Inheritance and Inflectional Morphology

In this book, the nominal inflectional morphology of Old High German, Latin, Early New High German, and Koine Greek are analyzed using inheritance trees. Morphological data is drawn from parallel texts in each language; the trees may be used as a translation aid to readers of the source texts as an accompaniment to or substitute for traditional paradigms.

Inheritance, which has its origins in the field of artificial intelligence, is a framework focusing on shared properties. When applied to inflectional morphology, it enables useful generalizations within and across paradigms. The inheritance tree format serves as an alternative to traditional paradigms and provides a visual representation of the structure of the language's morphology. This mapping also enables cross-linguistic morphological comparison. In this book, the nominal inflectional morphology of Old High German, Latin, Early New High German, and Koine Greek are analyzed using inheritance trees. Morphological data is drawn from parallel texts in each language; the trees may be used as a translation aid to readers of the source texts as an accompaniment to or substitute for traditional paradigms. The trees shed light on the structural similarities and differences among the four languages.

Autorentext

MaryEllen A. LeBlanc received her PhD. in Germanic linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley. As a Fulbright scholar, she studied in Germany at the University of Bonn.

Inhalt

Contents: Inheritance - Old High German - Latin -
Early New High German - Koine Greek - Contrastive Morphology - Conclusion - Appendix.