We argue that a set of facts about the plural nominal class prefixes in Southern Bantu languages shows that some plural prefixes spell out a phrasal constituent, a Specifier bottoming out in a classifier-like noun. This leads us to adopt a theory of lexicalization that leads to the conclusion that all nominal class prefixes in Southern Bantu lexicalize Specifiers of this sort, and we argue that the relation between primary and secondary prefixes supports this conclusion. We also discuss the consequences of our conclusion for the pairing of prefixes and nouns and for the analysis of agreement.
This chapter makes a case for morphemes as zones of functional sequence (fseq zones) in nanosyntax. Under such an approach, morphemes that compete for insertion with each other form the same fseq zone, whereas morphemes that co-occur together form different fseq zones. We illustrate this on the basis of the participle zone that is projected on top of verb stems in Slavic languages. We argue that in Polish and Czech, this participle zone spells out as L, T, or N, depending on its size and internal constituent structure. The constituent structure of this zone provides a direct solution to a long-standing puzzle in Polish and Czech morphology, namely why only unaccusative verbs build adjectival L-passives whereas all types of verbs build active L-participles.
We show that under certain circumstances, the Czech locative prepositions (LOC) show up as directional prepositions (DIR) and vice versa, (under different circumstances) the Czech DIR PPs show up as LOC. We argue that such a chameleon life of the PPs is structurally dependent.
This paper argues that semelfactive and degree achievement verbs are morphosyntactically distinct, despite the fact that the morphemes they are made of are often syncretic even in languages with synthetic verb morphology like Czech or Polish. We use the mechanisms of Nanosyntax, a theory of the architecture of grammar in which the lexicon stores entire syntactic subtrees, to show that there is a structural containment between semelfactives and degree achievements such that semelfactives include more syntactic structure than degree achievements. In this respect, the relative structure of these two verb classes contributes to Bobaljik's (2012) general claim that syncretism anchors structural containment as well as to the ongoing discussion about the form of spell out in syntax. The resulting picture supports the view whereby the semantics of lexical items is determined by their fine-grained internal syntax.
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