{"id":1425,"date":"2022-07-27T17:08:08","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T17:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2022-07-27T17:08:29","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T17:08:29","slug":"deriving-major-rule-minor-rule-distinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/deriving-major-rule-minor-rule-distinction\/","title":{"rendered":"Deriving the major rule\/minor rule distinction"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The ability to target underspecified lexemes&#8217; specifications for a rule feature, in which feature-filling is implemented by unification (e.g., Bale et al. 2014), ought to enable us to derive the traditional distinction (e.g., Lakoff 1970) between <em>major rules<\/em> (those for which non-application is exceptional) and <em>minor rules<\/em> (those for which application is exceptional), making this distinction purely descriptive of later feature-filling rules inserting unmarked rule features upon lexical insertion.<br \/><br \/>Let us suppose we have a rule R. Let us suppose that every formative is unified with\u00a0 {+R} upon lexical insertion. Then, unification will fail only with formatives specified [\u2212R], and these formatives will exhibit exceptional non-application. This describes the parade example of exceptions to a major rule: the failure of trisyllabic shortening in <em>obesity<\/em> (assuming\u00a0<em>obese\u00a0<\/em>is [\u2212trisyllabic shortening]; see Chomsky &amp; Halle 1968: \u00a74.2.2).<br \/><br \/>Let us suppose instead that every formative is unified with {\u2212R} upon lexical insertion. Then, unification will fail only with those formatives specified [+R], and these formatives will exhibit exceptional application, assuming they otherwise satisfy the phonological description of rule R. This describes minor rules.<br \/><br \/>This (admittedly quite sketchy at present) idea seems to address Zonneveld&#8217;s (1978: 160f.) concern that Lakoff and contemporaries did not posit any way to encode whether or not a rule was major or minor, except &#8220;transderivationally&#8221; via inspection of successful derivations. This also places the major\/minor distinction\u2014correctly, I think\u2014in the scope of theory of productivity. More on this later.<\/p>\r\n<h1>References<\/h1>\r\n<p>Bale, A., Papillon, M., and Reiss, C. 2014. Targeting underspecified segments: a formal analysis of feature-changing and feature-filling rules.\u00a0<em>Lingua <\/em>148: 240-253.<br \/>Chomsky, N. and Halle, M. 1968. <em>Sound Pattern of English<\/em>. Harper &amp; Row.<br \/>Lakoff, G. 1970. <em>Irregularity in Syntax<\/em>. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.<br \/>Zonneveld, W. 1978.\u00a0<em>A Formal Theory of Exceptions in Generative Phonology<\/em>. Peter de Ridder.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ability to target underspecified lexemes&#8217; specifications for a rule feature, in which feature-filling is implemented by unification (e.g., Bale et al. 2014), ought to enable us to derive the traditional distinction (e.g., Lakoff 1970) between major rules (those for which non-application is exceptional) and minor rules (those for which application is exceptional), making this &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/deriving-major-rule-minor-rule-distinction\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Deriving the major rule\/minor rule distinction&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-phonology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1425"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1438,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1425\/revisions\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}