Bessel Award Lecture: Gaps and doublets, rational learning, and a knowledge norm on forms

Abstract

Inflectional gaps (*forgoed/*forwent) and doublets (✓dived/✓dove) can seem surprising in light of common assumptions about morphology and learning. Perhaps understandably, morphologists have troubled themselves with such cases (especially with gaps) and have offered different ways in which they can be accommodated within the morphological component of the grammar, often by making major departures from common assumptions about morphology and learning. I will suggest that these worries and the proposed remedies are premature. The worries arise from the unmotivated assumption that all gaps and doublets are necessarily derived within individual grammars. Once this assumption is abandoned, the observed properties of gaps and doublets become much less puzzling. The only new assumption that is needed is that speakers only use forms that they know (and not just believe) to be correct.

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