This paper deals with gender and the role of morphology in determining the different gender values in a morphologically rich language likeGreek. It provides a theoretical account of gender in generative grammar and argues in favor of an organization of grammar where an autonomous morphological module interacts, in several aspects, with syntax, a lexicon, and a feature theory that feeds the other modules. Most claims and proposals are exemplified with evidence taken from Modern Greek where data about gender have been sporadically mentioned in the past and never studied systematically. Following a feature-based approach, it is argued that gender is an intrinsic property of lexical entries, namely of noun stems and derivational affixes. Considering features to be attribute-value pairs, entries are distinguished into two types: those characterized by a fully specified gender feature, that is, by a feature containing an attribute with a specific value part; and those that bear an underspecified gender feature, that is, an attribute without a value. It is proposed that the latter acquire the missing value either by some feature co-occurrence specification rules relating co-occurring features of the same lexical entry, or by another device operating outside morphology (e.g. agreement in syntax). Finally, it is shown that, without being specific to a particular process, gender is a lexical feature that actively participates in word-formation processes.
In recent years, morphology has received increasing attention within linguistic theory. It deals with word structure and attracts significant interest in languages that are morphologically rich, such as Modern Greek (hereafter Greek). In this paper, I present an overview of the main theoretical studies that focus on Greek morphology in the last four decades, with a particular emphasis on those following the framework of generative grammar. Reasons of space prevent me from giving an exhaustive presentation of all the topics that have been examined from a synchronic point of view. Moreover, I do not take into consideration studies on historical and dialectal morphology or lexical borrowing, or works that cover areas where morphological issues interact with research in domains such as computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics.
This paper deals with a case of morphology -phonology interaction, specifically, stress in Greek compounding. It is claimed that two types of compounds are distinguished with respect to the stressing procedure: a) [stem + stem] compounds, submitted to the application of the antepenultimate stress rule, and b) [stem + word] and [word + word] compounds, governed by stress preservation. On the basis of this analysis, a principle is proposed that, given the morphological structure of a certain compound type, predicts its mapping onto either one or two phonological words. Additional evidence from Italian is offered to support the analysis.A preliminary version of this paper has been presented at the First International Conference on Greek Linguistics held in Reading, England in September 1993. A shortened version of that presentation has appeared in the proceedings of the conference. A talk based on this paper was given also at the University of Thessaloniki in April 1994. We would like to thank the audience of Thessaloniki, Amalia Arvaniti and Sharon Peperkamp for useful comments. Throughout this paper, Greek examples are given phonologically, according to the characters of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Word secondary and word primary stresses are marked according to standard notation: a grave accent (""') stands for word secondary stress, an acute accent (""') for word primary stress. When relevant to the discussion, a stress that is stronger
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