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The No Blur Principle meets Norwegian dialects *
Author(s) -
Enger HansOlav
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
studia linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.187
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-9582
pISSN - 0039-3193
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9582.2007.00139.x
Subject(s) - norwegian , natural (archaeology) , class (philosophy) , linguistics , suffix , root (linguistics) , history , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , archaeology
. The No Blur Principle (NBP) is confronted with developments in Norwegian dialects. The NBP helps us explain why the suffixes of the most productive class do not become ‘super‐stable’: that would have entailed a violation of the NBP. If affixes associated with the most productive class have become super‐stable, something has been done with other suffixes, so the NBP is complied with, by and large. The NBP did not have to ‘bite’, for the suffix distribution is partly extra‐morphologically motivated. This indicates a ‘belts‐and‐braces’ strategy to ensure inflectional distinctness. The paper also presents arguments in favour of Natural Morphology.