Chapter 8: Morphomic properties

In Chapter 8 (‘Morphomic properties’), I discuss several noncanonical systems of inflection in which the grammatical distinctions relevant for a lexeme’s syntax are neither identical nor isomorphic to those relevant  for its inflectional realization; these include the systems of subject-verb agreement in Hua and Nepali, the system of tenses in Twi, and the system of verb inflection in Noon.  I show that in these systems, a lexeme’s inflected forms are not directly determined by the morphosyntactic property sets relevant to their syntax, but instead involve the realization of morphomic properties (Aronoff 1994)—properties whose sole motivation is morphological.  Thus, these systems involve a mismatch between the property sets distinguishing the cells of a lexeme’s content paradigm and the property sets distinguishing the cells of its stem’s form paradigm.