Phonological and morphological wordhood in Nivkh

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter presents the role of phonological and prosodic features in Nivkh, a polysynthetic language in which accentuation is morphologically driven by morpheme type and position in the morphological word and effected by a characteristic pitch contour. Phonological words in Nivkh are the next level above the syllable and smaller than or co-extensive to morphological words, composite groups are co-extensive to morphological words. As a further domain the determiner group is introduced, which is not an immediate constituent of any other domain. Phonotactics signal the left and right edges of phonological words, fixed types of affixes bracket the morphological word, morphophonemic processes signal the internal cohesion of units below the phonological phrase. As complex morphological words are formed according to the dependent-head synthesis principle, verbal conjunct remnants under coordination cannot be integrated and are phonological, but not morphological words, lacking right-margin suffixes.