Universal #370

Legacy number: 370

 Number  369
 Original  In agglutinative languages casual or fast speech shows less phonological deletion, fusion, and weakening than in flective ones, owing to the lack of syntactic redundancy that follows from the absence of (phrase-internal) agreement.
 Standardized  IF morphology is agglutinative, THEN casual/fast speech shows less phonological reduction than if morphology is flexive.
 Keywords  agglutination, flexion, fast speech, agreement
 Domain  phonology, morphology, syntax
 Type  implication
 Status  achronic
 Quality  absolute
 Basis  unspecified
 Source  Dressler 1985, adapted from Skalicka: Plank 1996, Plank 1998

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Discussion
Notes
The correlation is intended to comprise three parameters:(i) agglutinative morphology, (ii) no phrase-internal agreement, (iii) little phonological reduction in casual/fast speech;vs.(i) flexive morphology, (ii) phrase-internal agreement, (iii) much phonological reduction in casual/fast speech.
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
The correlation is intended to comprise three parameters:
(i) agglutinative morphology, (ii) no phrase-internal agreement, (iii) little phonological reduction in casual/fast speech;
vs.
(i) flexive morphology, (ii) phrase-internal agreement, (iii) much phonological reduction in casual/fast speech.