Vocabulary Insertion Research Articles

Suppletion of numerals ‘one’ and ‘two’ in Mandarin Chinese

In many languages numerals may appear in different forms depending on the context, which Greenberg (1978) called the contextual and absolute forms respectively. Greenberg made the universal generalization that if a numeral has two forms, then all the lower numerals also do. He then mentioned Mandarin Chinese as an exception because while its numeral ‘2’ has two forms, he thinks that the lower numeral ‘1’ doesn’t. This paper argues for a different view about Mandarin ‘1’–that is, ‘1’ actually has two forms just like ‘2’, despite their segmental identity. Then I argue that the two forms of ‘1’ and ‘2’ are not distinguished by use as Greenberg claimed for ‘2’, but rather by the morphophonological context: the contextual form appears when followed by overt material at the point of vocabulary insertion of the numeral, otherwise the absolute form appears. This generalization, together with the key assumption that vocabulary insertion proceeds bottom-up, leads to a particular structure for enumerating numerals like liǎng gè nv̌hái ‘two girls’, where the Cardinal head liǎng ‘two’ takes the Classifier Phrase gè nv̌hái as its complement. This paper also provides novel evidence suggesting that in Mandarin a complex enumerating numeral like ‘125 pears’ merges the complex cardinal phrase ‘125’ with the Classifier Phrase, supporting He (2015) and challenging Ionin & Matushansky (2016, 2018).

Suppletion in Global Perspective

Abstract This paper documents and analyzes a system of suppletive alternations that are conditioned by top-down prosodic context. In Mandar (Austronesian), seven heads supplete at the right edge of the phonological phrase to satisfy an output constraint on foot structure. When phrase-external phonological context makes it possible to resolve this output constraint in a more optimal way, this suppletion is suspended. These effects suggest that the mechanism which regulates suppletion, vocabulary insertion, must be situated within a phonological calculus that can access global context and respond to output constraints.

Agreement Switch in Verb-Echo Answers: Evidence for Distributed Ellipsis

Abstract In this article, we claim that syntactic objects undergoing ellipsis can be targeted by both narrow syntactic and PF operations. We base this conclusion on experimental evidence from the interaction between single conjunct agreement and verb-echo answers in South Slavic, which we show to be derived via verb-stranding VP ellipsis. Adopting the view that Vocabulary Insertion replaces Q-variables on lexical heads (Halle 1991) and ellipsis is a syntactic operation which deletes Q-variables (Saab 2022), we demonstrate that constituents properly included in the ellipsis site can undergo Internal Merge in the narrow syntax, and can participate in PF processes from the derived position. The interaction between ellipsis, Internal Merge and Agree-Copy that accounts for these patterns of data follows naturally within the Distributed Ellipsis approach.

Superlatives, partitives and apparent φ-feature mismatch in Spanish

Adjectival superlatives in Spanish are expressed by a definite determiner and the com-parative morpheme m ́as ‘more/-er’ modifying the adjective. While gender and numberconcord between the determiner, adjective and noun is generally obligatory, there is asubset of cases where it seems to be disrupted: the determiner surfaces as the so-calledneuter lo, the adjective spells out masculine and there is no overt noun. I argue that thisnon-canonical pattern is the result of a failed Agree dependency between probes on D anda noun underspecified for φ. Failure to value the probe triggers the emergence of defaultsat the point of Vocabulary Insertion: lo and masculine morphology on the adjective. Theanalysis that lo as genderless and numberless receives support from coordination patterns.

Semantic agreement in Russian: Gender, declension, and morphological ineffability

In this paper, I argue that declension classes are not primitives (see Aronoff 1994; Alexiadou 2004; Kramer 2015; i.a.), but are decomposed into simpler features, one of which is gender (Harris 1991; Wiese 2004; Caha 2019). The argument is based on semantic gender agreement in Russian, where a grammatically masculine noun can trigger feminine agreement if its referent is female (Mučnik 1971; Pesetsky 2013). Semantic agreement is grammatical only in those forms where a regular nominal exponent is syncretic with an exponent of a declension class that includes feminine nouns. In other forms, conflicting masculine and feminine gender features lead to ineffability in morphology (cf. Schütze 2003; Asarina 2011; Coon and Keine 2020). Ineffability arises because the Subset Principle (Halle 1997) that holds between features of a vocabulary item and a terminal at the point of Vocabulary Insertion is violated later in the derivation. This is in turn possible if Vocabulary Insertion applying cyclically bottom-up (Bobaljik 2000) is interleaved with Lowering that alters structure below a triggering node (Embick and Noyer 2001). Finally, I show that Russian also has a number of cases where conflicting gender features in a noun phrase do not result in a realization failure (Iomdin 1980). The difference between these patterns is derived in a principled way and follows from the positions where conflicting features are introduced.

