Modelling the morphological lexicon

The volume deals with an explanatory model of the morphological lexicon as a dynamic system of word learning and processing in both mono- and bi-lingual contexts. Some relevant aspects of the paradigmatic organisation of the mental lexicon are explored, in an interdisciplinary approach to lexical acquisition that combines theoretically-motivated accounts, psycho-cognitive evidence and methodologies, and machine learning technologies.
It is shown that the computational simulation of a biologically inspired neural architecture provides a principled algorithmic accounting for effects of lexical learning and processing, with morphology acquisition affected by a variety of input factors, such as word frequency distributions, paradigm regularity and wordlikeness. A processing-based notion of morpheme is suggested as a by-product of processing dynamics, with paradigms emerging as specialised surface relations between inflected forms.

Claudia Marzi is a Senior Researcher (Primo Ricercatore) at the Institute for Computational Linguistics of the Italian National Research Council. She holds a PhD in Linguistics (applied, computational and acquisitional linguistics) from the University of Pavia. She teaches Computational Psycholinguistics for the Master Degree in Digital Humanities at the University of Pisa. Supervisor of several graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; member of AILC and AItLA scientific societies; member of several scientific committee of international journals and conferences; member of evaluation panels (VQR, REPRISE, ELG). She authored more than 60 publications (papers in international journals, book chapters, edited collections, conferences papers and abstracts).