Chapter 1

All things morphology

It is of course too big a promise that this volume would deliver summaries of important work in all subfields of the vast and ancient discipline of morphology, like a medieval street fair of arcane morphological ideas. This is not an encyclopedia, despite the title. Rather, we have attempted here to provide a view of where the field has been and where it is today within a particular theoretical framework, gathering up new and representative work in morphology by both eminent and emerging scholars, and touching on a very wide range of topics, approaches, and theoretical points of view. The place where the authors of these seemingly disparate articles have a common touchstone is in their focus on a word-based, paradigmatic approach to morphology, which was brought to attention in the modern era by the likes of Matthews (1965), Aronoff (1976, 1994), and Anderson (1992). The chapters of this book show that this perspective accounts for both the independence of morphology and for its interactions with syntax and phonology. One prominent name missing from the list of contributors is Mark Aronoff. This is hardly an accident: this volume was conceived as a way to shine light on the importance of his work by contributors who in virtually all cases have collaborated with or been mentored by Prof. Aronoff. We hope that he will be honored with the research we have produced and see his influence in it.