Geometric representation of paradigms in a modular theory of grammar

Productive syncretism in Saami inflectional morphology

“…There is a fair number of cases where it seems, at least superficially, that an identity relation links two inflectional forms that do not form a contiguous region under any conceivable geometric construal of the paradigm in question. These, then, would seem to be instances of syncretism patterns with the structure in (19e) above, precisely the type that is predicted not to be possible in the model advocated by McCreight & Chvany (1991;cf. Johnston 1997).…”

“…in as well. A similar problem arises for the geometric conflation approach of McCreight & Chvany (1991): 'diagonal' pairs of disjoint cells like com.sg. and loc.pl.…”

“…It should be mentioned at this point that syntactic evidence can sometimes be brought to bear on the issue of determining whether an inflectional homonymy pattern is systematic or merely accidental. In the phenomenon known as syncretic resolution, a form which is ambiguous between conflicting morphosyntactic properties is able to represent both of these at once (Zwicky & Sadock 1975;Taraldsen 1981;Dyla 1984;Zaenen & Karttunen 1984;Pullum & Zwicky 1986;McCreight & Chvany 1991;Zwicky 1991). Consider the German sentences in (9), where the pronominal subject of the headless relative clause is simultaneously required to carry nominative case (as subject of ärgern "annoy") and accusative case (the relative clause being the object of zerstören "destroy"); the examples are from Taraldsen (1981).…”

“…The geometric conflation model advocated by McCreight & Chvany (1991), on the other hand, allows syncretism to affect an irregularly shaped (non-'rectangular') area of the paradigm, as long as it is contiguous as in (19d). The authors clearly hold non-contiguous syncretisms like (19e) to be impossible in principle, separating "conflatable syncretisms" from "identical endings that are not contiguous" (citing in this context the distinction between systematic and accidental homonymy as drawn by Zwicky 1991).…”

“…The Saami facts are powerful evidence in favour of frameworks which allow for syncretisms to be stipulated by means of 'rules of referral' or analogous devices. Furthermore, the Saami evidence directly contradicts proposals which limit syncretism to geometrically contiguous regions within a paradigm (McCreight & Chvany 1991;Johnston 1997).…”