The dual face of structural object case: on Lithuanian genitive of negation

We analyze genitive of negation (GN) in Lithuanian. When the verb is negated, GN is realized on an object that would otherwise be realized as accusative. We demonstrate that Lithuanian GN is a syntactic (in line with Arkadiev 2016) and morphological phenomenon in contrast to Russian GN, whose realization is influenced by semantic factors (e.g. Kagan 2013). It differs from Russian (Pesetsky 1982) in that (i) it is always assigned to a DP which would otherwise bear structural accusative regardless of its semantic properties, and (ii) it cannot affect a structural nominative DP regardless of whether it is an external or internal argument. Lithuanian GN, in this respect, is similar to Polish GN (e.g. Przepiórkowski 2000, Witkoś 2008). We offer a three-layered approach to case, arguing that GN is a reflection of structural object case, assigned in syntax, then translated to morphological genitive case at PF and, finally, realized at Vocabulary Insertion (Halle & Marantz 1993). Thus, structural object case has two morphological realizations: as genitive under negation or as accusative in the absence of negation. Lithuanian also exhibits long-distance GN (Arkadiev 2016), showing that case boundaries can cross non-finite clauses without an overt CP element, suggesting these are not phases.

Looking for default vocabulary insertion rules: Diachronic morphosyntax of the Japanese addressee-honorification system

As opposed to syntactic operations (such as Merge), morphology has been seen as the source of language variation. But few attempts have been made in the field of Distributed Morphology to explicitly and formally identify the role of postsyntactic rules in language change. By analyzing the change in the Japanese addressee-honorification system (Yamada 2019c), this paper proposes that the emergence of the new grammar — which seems to be an instance of a microparametric change in the Agree operation (Kayne 2000; 2005; Biberauer & Roberts 2012; Barbiers 2013) — is, in fact, explained as a morphological reanalysis: the reanalysis is caused by overgeneralization of vocabulary insertion rules resulting from abductive reasoning in pursuit of default rules. It is also suggested from a quantitative corpus survey using Time Series Analysis (the Dynamic Generalized Linear Mixed Effects Model) that the reanalysis is facilitated particularly in the configuration where the addressee-honorific marking is immediately followed by a sentence-final particle.

Preposition Allomorphy in Calabrian Greek (Greko) and Standard Modern Greek and Its Theoretical Implications

The article argues that the alternation between the prepositions asce ‘from’ and an ‘from’ in the south Italian Greek variety Greko and a similar alternation between the preposition se ‘in, to, into’ and the allomorph s- found in both Greko and Standard Modern Greek represent instances of contextually conditioned allomorphy sensitive to a linearly adjacent definite article. Alternative approaches in terms of portmanteaux or making use of hyper-contextual rules for vocabulary insertion are shown to be unable to account for the data, supporting the need for allowing reference to linear adjacency relations in morphosyntactic theories of allomorphy.

Romance Root Suppletion and Cumulative Exponence: Fusion, Pruning, Spanning

This paper discusses verbal stem allomorphy in Romance within the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). We will present several technical instruments provided by the framework, applying them to an analysis of Romance verbal forms, with a particular focus on stem suppletion with the verb go. We conclude that the best solution to the problem of form–function discrepancies, as they appear in suppletion (but not only), is a spanning approach. This approach operates at Vocabulary Insertion only, without any need for the assumption of further, often critically discussed, morphological processes, such as fusion or pruning.

A morphosyntactic approach to gender and thematic vowels in the formation of Spanish diminutives

In this paper, I address the formation processes of Spanish diminutives focusing on the relationship between gender and thematic vowels, the materialization of the latter being often taken to hinge on phonological conditioning for their scarcely predictable behavior in the diminutive environment. The analysis made here is of morphosyntactic nature. I adopt the view that gender and thematic vowels are disjoint features, that is, they are introduced in the derivation at a postsyntactic stage. Then, I argue that diminutive suffixes have a highly underspecified root status. An explication is offered showing that the linear proximity of the disjoint features at the moment of Vocabulary Insertion and their belonging to the same word-internal cyclic domain determine the eventual spell-out of thematic vowels.

