ABSTRACT
The revival of morphology as a subject of study by theoretical linguists has been announced more than once in recent years. In fact, it has become something of a cliché for collections of papers on morphology to begin with an editorial statement hailing the bright new dawn (Hammond and Noonan 1988; Booij and van Marle 1988). But this new atmosphere has not affected the status of morphology as an ‘optional extra’ in most linguistics degree programmes. As the published output in linguistics has expanded and new specialisms have proliferated, pressure on the time available in the average linguistics programme has grown correspondingly. Morphology has to compete for space in the syllabus with topics such as pragmatics, cognitive science, language acquisition and sign language, which scarcely existed as ‘teachable’ specialisms twenty years ago. So, even in linguistics programmes with a ‘theoretical’ orientation, phonology and syntax maintain their sway as the two indispensable core requirements, and morphology has not generally managed to establish itself alongside them.
