[1] More basically, it may also be construed as the "non-occurrence of one form due to the simple existence of another.
[3] One possible approach to blocking effects is that of distributed morphology, which asserts that semantic and syntactic features create slots or cells in which items can appear.
[4] Blocking was first described in the 5th or 4th century BC by the Indian grammarian Pāṇini, who stated that the more restricted of two competing rules would have precedence within a language system.
During the 1960s, this insight was reformulated as the so-called "elsewhere principle", used in the language of several contemporary theories of grammar.
Hermann Paul, a German linguist, wrangled with the idea, proposing an alternative theory that accounts for the crucial role of frequency in how blocking can be learned.