Speaker: Alec Marantz (NYU)
Time: Friday, March 5, 2010, 3:30pm-5pm
Location: 32-141 (Stata Center)
Title: Locality Domains for Contextual Allosemy
At least since work within Lexical Morphology and Phonology, the issue of the connection
between word structure and allomorphy has been heavily investigated by
morphophonologists. Recent advances within Distributed Morphology (see in particular
Embick 2010) have shown that the general cyclic architecture of a phase-based Minimalist
Program syntax provides the proper locality domains for the interaction of information
determining contextual allomorphy, although phonology- specific notions like adjacency
also play a role, restricting possible interactions even more than what might be allowed
within a cyclic domain. Less well understood are the parallel issues at the syntax/
semantics interface, namely the computation of possible meanings of morphemes in
context. Against some recent work disputing claims in Marantz (1997, 2000) linking the
domain of special meanings to phases and against recent proposals that the locality
domains for phonology and semantics might differ, this paper clarifies the issues in
contextual meaning determination and supports the idea that the locality domains for
contextual allosemy are just those for contextual allomorphy. As a specific notion of
phonological adjacency further constrains allomorphic interactions, so too does a
semantic specific notion of adjacency constrain allosemic interactions and may
restrict possible interactions among morphemes even more strongly than the general
cyclic architecture of phases.