The derivation of compound ordinal numerals: Implications for morphological theory

In the domains of both inflection and derivation, there is evidence for both rules of exponence (which realize specific morphosyntactic properties or derivational categories through the introduction of specific morphological markings) and rules of composition (which determine how such rules of exponence apply in the definition of a compound’s inflected forms or derivatives). A single, general rule of composition accounts for the definition of a wide range of derivatives from compound bases; nevertheless, ordinal derivation demonstrates the considerable extent to which rules of composition may vary across languages. Evidence from a diverse range of languages is used to motivate a typology of ordinal derivation whose distinct types embody different rules of composition

Directionality and the Processing of Contracted Auxiliaries

In a recent paper on the status of morphology in a generative theory of grammar, Zwicky (1982a) has argued “that processes of cliticization and readjustment together constitute a component of grammatical description in any language, a component related to others by strict principles of precedence…that syntactic rules, as a set, can feed or bleed rules of cliticization/readjustment (but not vice versa)” (Zwicky 1982b:51). Here, I shall consider the question of whether such an assumption of strict directionality can be maintained in a theory of language processing, in which generative rules of syntax and cliticization are replaced with rules of parsing and word recognition. My hypothesis is that given certain natural assumptions about language processing, rules for analyzing complex phrases and rules for analyzing host-clitic groups must be able to feed information to each other, making directionality an untenable assumption. To develop this hypothesis in concrete terms, I shall consider certain problems which contracted auxiliaries pose for a theory of language processing: specifically, I shall show that these problems can be elegantly handled if parsing rules and word recognition rules are permitted to interact in a nondirectional manner

Non-local Spirantization in Breton

Among the most striking morphosyntactic characteristics shared by the Celtic languages are their elaborate consonant mutation systems. It is clear from the most cursory inspection that in such systems, the range of possible syntactic relations between mutation triggers and their targets is subject to principled limits. In a recent paper, Zwicky (1984) has hypothesized that trigger-target relations are universally restricted by the constraint in (1): (1) The trigger determining a rule feature for a morphophonemic rule must be adjacent to the affected word and c-command it (Zwicky, 1984:389)

Rule Conflation in an Inferential-Realizational Theory of Morphotactics

In intuitive terms to be sharpened below, the micromorphology hypothesis is the hypothesis that an affix can itself be morphologically complex. This is a widespread assumption in descriptive accounts of the morphology of individual languages; yet, with only the rarest exceptions (e.g., the proposals of Bauer 1988; Bochner 1992 and Luís & Spencer 2005), morphological theory has tended to reject this hypothesis, most often tacitly. My objective here is therefore threefold. I begin by characterizing the micromorphology hypothesis in more precise terms, exemplifying it with the analysis of nominal inflection in Noon (Niger Congo/Atlantic; Senegal) presented by Soukka (2000) and showing that in a rule-based conception of morphology, this hypothesis entails an operation of rule conflation similar (though not identical) to the operation of function composition in mathematics. I propose an inferential realizational morphological theory that implements the micromorphology hypothesis by incorporating the notion of rule conflation. I demonstrate its basic properties with regard to the Noon evidence. I survey several kinds of evidence that favor the conciliation of morphological theory with the micromorphology hypothesis and therefore necessitate a rather profound rethinking of the principles of morphotactics. I discuss a number of apparent morphotactic anomalies that can be readily accounted for by assuming that the default patterns of interaction among a language’s morphological rules can be overridden by the conflation of two or more rules. I conclude by discussing the wider implications of the micromorphology hypothesis for refining a theory of inflectional exponence, observing that rule conflation is only one of the ways in which current conceptions of the algebra of morphotactics must be improved upon