Visibility and Intervention in Allomorphy: Lessons from Modern Greek

Abstract

An often discussed dimension of the locality conditions on allomorphy is visibility: when do the trigger and target of allomorphy “see” each other? An equally important dimension is intervention: when do the trigger and target stop seeing each other? Through the lens of a detailed analysis of Greek verbal morphology, I examine the conditions under which intervention forces the insertion of a default exponent. On the basis of two case studies on affixal allomorphy and one on stem allomorphy, I argue that patterns of intervention are easily accommodated under adjacency-based theories of the locality of allomorphy, and mysterious under less restrictive alternatives.