Limits on Allomorphy: A Case Study in Nominal Suppletion

Abstract

Reporting on a study of 79 languages (see appendix B), I argue that (morpho-)syntactic structure plays a crucial role in two observed asymmetries: (i) in nouns number-driven root suppletion is common while case-driven root suppletion is virtually unattested, and (ii) in contrast to lexical nouns, pronouns commonly supplete for both number and case. I propose that the structural difference between lexical nouns and pronouns, combined with locality effects as proposed in Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle and Marantz 1993), account for the two asymmetries, which raises the question whether these can be captured in frameworks that deny that hierarchical syntactic structure plays a role in the morphology, such as Word and Paradigm approaches (e.g. Anderson 1992, Stump 2001).