How Lexical Conservatism Can Lead to Paradigm Gaps

The goals of this paper are twofold. First, I provide empirical generalizations regarding paradigmatic gaps in the Russian genitive plurals. Second, I propose an analysis of these facts in terms of inviolable lexical conservatism conditions. The main idea behind Lexical Conservatism is that speakers are hesitant introducing forms that would create a new allomorph of an existent morpheme. I reject an alternative hypothesis based on vowel neutralization and consider predictions of Lexical conservatism for the rest of the Russian nominal paradigm. Additionally a survey with native speakers is used to provide further evidence for the claims made.