A memory-based learning model of Dutch plural inflection
Emmanuel Keuleers, Dominiek Sandra · 2004
A common observation in studies of inflectional morphology is that words which are atypical members of their syntactic class often take a regular inflection, independent of their phonology. For example, in English we would say that the plural of the surname mann is manns although it has the same phonology as the noun man which has the irregular plural men. The same goes for the borrowed word talisman (plural talismans) as opposed to the noun fireman (plural firemen). Marcus et al. (1995), refer to these atypical words as non-canonical roots, and suggest that their inflection can best be explained by a dual-mechanism model. Irregular words are inflected through an associative memory system, while regular words are inflected by a symbolic rule (e.g. add-s). For non-canonical roots however, access