Locality, Listedness, and Morphological Identity

Abstract

This paper investigates the syntax/morphology interface along four dimensions, in a study of English participial allomorphy. The results are developed in terms of the framework of Distributed Morphology. First, it is shown that considerations of syntactic locality play a direct role in morphological spell-out. Second, the manner in which vocabulary insertion proceeds is argued to be divided into distinct cycles of insertion, with potentially different conditions on insertion applying in Root-attached vs. non-Root-attached structural domains. Third, it is argued that the study of syncretisms must appeal to a notion that I call Substantive Identity in defining what it means for morphology to be`the same' across the distinct cycles of insertion. Finally, it is shown that in addition to structural locality, string adjacency is also a factor in morphological realization.

Middles in the syntax

“…This pattern converges with observations about allomorphy that have been developed in terms of the structural approach to word formation assumed here, in which a significant distinction is made between functional heads that are attached to Roots, and functional heads that are attached to other functional heads, in what we will call the Outer Cycle (see Marantz (2001), Embick (2003)). …”

“…For some Roots, this results in coercion (cf. Kratzer (1993), Embick (2003)). In the case at hand, the pont is that the fact that Ú-Roots in Hindi can be associated with (target) states when they are merged as Ú[B]'s complement, but this does not make these Roots inherently stative, and it does not mean that these Roots appear as the complement of Ú[B] when they are intransitive.…”

“…In the implementation of Embick (2003), the same functional head may have distinct contextual conditions on insertion depending upon whether that head is attached to a Root or attached outside of the Root.…”

On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English

“…The table in (11) lists some of the different allomorphy patterns found in statives, resultatives, and eventive passives. The nature of these allomorphy patterns is discussed in detail in Embick 2003a, where I argue that the allomorphy differences seen in (11) result from structural considerations of the type I articulate below. The basic pattern is that the stative may potentially take a different participial or other allomorph than the resultative or other participial forms do.…”

Syncretism without underspecification: The role of leading forms

“…For underspecification-based systems, it can be assumed that children look for properties that the various environments in which exponents with the same form occur have in common; i.e., they learn underspecified feature structures of exponents by intersecting the sets of the different (fully specified) environments; see Harley (2001) and Pertsova (2007) for proposals along these lines (essentially, this is what Pertsova's NoHomonymy learner mentioned above does). On this view, the child assumes a syncretism to be systematic (i.e., going back to a single entry) whenever possible (see Pertsova (2007, 135)), and postulates two separate entries only as a last resort (e.g., when the interaction of (i) the Subset Principle and (ii) a system of decomposed features that is assumed as given fail to permit a coherent underspecified feature structure underlying two occurrences of one exponent form); this is essentially the meta-grammatical Avoid Accidental Homonymy condition assumed in Embick (2003), or the Syncretism Principle argued for in Müller (2007a) and Alexiadou & Müller (2008). Evidently, such an approach is not available in an underspecification-free approach such as the one developed here: Intersection invariably leads to underspecification.…”