Breton Masculine Human Plurals, Locality, and Impoverishment

This article presents an apparent locality condition violation observed in Standard Breton masculine human plurals ending in -où. It proposes a unique impoverishment rule deleting a syntacticosemantic feature conditioned by a specified phonological exponent. Adopting a specific architectural view of lenition, it forces a rethinking of the precise timing of various postsyntactic processes, including certain types of impoverishment rules as well as Agree-Copy in dissociated Agr nodes. It also lends support to the independent claims that syntacticosemantic features are not overridden during Spell-Out and that Vocabulary Insertion applies to a linearized structure, not a hierarchical one.

The role of phonology in Vata adjectival agreement

AbstractIn realizational theories of morphology, different opinions exist on the relationship between phonology and Vocabulary Insertion. On the one hand, there are separational theories like Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), which assume that Vocabulary Insertion does not interact with the phonological component of the grammar. These theories predict that the properties of a language's regular phonology never play a role when vocabulary items (VIs) are inserted. The opposite view is held by integrational theories as, for instance, proposed in Wolf (2008). These theories assume that the general phonology of a language can influence Vocabulary Insertion. Based on adjectival agreement in the language Vata, I propose an integrational model that assumes that Vocabulary Insertion applies in an Optimality-Theoretic (Prince & Smolensky 1993) phonology, where regular phonological constraints are active. I propose that the phonology consists of two levels: one level where VIs are inserted and one level for regular phonology.

Quoi-sluices in French

Sluicing has traditionally been analyzed as an operation involving wh-movement and deletion (Merchant 2001). French is a language that has both fronted and wh-in situ strategies; on the surface, however, it seems that French sluices do not involve (overt) movement, in spite of this being an available option. For nearly all wh-words, the in situ and moved forms are the same; the notable exception is que/quoi ‘what’— que is found in fronted wh-questions alone, while quoi is found in situ. In sluicing, only quoi surfaces, suggesting that French may be a challenge for the movement-and-deletion approach (Dagnac 2019).By formalizing an analysis within a late insertion approach to the syntax-morphology interface, I argue that not only do sluices in French involve full structure, but that these involve movement as well. I assume that the wh-word is initially represented in the syntactic derivation as an abstract feature bundle. The morphological form is determined in the mapping of syntax to morphology by locality-dependent Vocabulary Insertion (VI) rules that are sensitive to C. These rules apply only after ellipsis occurs. Additionally, following Thoms (2010), I argue that C is targeted in sluicing, and as a result sluicing destroys the context that would trigger que. In this way, French sluicing provides support for the idea that ellipsis is able to bleed morphological operations (Saab & Lipták 2016; among others). The benefit of this analysis is that it is able to capture sluicing in French, while simultaneously explaining the behavior of quoi more generally.

Span–conditioned allomorphy and late linearization: Evidence from the Classical Greek perfect

Data from the perfect in Classical Greek provide empirical evidence for inwardly– and outwardly–sensitive span–conditioned allomorphy and indicate the need for a post–Vocabulary Insertion linearization process. The data also support the extremely late computation of the phonology of reduplicants. Perfect aspect in Classical Greek is realized via three distinct exponents: a reduplicative prefix, a suffix -/k/ (for some verbs) or stem allomorphy (for others), and a dedicated set of agreement suffixes. I argue that this case of Multiple Exponence results from one direct exponent of the Aspect[perfect] head and two cases of allomorphy at other nodes conditioned by spans that include the Aspect[perfect] head. The reduplicant is a Vocabulary Item (RED) that instantiates Aspect. Its phonology is determined after both Vocabulary Insertion and linearization. The -/k/ suffix is an outwardly–sensitive allomorph of Voice[active] conditioned by the span ⟨Aspect, Tense⟩, and perfect stem allomorphy in verbs that show it is conditioned by ⟨Voice, Aspect, Tense⟩. The agreement suffixes are inwardly–sensitive allomorphs conditioned by the span ⟨Voice, Aspect, Tense, Mood⟩. When taken together, the data indicate that Vocabulary Insertion must proceed cyclically, and that linearization must happen very late – after Vocabulary Insertion – since the realizations of both Voice[active] and AGR are conditioned by spans of hierarchically adjacent, rather than surface–contiguous, heads. The Greek data are essential for our understanding of the post–syntactic order of operations.

