Inheritance

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Inheritance is a process in which a category 'inherits' some feature of a lower category.

Morphology

the phenomenon that a category can inherit (part of) the argument structure of the category from which it is derived.

Example

the noun driver is said to inherit the internal argument of the verb drive from which it is derived, cf. Rochelle drives trucks / Rochelle is a driver of trucks, where trucks is the internal argument.

Link

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

  • Booij, G.E. 1988. The relation between inheritance and argument linking, Everaert et al. (eds) Morphology & modularity, pp.57-75, Foris, Dordrecht.
  • Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological Theory, Blackwell, Oxford.
  • Sproat, R. 1985. On Deriving the Lexicon, PhD diss. MIT.

Syntax

in the Barriers theory of Chomsky (1986b) a maximal projection is said to inherit barrierhood in case the first maximal projection it dominates is a Blocking Category.

References

  • Booij, G.E. 1988. The relation between inheritance and argument linking, Everaert et al. (eds) Morphology & modularity, pp.57-75, Foris, Dordrecht.
  • Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological Theory, Blackwell, Oxford.
  • Sproat, R. 1985. On Deriving the Lexicon, PhD diss. MIT.