ABSTRACT
One way of regarding paradigm economy (the topic of Chapter 3) is as a paradigm-related constraint on what in Chapter 1 we called Deviation II - paradigmatic one-to-many relationships between morphosyntactic properties and their exponents. An independent constraint on Deviation II will be suggested in Chapter 5. In this chapter, by contrast, we will in effect be concerned with a paradigm-related constraint on Deviation IV - paradigmatic many-to-one relationships between morphosyntactic properties and their exponents, or homonymy within inflexional paradigms. The search for principles governing inflexional homonymy is not new and, superficially at least, we are now entering upon more well-trodden ground. Interest in inflexional homonymy in recent decades has focused on three main issues:
(a) the parallel between morphological and lexical homonymy on the one hand and phonological 'neutralisation' on the other; (b) limits to the ambiguity engendered by inflexional homonymy and how this ambiguity is resolved; (c) relationships between morphosyntactic properties on the 'plane of content' which either favour or inhibit homonymy in their inflexional realisations.
