The morphology-phonology interface: Isolating to polysynthetic languages

Abstract

Given the substantial variation in the nature of the grammatical word (GW) across languages, this paper addresses the question of whether the Phonological Word (PW) exhibits the same degree of variation or rather abstracts away from it due to the typically flatter nature of the phonological hierarchy. Various types of languages are examined, focusing on isolating and polysynthetic languages—opposite ends of a word structure continuum. It is demonstrated that, indeed, the PW exhibits substantially less variation across languages than might be expected on the basis of the differences in GW structure. Furthermore, it is shown that an additional constituent (i.e., the Clitic Group, renamed Composite Group) is required between the PW and the Phonological Phrase to fully account for the interface between morpho-syntactic and phonological structures.