Introducing Linguistic Morphology

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An expanded and updated new edition of this best-selling introduction to linguistic morphology. The text guides the reader from the very first principles of the internal structure of words through to advanced issues of current controversy. The first part of the book introduces basic concepts, with the help of examples from a range of familiar and exotic languages. The second section highlights particularly important topics, and discusses them in more detail. These include the definition of the word-form, productivity, the vexed problems of inflection versus derivation and the nature of the morpheme, and the position of morphology in relation to phonology and syntax. The third section looks at the theory of morphology, considering fundamental problems such as the nature of morphological universals, how the brain deals with morphologically complex words and how morphology changes over time, but also with individual ways of looking at morphology, including natural morphology, word-and-paradigm and level-ordered models.