The lexical representation of nouns and ajectives in romance languages

This paper discusses such issues as the format under which lexical units are stored in memory, the way in which inflection and derivation interact, and the definition of morphological units, such as stem, root, word form, etc. More largely, two competing models of morphological competence, a “units-plusrules” model and a global model based on analogy, are discussed. The main focus is on nouns and adjectives in three Romance languages: French, Catalan and Italian. The data are analyzed within a word-based model of morphology. Word forms are considered to be the main units of lexical memorization universally. These forms are organized into larger, more abstract units, the lexemes, roughly corresponding to dictionary entries. It is claimed that the other units traditionally identified in morphological analyses, such as stems, roots, etc. may serve as organizing units in some cases, but should not be considered to be universal units of morphology cross-linguistically.