Peeling away the layers of the onion: on layers, inflection and domains in Icelandic compounds

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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The expression of number (#) within the noun phrase has been argued tovary between a high (num) and a low position, which Kramer (2014) associates with n, providing the root with a syntactic category. We argue that Linking Morphemes (L) in Dutch provide new evidence for such a split, and moreover, for a low expression of # in a language that is normally considered to have high #. By taking L to instantiate n, the presence or absence of L can be taken as a diagnostic of the size of non-head elements. Combined with recent work on Germanic compounds (Harðarson2016, De Belder 2017) this makes a prediction about the order of modifiers in Dutch compounds, which we show is borne out

supporting

confidence: 66%

mentioning

confidence: 59%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Your ns are numbered! On linking morphemes in Dutch

Fenger¹,

2018

Proc Ling Soc Amer

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“…Bauer 2009 on Danish). It is unclear at this point, however, whether these elements pattern with their mainland counterparts or if they should still be considered to be inflectional as their counterparts in Icelandic (Harðarson 2016 It appears that the variation observed between hierarchies is also constrained by contiguity, i.e. it only seems to affect two contiguous cases on the hierarchy.…”

Section: Constraining the Variation Of Case Hierarchiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A case for a Weak Case Contiguity hypothesis—a reply to Caha

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

2016

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss some counterexamples to the Strong Case Contiguity Hypothesis (SCCH) argued for by Caha (2009Caha ( , 2013 from West Nordic, which were absent from Caha's sample of languages. The languages to be discussed are Old Norse, Modern Icelandic and Modern Faroese. These three languages show a great deal of syncretism between dative and accusative to the exclusion of genitive, which also fulfill Caha's criteria for systematic syncretism. This pattern is not predicted to be possible under Caha's theory. Under closer inspection, however, the data from West Nordic turns out to be compatible with a weaker version of Case Contiguity. Syncretism between accusative and dative appear in a variety of contexts whereas syncretism between accusative and genitive to the exclusion of dative occurs only in a highly restricted context and should be considered accidental under Caha's criteria. Syncretism thus appears to target continuous regions on a slightly different case hierarchy. Hence although SCCH is wrong a weaker version is still feasible. I also propose a draft of a feature-based account for the observed variation in case hierarchies, providing a restrictive medium between SCCH and an unrestricted variation in hierarchies.

On the domains of allomorphy, allosemy and morphophonology in compounds

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

2020

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In this paper I review the locality domains of contextual allomorphy, contextual allosemy and morphophonology with a special emphasis on compounds. I show that when the applications of these processes within compounds are compared, we observe a distinction between the domain of contextual allomorphy and contextual allosemy, on one hand, and morphophonology on the other. I argue that the mismatches in the domains in question lie in the timing of the operations where operations applying prior to vocabulary insertion are constrained by cycles/phases, whereas operations applying after vocabulary insertion are constrained by the timing of concatenation. Under such approach, all of these processes will make reference to the same morphosyntactic structure although their domains will be marked by different points in that same structure.