Abstract
This paper argues that the availability of exponents for insertion is restricted not only by their morpho-syntactic feature specification but, in addition, by an accessibility relation holding within a marker inventory: The exponent inserted at step n constrains the set of exponents competing for insertion at step n+1. The proposal is applied to a number of phenomena that have previously been dealt with by stipulating designated post-syntactic operations that modify the syntactically determined feature sets before morphological exponence is determined. Apparent mismatches between syntactically motivated feature specifications and morphological exponence are treated as the result of the accessibility relation. The paper contains analyses of multiple exponence in Archi and Dumi, apparent feature insertion in Nimboran, and obligatory co-occurrence of exponents in Spanish clitics.
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For helpful discussion, comments and criticism I am indebted to the editor Jochen Trommer and two anonymous reviewers as well as Olivier Bonami, Gilles Boyé, Johannes Hein, Nick LaCara, and Gereon Müller. Portions of the material reported here have been presented at the Workshop on Polyfunctionality and Underspecification (August 2009, Wittenberg), the 14th International Morphology Meeting (May 2010, Budapest), and the 5th Workshop on Theoretical Morphology (June 2010, Wittenberg). I would like to thank the audiences for their comments and questions. All errors and inadequacies are my own responsibility. This research was supported by a DFG grant to the project ‘Argument Encoding in Morphology and Syntax’, as part of Forschergruppe 742.
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Keine, S. Syntagmatic constraints on insertion. Morphology 23, 201–226 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-013-9221-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-013-9221-9