In recent years, considerable attention has been devoted to the mismatches that often exist between a word's morphological structure and its semantics. Here, I argue that the full range of mismatches can only be resolved within the framework of a paradigm-based theory of morphology in which morphological rules are formulated as operations on morphological expressions and in which the formal relations between the root of a paradigm and the words in that paradigm are defined by a set of paradigm functions. I demonstrate that this kind of framework affords a straightforward resolution of certain morphosemantic mismatches from Breton which nevertheless present insuperable difficulties for structure-based approaches to ‘bracketing paradoxes’ such as that proposed in Pesetsky 1985. The paradigm-based approach is shown to apply with equal success in the domains of inflection and derivation. Moreover, paradigm functions are shown to be more adequate for the resolution of certain kinds of mismatches than either the head operations of Hoeksema 1985 or the process of analogical back-formation proposed by Spencer 1988.

One problem in linguistic theory concerns the way in which the properties characterizing parenthetical or disjunct constituents are formally recorded in linguistic descriptions. The goals of this paper are to describe the interaction between disjunct constituents and sentential structures and to argue for an extension of the theoretical apparatus initially postulated in autosegmental phonology in order to represent complex syntactic structures containing disjunct constituents with a number of independent phrase markers that intersect at the linear axis.

A computer is used to count the number of new vocabulary words introduced into a text over a moving interval thirty-five words long. The number of new words in each successive interval is plotted at the midpoint of the interval, generating a curve called the Vocabulary-Management Profile (VMP). Analysis of VMPs for passages from James Joyce and George Orwell illustrates that clearcut peaks and valleys on VMPs correlate closely with constituent boundaries and information flow in discourse. VMPs for these authors show surprisingly regular alternations between peaks and valleys (that is. between new and repeated vocabulary), reflecting two competing principles that necessarily underlie all normal discourse: innovation and coherence.