Morphological Classes as Natural Categories

Abstract

The most productive class of strong verbs in English is that exemplified by the verb string/strung. Both historical and experimental evidence show that the class is phonologically defined. However, the members do not share a single set of phonological features. Rather, the class is organized around a prototypical member (in the sense of Rosch 1978), to which the other members stand in a family-resemblance relation (in the sense of Wittgenstein 1953). The defining attributes of the class include the final consonants as well as the initial consonants and consonant clusters, and to a lesser extent the vowel of the base verb. The organization of the formal aspects of linguistic units is shown to follow the same principles as the organization of the content of the linguistic units. The phonological shapes of verbs in morphological classes can be organized into natural categories, like other natural and cultural objects.