Morphosyntax and Phonology of Agreement in Turkish

AbstractThis article offers a new morphosyntactic account of subject agreement in the Turkish verbal domain. The account is based on a combination of well‐known, novel, and overlooked observations about the distribution and prosody of verbal agreement. In Turkish, when certain morphosyntactic requirements are met and the verb is focused, as in fragment answers with ellipsis, the agreement morpheme can be parsed inside or outside of the prosodically prominent part of the verbal domain that constitutes the fragment answer. I claim that this optionality is a reflex of how the morphemes that constitute the verbal domain are postsyntactically concatenated. In particular, I argue that an agreement morpheme either lowers together with its host (full lowering) or is stranded when its host lowers (partial lowering). In full lowering, agreement is contained within the prominent part of the verbal domain, whereas in partial lowering, agreement falls outside of this prominence domain. I also show that the prosodic variability in question is observed only when two related noncanonical realizations of agreement are possible: medial agreement and double agreement. The Vocabulary Insertion rules that I postulate for the subject‐agreement paradigms of the Turkish verbal domain capture the acceptable cases of medial and double agreement and successfully predict in which environments medial agreement is optional and in which environments it is obligatory.

On the domains of allomorphy, allosemy and morphophonology in compounds

In this paper I review the locality domains of contextual allomorphy, contextual allosemy and morphophonology with a special emphasis on compounds. I show that when the applications of these processes within compounds are compared, we observe a distinction between the domain of contextual allomorphy and contextual allosemy, on one hand, and morphophonology on the other. I argue that the mismatches in the domains in question lie in the timing of the operations where operations applying prior to vocabulary insertion are constrained by cycles/phases, whereas operations applying after vocabulary insertion are constrained by the timing of concatenation. Under such approach, all of these processes will make reference to the same morphosyntactic structure although their domains will be marked by different points in that same structure.

A split approach to the selection of allomorphs: Vowel length alternating allomorphy in Dutch

In this article it is argued that the selection of allomorphs is distributed over two modules, viz. Vocabulary Insertion and Phonology. This is done on the basis of a case study of vowel length alternating allomorphs in Dutch. The data show a split pattern: some empirical domains can be fully captured by phonological principles. For these cases, the phonologically most optimal allomorph will be selected. In other empirical domains, phonological principles still account for many of the attested data. Yet, one attests lexicalised exceptions as well, which are clearly phonologically non-optimal. The data echo opposing views in the literature: some proposals attempt to reduce allomorph selection to phonology, others focus on the fact that many examples are simply not phonologically optimal and suggest that allomorph selection should not be done by Phonology. I argue that the opposing nature of these two types of data is actually indicative of the way the selection of allomorphs is organised. More specifically, both Vocabulary Insertion and Phonology can determine the selection of allomorphs. Vocabulary Insertion is responsible for stored information, Phonology is responsible for phonologically optimising patterns.

Ellipsis as obliteration: Evidence from Bengali negative allomorphy

Bengali has two negative markers: ni with perfects, and na everywhere else. When a perfect is elided, however, only the elsewhere form is permissible. Hence, in Bengali, ellipsis bleeds allomorphy. Ellipsis in Bengali is analysed as PF deletion, since differential object marking and quirky case are preserved out of ellipsis sites. Given these facts, this paper argues that in a Distributed Morphology framework, ellipsis in Bengali is implemented as terminal obliteration prior to Vocabulary Insertion. This contrasts with Irish, where it appears stress placement bleeds ellipsis. Some implications for the timing of ellipsis cross-linguistically are discussed.

Strictly Local Impoverishment: An Intervention Effect

Strictly Local Impoverishment: An Intervention Effect

Estrutura sintática e morfofonológica da posse na língua Aweti

Este artigo investiga fenômenos de alternância morfofonológica na realização dos morfemas prefixais possessivos da língua Aweti, língua da família Tupi falada no estado do Mato Grosso, Brasil. Inicialmente, é feita uma descrição do sistema pronominal possessivo a partir da qual, como resultados, são apresentadas uma proposta para a estrutura sintática para o DP possessivo e uma proposta de análise morfofonológica para a alomorfia prefixal e seus condicionamentos fonológicos e semânticos/extra-linguísticos com base no modelo teórico gerativo da Morfologia Distribuída. A investigação sintática do DP perpassa a discussão sobre os tipos de posse presentes na língua, alienável e inalienável, e as melhores propostas de representação a partir da literatura geral sobre o tema. O artigo propõe que os dois tipos de posse, alienável e inalienável, no Aweti sejam representadas por dois tipos de estruturas sintáticas. A investigação morfofonológica sugere uma diminuição na quantidade de alomorfes geralmente propostos para os prefixos possessivos e a inserção de regras de reajuste fonológico. Além disso, sugere-se que a informação sobre o gênero do falante é gramaticalmente codificada na língua, dada sua relevância para a inserção de vocabulário.