Varieties of morphological defaults and exceptions
Default variant realization in inflectional morphology is both similar to and different from the concept of default or basic allophone in structural phonology and the use of elsewhere ordering in phonology, although all share the analytical insight that the statement of the distribution of the default should be maximally simple or parsimonious. I distinguish three uses of default realization in morphology: normal, exceptional, and orphan. The three uses can be unified if we treat the exceptional case default as a negative exception to a local norm rather than having the default realization directly override the more restricted local realization rule. Orphan defaults (usually borrowings) fall under the general case because they inherently lack any specification or morphological class. All three types are covered by a single very generally stated rule under this sort of analysis. The only downside is the addition of negative exceptions as a new type.
