Paper info: Embick "Variation and morphosyntactic theory"

Embick, David (to appear) "Variation and morphosyntactic theory: Competition fractionated," to appear in Language and Linguistics Compass. downloadable from the Embick's website on UPenn

• How can dynamic aspects of language-variation and change- be treated in formal morphosyntactic theory?


• On the notion "competition": competition for grammaticality, competition for use, modularity, and their relation.


• How does Distributed Morphology define competition and analyze blocking phenomena?


• Two stances for some doublet phenomena (e.g. "dove" and "dived" for a past form of "dive"): Competition Grammar theory and some "gradient" and "probabilistic" theories.


• Movement phenomena in English, Middle English, and Belfast English