Joan Mascaró Altimiras
“Phonologically (and syntactically and lexically) conditioned allomorphy.”
WHEN: Feb 7, 12:30-1:45
WHERE: 32-D461
Abstract is below.
The schedule of talks for the rest of the semester will be posted later this
week at:
Hope to see you there!
Your ling-lunch organizers,
Jen & Jessica
——-
ABSTRACT:
Phonologically conditioned allomorphy has been analyzed as an instance of The
Emergence of The Unmarked (TETU). Allomorphs are listed in the lexicon with no
contextual subcategorization, and the phonology chooses the allomorphs that
yield a less marked structure, depending on the context in which they appear. I
will analyze two specially difficult cases of phonologically conditioned
allomorphy, Haitian definite suffix selection and Northeastern Central Catalan
s-deletion.
In the first case allomorph selection seems to be governed by unnatural
phonological conditions: the allomorph la appears after consonants, as in
liv-la ‘book-the’, and the allomorph a appears after vowels, as in papa-a
‘father-the’. I will show that once we allow partial ordering allomorphs in
the lexicon (ordering reflecting relative markedness), natural alignment
conditions derive the right results.
The second case regards s-deletion. Here “deletion” is subject two three
heterogenous conditions: a phonological condition (s must be final in a complex
coda and followed by a consonant), a lexical condition (s must be the plural
morph), and a syntactic condition (the lexical element ending in s must be
prenominal). Thus in bon-s vin-s blanc-s franceso-s ‘good-pl wine-pl white-pl
French-pl’, the plural marker in prenominal bon-s doesn’t appear, but
plural markers in postnominal vin-s and blanc-s show up. Assume N is final
within the DP and raising causes agreement with elements appearing to its
right, but agreement with the rest takes place at PF. This forces postnominal
agreement but leaves prenominal agreement subject to PF conditions. The bare
root bon will be preferred to the number-inflected bon-s because it doesn’t
violate the marked structure CsC even if it violates (PF) Concord. Other cases
of prenominal-postnominal asymmetry will be briefly discussed.