Workshop at the 22nd International Morphology Meeting: Micromorphology of Inflection

Date: 28-May-2026 - 31-May-2026
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Contact: David Erschler
Contact Email: [email protected]
Meeting URL: https://nytud.hu/en/event/22nd-international-morphology-meeting-2

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology; Typology

Submission Deadline: 31-Oct-2025

The term “micromorphology” was coined by Stump 2017b for the hypothesis that an affix can itself be morphologically complex. Variations of this hypothesis and its uses have been investigated by Bochner 1993, Soukka 2000, Luís and Spencer 2005, and Stump 2017a, b, 2023, among others. The relevant phenomenon is illustrated for derivational suffixes in (1), see Stump 2017b for the demonstration that (1) involves a complex suffix rather than iterative addition.
(1) a. whimsy → *whimsic, whimsical
b. type → *typic, typical
c. character → *characterist, characteristic

This special workshop focuses on instances of complex affix formation in inflection, i.e., on the situation where more than one affix is needed to create a particular form inside a paradigm and the properties of the derived form are such that a micromorphological account seems preferable. Cases of this type have not so far attracted sufficient attention where it comes to inflection, and our workshop aims to fill this gap.

We welcome abstracts dealing with the following issues:
- Case studies of micromorphology in inflection, including suprasegmental morphemes and circumfixes
- Functional and diachronic motivations of micromorphology
- Evidence for/against micromorphological analyses of specific phenomena
- Resolution of conceptual issues arising from non-simplex inflectional morphology

The workshop is not restricted to any specific theoretical framework.

Abstract Submission:

The workshop forms part of the 22nd International Morphology Meeting to be held in Budapest, May 28–31, 2026. Every talk will be allotted 30 minutes in total (20 minutes talk + 10 minutes discussion).

Submissions are limited to a maximum of one individual and one joint abstract per author or two joint abstracts per author, and this constraint includes submission to the main session and other workshops. Abstracts should be anonymous, written in English and not exceed 2 A4 pages (Times New Roman, 12pt font, single line spacing, 2.5-inch margins).

Please send your submission to Ora Matushansky, [email protected], by October 31, 2025. Notification will be provided in December 2025.

Selected References:
Gardani, Francesco. 2015. Affix pleonasm. In An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, vol. 1, ed. by Peter O. Müller, Ingeborg Ohnheiser, Susan Olsen and Franz Rainer, 537–550. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110246254-032.
Harris, Alice C. 2017. Multiple Exponence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190464356.001.0001.
Luís, Ana, and Andrew Spencer. 2005. A paradigm function account of ‘mesoclisis’ in European Portuguese. In Yearbook of Morphology 2004, ed. by Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle, 177–228. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Soukka, Maria. 2000. A descriptive grammar of Noon: A Cangin language of Senegal. Munich: LINCOM Europa.
Stump, Gregory. 2017a. Polyfunctionality and the variety of inflectional exponence relations. In Perspectives on Morphological Organization: Data and Analyses, ed. by Ferenc Kiefer, James Blevins and Huba Bartos, 9-30. Leiden: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004342934_003.
Stump, Gregory. 2017b. Rule conflation in an inferential-realizational theory of morphotactics. Acta Linguistica Academica 64(1), 79–124, http://akademiai.com/loi/2062.
Stump, Gregory. 2023. Morphotactics: A Rule-Combining Approach 169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009168205