Contrast in syntax and contrast in phonology

Abstract

This chapter investigates the parallels and asymmetries between contrastive features in phonology and syntax, with particular reference to the notion of a contrastive hierarchy. In phonology, contrastive features can be assigned to segments by a recursive procedure that applies to the underlying phonemic inventory of a language. To apply such a procedure to morphosyntactic features, it is necessary to identify the inventory of items that the features serve to distinguish. This chapter argues that the relevant morphosyntactic inventory is the inventory of functional lexical items (in the sense used in Distributed Morphology), and not the inventory of vocabulary items. It further proposes that contrastive specification of functional lexical items is done separately on different dimensions of contrast—for example, that person features are specified separately from number features. This approach is illustrated by application to phi-features in Mi’gmaq, where it is shown to be consistent with patterns of agreement.