Chapter 9: Too many cells, too few cells

Chapter 9 (‘Too many cells, too few cells’) examines cases in which a content cell fails to correspond to any form cell (and hence lacks a realization) as well as cases in which a lexeme has more realizations than expected.  Instances of this latter sort include cases of overabundance, in which a lexeme has more than one realization for the same morphosyntactic property set (as with English dreamed and dreamt); cases of overdifferentiation, in which a lexeme’s inflection expresses more morphosyntactic distinctions than are normal for members of its syntactic category (as with English am and are); and cases of shape alternation, in which synonymous word forms are restricted to complementary phonological or syntactic contexts (as with English my and mine).