Grammatische-Regel-Konfl ikte: Eine kanonische Annäherung

Abstract

Grammatical rules conflicts. A canonical approach

This article gives an overview of the theoretical background and the methodology of a relatively new language typological approach, called canonical typology. This will be done in the form of a case study by describing and classifying a special linguistic phenomenon, grammatical rule conflicts, which occur if a lexical item happens to be in the scope of two or more grammatical rules with different outputs. These rule conflicts represent exceptionalities or irregularities in the grammatical system of the language and mark limits of possible words. The data-based analysis presents over 50 examples of phonological, morphological or morphosyntactic rule conflicts in German, Latin, Arabic, French, Spanish and Hungarian in order to find out the “best” or canonical examples of rule conflicts.