SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Despite the considerable difference that exist between competing theories of phonology and competing theories of morphology, it is still possible to undertake a meaningful investigation into the nature of a language user's morphological knowledge and its acquisition in terms which are generally acknowledged to be invariant across all theories. We attempt in this paper to develop a framework which is as abstract as possible (in the sense of being independent of existing theories of particular morphological or phonological structure), yet still claims to make empirically testable claims about the acquisition of morphological knowledge as manifested by a native speaker's judgements. Far from attempting to replace current theories of phonology and morphology, this framework is orthogonal to them, providing a tool for exploring the relationship between phonology and morphology independently of any particular model of phonology or morphology. The contribution these speculations claim to make is to make clear what phenomena can potentially be explained outside any theory of phonology or morphology.