CHAPTER 2: SEMANTIC DETERMINANTS OF INFLECTIONAL EXPRESSION 1. Lexical, inflectional and syntactic expression. This chapter proposes a set of principles that contribute to an eventual answer to the question of what are the possible inflectional categories in the languages of the world. The hypothesis is set in the larger framework that includes a consideration of what semantic notions can be expressed lexically and syntactically in the languages of the world, although no complete answer to any of these questions is proposed. The proposed principles do, however, make predictions about the behavior of inflectional categories: their fre-quency of occurrence in the languages of the world, their order of occurrence with respect to a stem, and the morpho-phonemic effect they have on the stem .. In order to state the hypothesis, it is necessary first to define three major ways in which semantic elements may be combined into expression units. (a) First, two or more semantic elements may be expressed in a single monomorphemic lexical item. This is lexical expression. For instance, the lexical item kill at some level of analysis combines the semantic elements of 'die' and 'cause'; drop combines 'fall' and 'cause'. (b) In inflectional expression, each semantic element is expressed in an individual unit, but these units are bound into a single word. Inflectional expression may be in the form of affixes added to a stem, or in the form of a change in the stem itself, e.g. English regular Past Tense, walked, vs. irregu-lar brought. Inflectional expression is by definition very general. A mor-phological category is inflectional if some member of the category obligatorily accompanies the radical element when it occurs in a finite clause. Thus, an inflectional category must be combinable with any stem with the proper syntactic and semantic features, yielding a predictable meaning. ( c) In syntactic expression the different semantic elements are expressed by totally separable and independent units, that is, in separate words. Thus come to know is the syntactic expression of 'inchoative' and ,'know', while12 MORPHOLOGY realize is the lexical expression of the same notions. This type of expression is also often termed "periphrastic" expression. These three expression types do not constitute discrete categories, but rather mark off areas on a continuum. Intermediate expression types also exist, and are important to the general hypothesis. Between lexical and inflec-tional expression lies derivational morphology. Derivational expression resembles lexical expression in that derivational morphemes are often restricted in applicability and idiosyncratic in formation or meaning. It resem-bles inflectional expression in that two distinct morphemes are combined in a single word. The hypothesis' to be outlined here will contribute to a better understanding of the inflectional/derivational distinction, which is discussed in detail in Chapter 4. Between inflectional expression and syntactic expression are various types of units that have properties of grammatical morphemes, that is, they belong to a closed class and occur in a fixed position, but which are not bound to any lexical item, and thus are not inflections. These units are var-iously named clitics, particles or auxiliaries. Examples are the cliticized object pronouns of Spanish or French, or the modal auxiliaries of English (may, can, will, etc.). These free grammatical morphemes resemble inflections in that they make up contrast sets that are obligatory in certain environments, and they have positional restrictions. They resemble periphrastic expressions in that they are not bound to lexical stems. Free grammatical morphemes are not studied in the present work, although their existence is recognized by the theory to be proposed. These expression types form a continuum that ranges from the most highly fused means of expression, lexical expression, to the most loosely joined means of expression, syntactic or periphrastic expression: lexical - - - derivational - - - inflectional - - - free grammatical - - - syntactic < -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------greater degree of fusion Given these basic types of expression, the question this chapter considers is whether there are any generalizations to be made concerning the content of the semantic elements that may be expressed in each of these ways. Since there seem to be few constraints on what may be expressed syntactically, it is more interesting to focus attention on what may be expressed lexically and inflectionally. In fact, the hypothesis of this chapter is concerned primarily with the most c.onstrained expression type - inflectional expression. SEMANTIC DETERMINANTS OF INFLECTIONAL EXPRESSION 13 When one looks around casually at the languages of the world, one is struck by the fact that the same or very similar inflectional categories appear in one language after another. Verbal systems quite commonly inflect for aspect and/or tense, mood,. and person and number agreement with the subject. Somewhat less frequently, it seems, one finds inflectional causatives, negation, voice, and object agreement. For nouns, number, gender or other types of classifiers, case and sometimes deixis are expressed inflectionally. These lists are not exhaustive, of course, but the fact that it is possible to come up with ~. relatively short list of seIl!antic elements often expressed inflectionally indicates that there must be some general principles governing inflectional expression. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to explicat-ing two of these principles, relevance and generality. 2. Determinants of inflectional expression 2.1. Relevance A meaning element is relevant to another meaning element if the semantic content of the first directly affects or modifies the semantic content of the second. If two meaning elements are, by their content, highly relevant to one another, then it is predicted that they may have lexical or inflectional expression, but if they are irrevelant to one another, then their combination will be restricted to syntactic expression. Notice that the hypothesis does n01 predict that a semantic element must have lexical or inflectional expression in a particular language, it only delineates the set of elements that may have lexical or inflectional expression. Let us consider some examples. In English