A Category-free Model of Finnish Derivational Morphology
Pauli Brattico · SKY journal of linguistics · 2005
The lexicon is traditionally understood as consisting of lexical items, which are categorized in lexical categories such as verbs, nouns or adjectives. Recently, this assumption has been challenged by a theory which posits no lexical categories in the lexicon. Rather, lexical items are taken to be categorially underspecified roots. This article presents a theory of Finnish word formation which supports, and is based on, a category-free model of the lexicon. It is argued that the category neutral layer of word formation in Finnish is recursive, hence likely to be part of the syntax proper. Some implications are discussed.