Words and Paradigms: Peter H. Matthews and the Development of Morphological Theory
by Stephen Anderson (Yale University)
The tension between morpheme-based views of word structure, on which words are exhaustively divided into atomic units linking form and content, and word and paradigm views, on which words are analyzed in terms of their relations to others, goes back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century. The history of this opposition within modern linguistics is described, and the specific role of Peter H. Matthews in promoting the superiority of a non-morphemic approach to morphology is highlighted. Arguments for such an approach are briefly reviewed, with discussion of the response to these on the part of the broader field of linguistics.
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