Introduction: Morphological paradigms

An introduction to essays in a special issue of Transactions of the Philogical Society dedicated to the memory of R. H. Robins & titled "Morphological Paradigms" indicates the heterogeneity of the word-&-paradigm approach to morphology, in which the relative importance of morphemes vs words varies from one extreme, associated with ancient & traditional grammars, in which words are the locus of generalizations & sublexical units are purely morphotactic in function to an opposing position centered on morphemes that treats paradigms as the locus of high-level grammatical constraints. Between the extremes of the word-&-paradigm approach are the realization-based models that relax the form/meaning biuniqueness requirement for morphemes while assigning grammatical properties to roots, stems, or exponents independently of inflected word forms. 7 References. J. Hitchcock