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Book: Morphosyntactic Alternations in English

Chapter: 14. Morphological relatedness and zero alternation in Old English

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.20322

Blurb:

This chapter by Javier Martín Arista, is centrally concerned with morphological alternations as recurrent pairings of meaning and form. Martín Arista deals with zero alternation in Old English (OE) as comprising two phenomena involving an irregular association (or mismatch) between form and meaning: zero derivation and the empty morph. The author proposes a typology of affixless derivation in OE that distinguishes zero derivation and conversion, and shows that zero derivation and redundant derivation with empty morphs are related phenomena if word-formation is considered in its syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions.

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