Paradigm economy

Abstract

The inflexional paradigm, as a linguistic entity or concept, has not been a major preoccupation of theoretical linguists (at least in the English-speaking world) for several decades. For example, it is scarcely mentioned by Zellig Harris in his classic Methods in structural linguistics (1951). Nor have generative grammarians devoted much attention to it. Being interested originally in syntax, semantics and phonology to the almost total exclusion of morphology, they had no immediate incentive to reconsider such a squarely morphological concept. Quite apart from this, a positive reason for continuing to neglect, or reject, the paradigm seemed to flow from their approach to phonology. If phonological organization and phonological change were properly understood (they thought), then it could be seen that there was no need to invoke explicitly non-phonological factors such as ‘paradigm pressure’ or ‘analogical levelling’ in order to account for ‘exceptions’ to ‘sound laws’.