A Paradigm Function Morphology Account Of Serbian Nominal Inflection

As a member of the group of South Slavic languages,the Serbian language has a rich inflectional system.Serbian inflectional morphology presents a set of intricate problems;in the present thesis,PARADIGM FUNCTION MORPHOLOGY(PFM)(Stump 2001)is used to resolve these problems as it affords simple accounts of a number of morphological phenomena.As Serbian inflection exhibits instances of particularly interesting morphological behavior,the goal of this thesis is to shed new light on them.The thesis is aimed at a description of the nominal inflection–i.e.the noun,adjective and pronoun inflectional classes and patterns–in contemporary Serbian.As the thesis deals with standard Serbian,but also intends to describe word forms that are in fact in current use among the native speakers of Serbian nowadays,attempts are also made to adapt the standard to the actual use of the language as much as possible,so we rely on a diverse linguistic literature.Some notes on the typological properties of the Serbian inflectional system will be discussed as well.We use Paradigm Function Morphology to account for the inflection of nouns,adjectives,and pronouns in the Serbian language,by instantiating the relevant rules of basic stem choice,realization rules,morphophonological rules and morphological generalizations.We show that we can account for a range of Serbian data,and that we can provide an alternative analysis to what is usually done in this field in traditional Serbian linguistics.Our analysis has shown instances of extended exponence and underdetermination,which cannot be adequately accommodated by approaches that are fundamentally different from Paradigm Function Morphology.Furthermore,morphological phenomena such as syncretism(whole-word or affixal),defectiveness,and suppletion have been observed in our analysis,and we have relied on the relevant literature in these instances in order to produce an adequate PFM account of the Serbian nominal inflection.The present thesis focuses on how Paradigm Function Morphology accounts for Serbian inflectional data,and on the problems the data presents.What we mainly assess in this thesis is whether PFM is preferable to traditional accounts and in what ways,and we thus provide an original research,of interest for both Serbian linguistics,where this approach has not yet been adopted,as well as for morphology in general,considering the further linguistic and typological implications this thesis offers.Where it is relevant,we compare the inflection of Serbian to other languages,thus expanding the scope of interest and significance of the research.