The Exoskeletal Model in

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, or XSM, is a

generative Generative may refer to: * Generative actor, a person who instigates social change * Generative art, art that has been created using an autonomous system that is frequently, but not necessarily, implemented using a computer * Generative music, mus ...

framework in morphology and morphosyntax, introduced in the work of Hagit Borer,

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

at the Queen Mary University of London and previously

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

. The main idea of the Exoskeletal Model is that

Lexical items In lexicography, a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words (catena) that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are ''cat'', ''traffic light'', ''take care of'', ''by the way'' ...

do not have a syntactic category. Rather, they take on whatever syntactic category is imposed on them by their syntactic context. The framework is detailed in

Borer Borer may refer to: Insects * Stem borer * Twig borer * Shoot borer Moths * ''Chilo'' (moth) *''Diatraea grandiosella'', southwestern corn borer *'' Podosesia syringae'', ash borer or lilac borer *'' Melittia cucurbitae'', squash vine bore ...

's two 2005 books ''In Name Only'' and ''The Normal Course of Events'', part of a trilogy entitled ''Structuring Sense'', and a number of her and others' papers in morphosyntax. The main idea of the Exoskeletal Model is a divorce between the

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

and the

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

, but a strong correspondence between structure and meaning. Words in isolation have no syntactic category, it is only when they appear in a

that they acquire these categories. More specifically, words in and of themselves are not nouns or verbs, nouns are not themselves

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...

count Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility. Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty''. New York: ...

, and verbs are not themselves telic or atelic. Rather it is the noun phrase ( DP) as a whole that is

, and the verb phrase (VP) that is telic or atelic. The framework is implemented so that it avoids type-shifting and lexical

ambiguity Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...

Selected bibliography

Borer, H. (2005a). ''In Name Only.'' Structuring Sense, Volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
*Borer, H. (2005b). ''The Normal Course of Events.'' Structuring Sense, Volume II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Borer, H. 2003. "Exo-skeletal vs. Endo-skeletal Explanations: Syntactic Projections and the Lexicon," M. Polinsky and J. Moore (eds.) The Nature of Explanation. Chicago: Chicago University Press
*De Belder, M. (2008). Size matters: Towards a syntactic decomposition of countability. In Abner, Natasha & Jason Bishop (eds.) Proceedings of the 27th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, Somerville
Bale, A. and H. Khanjian (2009). Classifiers and number marking. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) XVIII.Park, S.Y. (2009). Functional Categories: the syntax of DP and DegP, VDM
Linguistic morphology {{ling-morph-stub