Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Qupperneq 214

broad annotation was to compare the different approaches’ success at predicting
the case marking patterns present in the language and shown in the experiments,
but it progressively became clear that this annotation was too time-consuming to
be completed within the project, in addition to the fact that the criteria for dif-
ferent categories were not always clear (e.g. in the case of the simultaneous or
separated subevents of Svenonius’ 2002 analysis). I still think a more decomposi-
tional feature-based approach should be the move forward, perhaps using com-
putational methods (e.g. Stengel-Eskin et al. 2021) in addition to the current
manual annotation.
Another limitation of the present work is a lack of thorough testing of alter-
native approaches to compute productivity predictions of case marking patterns,
as a comparison of the Tolerance Principle to other approaches would be feasible,
particularly in the context of a productivity threshold as a necessary innovation
within the evolution of rule-based language. This is one way in which the disser-
tation would benefit from a wider scope, but another related one is the cross-
linguistic perspective which Butt highlighted in her commentary, where she
brings forward the various parallels between Icelandic and Urdu/Hindi. The ko
case clitic data she presents is particularly interesting considering that the paral-
lels to the Icelandic system emerge with innovative case marking and therefore
not only as a result of the languages’ shared history. The common semantic core
of the Icelandic dative and ko perhaps also points to typologically recurring ways
in which semantic features are encoded systematically into language, possibly
based on conceptual categories which represent pre-linguistic core cognitive
knowledge (Rissman and Majid 2019). Indeed, it seems that a fruitful way to
move forward would be to engage in a cross-linguistic exploration of the map-
pings between conceptual knowledge, linguistic meaning and conceptual form
with an emphasis on children’s acquisition of productive ways to mark non-
agents and non-patients. This aligns well with the small contribution the disser-
tation makes to big questions, as its broadest aim was to investigate how children
map form to meaning and use language productively, and how the mechanisms
involved in language acquisition shape variation and change.

references
Aissen, Judith. 2003. Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy. Natural
Language & Linguistic Theory 21:435–483. <https://doi.org/10.1023/A:102410900
8573>.
Albright, Adam, and Bruce Hayes. 2003. Rules vs. analogy in English past tenses: a com-
putational/experimental study. Cognition 90(2):119–161. <https://doi.org/10.1016/
S0010-0277(03)00146-X>.
Ambridge, Ben. 2020. Against stored abstractions: A radical exemplar model of language
acquisition. First Language 40(5–6):509–559. <https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237198
69731>.
Ambridge, Ben, Libby Barak, Elizabeth Wonnacott, Colin Bannard and Giovanni Sala.
2018. Effects of Both Preemption and Entrenchment in the Retreat from Verb
Iris Edda Nowenstein214