Word-Based Morphology p. 534
• LaCara (2019) Morphemes and morphological structures pp. 11-12
• Manova, Hammarström, Kastner & Nie (2020) What is in a morpheme? p. 2

Boutin (2004) appears to treat them as synonymous:

• Boutin (2004) Towards a realizational approach to morphology in Role & Reference Grammar p. 2

I think LaCara (2019) and Manova et al. (2020) are clearest in making the type distinctions, deriving from Stump (2001)'s framework:

One can therefore imagine four types of theories of inflectional morphology: lexical–incremental theories, lexical–realizational theories, inferential–incremental theories, and inferential–realizational theories. At present, each of these four types of theories has its proponents. [...] Finally, Word-and-Paradigm theories of inflection (e.g. those proposed by Matthews (1972), Zwicky (1985a), and Anderson (1992)) are of the inferential–realizational type.

— Stump (2001) pp. 2-3

WORD-AND-PARADIGM (WP) theories also reject the hypothesis that words are composed of morphemes and assume that only words are stored in the lexicon. [...] For instance, if the word hús ‘house’ occurs in a definite DP that is the object of a preposition that assigns dative case, we look for the [DEFINITE, PARADIGM, SINGULAR] part of the paradigm. [...] This gives rise to the name REALIZATIONAL MORPHOLOGY. [...] Not all realizational approaches to morphology reject the notion of morpheme. Distributed Morphology is an item-and-arrangement approach that is also realizational (Bobaljik 2017).

— LaCara (2019), pp. 11-12

3) lexical-realizational, e.g. Distributed Morphology (DM; Noyer 1997, Halle and Marantz 1993, Bobaljik 2017).
4) inferential-realizational, e.g. the general approach of Word-and-Paradigm morphology (Matthews 1972, 1974, 1991, Zwicky 1985, Blevins 2016), Amorphous Morphology (Anderson 1992), Network Morphology (Corbett and Fraser 1993, Brown and Hippisley 2012, among others), as well as Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM; Stump 1997, 2001). Construction Morphology (CxM; Booij 2010) should also fall under this general view, although its focus is not on inflectional morphology.

— Manova et al. 2020

Given this info, for now I would oppose. ~ oklopfer (💬) 19:07, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Especially given Stump and Manova et al., it would seem that WP morphology is a type of realizational approach, and in that you are correct, but Word and Paradigm Morphology (Blevins, 2016; p. 5) seems to state otherwise:

The point of departure for this morphological tradition is the classical WP model [...]. The following summary focusses primarily on two traditions. Models that formalize the classical model in terms of interpretive rule or constraint systems are collectively designated as realizational models. Models that adopt a complex system perspective and emphasize patterns of interdependency, recently formalized in terms of information theory and discriminative learning, are grouped together as implicational models.

But most importantly, Part II of his book (called Contemporary WP models) includes Realizational models (chapter 6) and Implicational models (chapter 7), very much implying they are two types of WP. In my opinion, Blevins (2006) p. 534 that you linked indirectly suggests that realizational morphology is a type of WP, basically implying what Blevins (2016) says. He also says that realizational emphasis on stems clashes with pure WP, so there's that.

I know that we shouldn't put undue weight on a single author, but his is the most recent monographic book and he's one of the big scholars in WP/realizational morphology. Even if the article ends up not being moved, I think it should be noted that some analyse realizational theory as a subset of WP.

Upon further reading, we can confirm that the sources do clash on this topic, which complicates describing the "taxonomy" (and—I think—even the theory). There's three approaches to this classification:

• Stump's approach (realizational is the broader term; stems from his 2x2 taxonomy: lexical vs. inferential + incremental vs. realizational);
• Blevins's approach (realizational is a type of WP, follows Hockett's IA–IP–WP classification);
• the synonyms (or near-synonyms) approach—possibly used when a distinction isn't necessary or isn't the scope of the study or paper.

Stump might be the most popular classification, but the other two should be mentioned. It should clearly be stated that there's conflicting views on this. It should also be noted that WP is the older term (which is what the lead refers to when it says "created by Hockett": the term created by him is WP); and I also still think the term word-and-paradigm would be recognized by more people than realizational.

Of course, I might be misunderstanding this, so anyone should feel free to correct or redirect me if I'm mistaken. IlmarisenVasara 23:29, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree with all of your analyses. Blevins does seem to flip the taxonomy, and your "three approaches" explanation is what I interpret too based on what we have found. I think the best thing for us to do is plainly state that such ambiguity exists, and describe the different approaches as they are. ~ oklopfer (💬) 04:51, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.