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Frequency determines defaults in German: Default perfect -t versus irregular plural -s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1999

Joseph Paul Stemberger
Affiliation:
Department of Communication Disorders, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 stemberg@tc.umn.edu

Abstract

The German facts are consistent with the hypothesis that the default is the most frequent allomorph. Plural -s is the least frequent allomorph and does not act as a default. There is another way to measure the frequency of perfects in which no single -n allomorph is as frequent as -t. Lexical versus computational components do not correlate with regularity.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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