Abstract
The Welsh morphophonological phenomenon known as soft mutation is one which attracts recurrent attention from linguists, both for its phonological properties and for its relationship with morphosyntax. In this paper I review two recent discussions by Lieber and Zwicky which attempt to account for a particular subclass of soft mutation by an appeal to case. I argue that neither successfully accounts for the full range of relevant data and suggest a novel interpretation of the phenomenon which generalises beyond the occurrence of soft mutation in NPs to its occurrence in other categories. Instead of an account founded on a treatment of soft mutation as a manifestation of case, I propose that it can be satisfactorily and elegantly accounted for if we recognise phrasal categories as triggers of phonological phenomena.
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Harlow, S. The syntax of Welsh soft mutation. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 7, 289–316 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00208099
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00208099