Affix raising and the level ordering hypothesis

Abstract

The compositional structure of derived words like ungrammaticality constitutes a serious problem for level ordering theories of morphology that play a prominent role in Lexical Phonology. Pesetsky (1985) proposed an elegant solution to these apparent level ordering paradoxes which invoked a mechanism of Affix Raising to preserve level order. However, it is argued here that the Affix Raising account of level ordering paradoxes cannot be maintained: it is both too weak in its original form, and too strong when modified to accommodate clear cases of acceptability. Furthermore, it is argued that this attempt to maintain strict morphological level ordering is misguided, ant that, instead, lexical derivations can shift freely between morphological strata. Despite the rejection of strict morphological ordering, there remains strong motivation for the interleaving of morphological and phonological strata: Lexical Phonology does not fall with the fall of the rigid level ordering of word formation rules.