Abstract
Rolle (2020) identifies an apparent morphophonological conspiracy in serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Degema. He argues that it constitutes evidence for a partly-unified postsyntactic module, in which morphology and prosody are built in parallel (by ‘Optimality-Theoretic Distributed Morphology’). We argue that the pattern Rolle identifies in Degema SVCs instead results from the simultaneous interaction of two independently-attested syntax-prosody phenomena: (1) the pressure for adjacent verbs in an SVC to form a single prosodic unit, and (2) the suppression of redundant agreement within a single prosodic word (a.k.a. ‘Kinyalolo’s Generalization’). Thus the Degema SVC conspiracy can be localized to the syntax-prosody interface, and there is no need to adopt a unified postsyntactic morphology-prosody module like Rolle’s. We offer some further conceptual critiques of his model.
Highlights
Rolle (2020) describes an interaction between morphology and prosody in serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Degema (Niger-Congo, Nigeria)
Before moving on to our evaluation of Rolle’s ‘OT-DM’ analysis of the Degema pattern, we compare our account to a similar account that Rolle considers and rejects, and we address two outstanding questions relating to our analysis
Single-marking is preferred because each clitic is exponed only once. For this to happen, adjacent verbs in an SVC need to be corralled into a single ‘morphological word’ (MWd), with each morphological words (MWds) serving as a host for a procliticenclitic pair
Summary
Rolle (2020) describes an interaction between morphology and prosody in serial verb constructions (SVCs) in Degema (Niger-Congo, Nigeria). The second component of our analysis relates to a dispreference for word-internal repetition of functional morphology: following work by Kinyalolo (1992), Carstens (2003, 2005) and others, we refer to this phenomenon as Kinyalolo’s Constraint. We contend that both of these patterns are observed in Degema, and that the interaction identified by Rolle is both patterns surfacing simultaneously.
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