Gradient Harmonicity in Compounds

Abstract

Some recent approaches to morphological complexity (e.g. Hay 2001, Hay & Baayen 2005) claim that (i) morphological complexity is gradient so that even different forms that share the same affix may differ in complexity and (ii) a frequency-dependent measure of complexity is appropriate for capturing these differences. In this paper we argue that this approach can explain the unusual harmonic behaviour some compounds and compound-like words in Hungarian which unexpectedly show variation or unexpectedly do not show variation in palatal suffix harmony. We argue that this unusual harmonic behaviour is due to the fact that "compoundness" is gradient and put forward a measure of compound complexity based on the relative frequency of a compound and its constituents.