title: Dutch plural inflection: the exception that proves the analogy.
abstract: We develop the view that inflection is driven partly by non-phonological analogy and that non-phonological information is of particular importance to the inflection of non-canonical roots, which in the view of [Marcus, G. F., Brinkmann, U., Clahsen, H., Wiese, R., & Pinker, S. (1995). German inflection: the exception that proves the rule. Cognitive Psychology, 29, 189-256.] are inflected by a symbolic rule process. We used the Dutch plural to evaluate these claims. An analysis of corpus data shows that a model using non-phonological information (orthography) produces significantly fewer errors on plurals of non-canonical Dutch nouns, in particular borrowings, than a model that includes only phonological information. Moreover, we show that a double default system, as proposed by Pinker [Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules. London: Phoenix.], does not offer an advantage over the latter model. A second study, examining the use of orthography in an online plural production task, shows that, in Dutch, the chosen pseudoword plural is significantly affected by non-phonological information. A final simulation study confirms that these results are in line with a model of inflectional morphology that explains the inflection of non-canonical roots by non-phonological analogy instead of by a default rule process.
authors.affiliation: Center for Psycholinguistics, University of Antwerp, Belgium. emmanuel.keuleers@ua.ac.be
authors.forename: Emmanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Keuleers
authors.forename: Dominiek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sandra
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Daelemans
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gillis
authors.forename: Gert
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Durieux
authors.forename: Evelyn
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Martens
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics / Q000379:methods; D014825:Vocabulary