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Morpho-phonology is not independent of semantics

The case of German nominal number marking

ORCiD logo with link | Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
 | Universität Tübingen
 | Universität Erfurt
Published online: 12 September 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.24008.pla
Abstract
Morpho-phonological alternations in inflectional paradigms are commonly analyzed as purely formal phenomena, in which the mapping of phonological structure and morpho-syntactic categories is organized without recourse to semantic properties of the words involved. The present paper explores the role of semantics using the Discriminative Lexicon approach (Baayen, R. H., Chuang, Y.-Y., & Heitmeier, M. (2019). Wpmwithldl: Implementation of word and paradigm morphology with linear discriminative learning [Computer software manual]. (R package version 1.4.6, available at [URL])). The test case explored in this paper is German nominal number, a system involving complex morpho-phonological variation (e.g. Köpcke, K.-M., Schimke, S., & Wecker, V. (2021). Processing of german noun plurals: Evidence for first- and second-order schemata. Word Structure, 14 (1), 1–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Heitmeier, M., Chuang, Y.-Y., & Baayen, R. H. (2021). Modeling morphology with linear discriminative learning: Considerations and design choices. Frontiers in Psychology, 4929. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Plag, I., Heitmeier, M., & Domahs, F. (2024). German nominal number interpretation in an impaired mental lexicon: A naive discriminative learning perspective. The Mental Lexicon. 18(3), 417–445.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; McCurdy, K. (2024). Rules, frequency, and predictability in morphological generalization: Behavioral and computational evidence from the german plural system. Edinburgh Research Archive. [URL].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Using word2vec vectors as semantic representations, and triphones as form representations, we created two-layer linear discriminative learning (LDL) networks that map form representations directly onto semantic representations (modeling comprehension), and semantic representations onto form representations (modeling production). The LDL mappings successfully predict the forms and the meanings of the singular and plural nouns taken from a pertinent study (Domahs, F., Bartha-Doering, L., Domahs, U., & Delazer, M. (2017). Wie muss ein “guter” Deutscher Plural klingen? In N. Fuhrhop, R. Szczepaniak, & K. Schmidt (Eds.), Sichtbare und hörbare Morphologie (pp. 205–237). Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). A number of semantic and phonological measures derived from the LDL network also very successfully distinguished between singular and plural forms. Our results demonstrate that semantics, in addition to formal and grammatical properties, may play a decisive role in the representation and processing of German nominal number. The system of German nominal number can be understood as emerging from the distributional properties of words on the one hand, and basic principles of discriminative human learning on the other.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Modeling German nominal number
    • 2.1Previous approaches
    • 2.2Modeling nominal number with discriminative learning
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1The data
    • 3.2The baseline models
    • 3.3The LDL model
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Predicting form and meaning using LDL
    • 4.2Predicting number
      • 4.2.1The baseline models: Predicting number based on structural-phonological properties
      • 4.2.2Predicting number using the LDL model: T-SNE and LDA analysis
    • 4.3Inspecting individual LDL measures: PCA analysis
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (85)
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