Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian, a polysynthetic language. I argue that while verbs and nouns superficially share a similar morphological profile, they are in fact constructed through two distinct word formation strategies: while verbal morphology is concatenated via syntactic head movement, the noun phrase is pronounced as a single word due to rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping. Such a division of labor provides an account for why only nouns, and not verbs, exhibit productive noun incorporation in the language: West Circassian noun incorporation is prosodic, rather than syntactic. The evidence for this two-fold approach to word formation comes from morpheme ordering in nominalizations.
Highlights
West Circassian, known as Adyghe, of the Northwest Caucasian family displays complex polysynthetic morphology in both the verbal and nominal domains
I argue that this difference is due to the fact that nouns and verbs are constructed via two distinct structural avenues: the verbal root and any verbal morphology that is present undergo head movement to form a complex head, while the noun and any accompanying nominal morphology are pronounced as a single phonological word due to a constraint on syntax-to-prosody mapping: the DP phase is mapped to a single phonological word
The following section presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian which accounts for the unavailability of noun incorporation in the verbal domain: the nominal complex is spelled out as a single word due to rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping, while the verbal form is constructed via head movement
Summary
West Circassian, known as Adyghe, of the Northwest Caucasian family displays complex polysynthetic morphology in both the verbal and nominal domains. The root with the underlying form leKe ‘dish’ surfaces faithfully in the former case, where it is incorporated into a larger stem and does not appear at the edge of zone D In the latter case, on the other hand, this root appears as an independent phonological word and displays this alternation in the penultimate syllable. The following section presents an analysis of word formation in West Circassian which accounts for the unavailability of noun incorporation in the verbal domain: the nominal complex is spelled out as a single word due to rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping, while the verbal form is constructed via head movement
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