Beyond Plain and Extra-Grammatical Morphology: Echo-Pairs in Hungarian

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Morphology
• Phonology

Background:

• Echo-pairs in Hungarian are word formations with diminutive, playful, or intimate connotations.
• They are often classified as extra-grammatical morphology, deviating from standard word-building rules.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the morphological mechanisms behind Hungarian echo-pairs.
• To clarify the distinction between extra-grammatical and plain morphological processes.
• To determine the best computational models for explaining echo-pair formation.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a corpus of online Hungarian echo-pairs.
• A large-scale online nonce-word experiment involving nearly 1,500 participants.
• Comparison of the Minimal Generalization Learner and Generalized Context Model.

Main Results:

• Identified two primary phonological patterns in echo-pair formation.
• Observed systematic variations influenced by word type and experimental stimuli.
• Found that lexicon-oriented models, specifically the Generalized Context Model with structured similarity, best capture the data.

Conclusions:

• Echo-pair formation is better explained by models that consider lexical properties and broader generalizations.
• The study challenges a strict dichotomy between extra-grammatical and plain morphology, suggesting a gradient.
• Characteristics of extra-grammatical phenomena may arise from their specific functions and limited usage contexts.