The morphology–syntax interface

Abstract

This book is an extension and revision of the research programme initiated by Sadock (I985) (for introductions to the theory see Spencer, I99I: 435-44I; Carstairs-McCarthy, 1992: I48-I5I). The central concern of autolexical syntax is mismatches between structural descriptions at different levels of linguistic representation. Sadock argues that we must often provide two (or more) structures for a single expression, and that the linearprecedence and immediate-domination relations of each structure may be different. This, of course, is not new: it characterizes the transformation of a D-structure into an S-structure in classical transformational grammar. However, Sadock argues that the two structures must be represented simultaneously, without appear to the temporal, procedural metaphor implicit in a derivational model. Moreover, many of the more puzzling structural mismatches arise at the interface between morphology and syntax. Therefore, Sadock posits a separate morphological 'module', whose representations can be accessed simultaneously with representations from syntax and semantics (and, presumably, phonology). This defines a nonhierarchical organization, hence, a different type of theory from that in which morphological rules apply only after syntactic rules have applied (that is, in which morphology is a 'component' in the sense of Grimshaw, I986). He stresses that a module in this sense is different from the notion of module in Government-Binding (GB) syntax. For him, each of the modules, morphology, syntax, semantics, is an 'autonomous grammar' (io), not a set of principles which can apply at several or all levels of representation (such as GB's Binding theory). There are two types of construction which abound in the world's languages and which engender structural mismatches: these are cliticization and incorporation, and they form a dual focal point for autolexical syntax.