Recursion and paradigms

This paper sketches the current status of morphology and paradigms in linguistic
theorising. In particular, it is shown that from a constructionist as well as from
a compositional perspective, morphology including paradigms tends to dissolve.
The former might be less obvious; however the paper argues that a constructional
deconstruction of paradigms and morphology follows directly from Haspelmath’s
(2011) take on Booij (2010) and related approaches in the realm of Construction
Morphology (CxM). The latter is more obvious; in particular, proponents of
Distributed Morphology (DM) regularly emphasise that morphology is but an
interface and paradigms are epiphenomenal. Throughout the paper I assume some
familiarity with Construction Morphology and Construction Grammar more generally
whereas I introduce DM specifically. However, the paper is not intended as a
thorough discussion of the approaches presented (nor do I take sides); rather it is their
shared detachment from paradigms that is at stake here. Consequently, also what
is sometimes called Autonomous Morphology is addressed in the paper: a rather
recent approach that advocates morphology as an irreducible level of description
and upholds the paradigm as a format of description in its own right. The balance
of the paper is rather pessimistic for morphology and paradigms but eventually I
come up with a presumably new argument in favour of regarding paradigms as
fundamental: restrictions on inflectional recursion fall out naturally from them.