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Stretching, spanning, and linear adjacency in Vocabulary Insertion

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Abstract

In studying the mechanisms that create portmanteaux, it is often difficult to distinguish structural constituency from linear adjacency. This paper examines the Irish verbal complex, the particular intricacies of which allow us to disentangle linear adjacency from morphosyntactic constituency. We observe that portmanteaux are formed between linearly adjacent nodes, without reference to structural constituency. A theory is developed in which Vocabulary Insertion operates over linearized structures, allowing Insertion of linearly adjacent nodes. This mechanism is termed ‘Stretching.’ In this way the characteristic slogan of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993) “syntax all the way down” is maintained, but the relevant sense of syntax is one in which post-syntactic processing creates complex structures which imperfectly mirror the narrow syntax. Importantly, it is linear adjacency within these post-syntactic structures which regulates patterns of Vocabulary Insertion, not structural adjacency.

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Notes

  1. These are often called “Vocabulary Items” in classical DM. Here I follow Arregi and Nevins (2012) in using Vocabulary Entry with the abbreviation VE to avoid confusion with Vocabulary Insertion and its abbreviation VI.

  2. The consensus view is that these elements are best identified with C. See McCloskey (1996) for arguments for this position, though see Sells (1984), Noonan (1992, 2002) for alternatives.

  3. The simple feature system in (9) could presumably be substituted with something more sophisticated, as Acquaviva (2014). This is peripheral to the morphological analysis presented here. I also do not decompose (9c–e) into a morpheme -f- along with a further TAM element idh or eadh. This is for expository simplicity, though see Acquaviva (2014).

  4. As a reviewer points out, the assumption here is that all dialects of Irish have fundamentally the same grammar. This seems to be the null hypothesis, as well as the standard assumption made throughout the Irish generative literature, as the same reviewer points out. With these methodological concerns recognized, I adopt this assumption here.

  5. (11) also demonstrates Initial Consonant Mutation in the orthographic change from cuir to chuir. Throughout I systematically ignore Initial Consonant Mutation, as it is irrelevant to the patterns under consideration here. Mutated forms may be spotted in the traditional orthography used here by -h- being inserted after the first consonant or a single consonant like g- or a digraph like bh- prefixed to the word.

  6. This is an oversimplification, as observed by McCloskey and Hale (1984), who note that some dialects allow both (ia) and (ib).

    1. (i)
      figure c

    Therefore, a more accurate empirical claim would be that some synthetic endings are obligatory when available, where others are optional. Regardless, the critical patterns in (12) and (13) hold regardless.

  7. The author collected (15) from a single native speaker in her 70s on Inis Meáin in July 2016.

  8. There is also an additional morpheme do which is clearly related to the morphology of tense in the left periphery of this language. Do does not interact with either dependent forms or synthetic endings though, and for this reason it is not discussed here. See Oda (2012) for further details on the distributions of both morphemes.

  9. McCloskey (2017) does not label this node ‘Mood’ but points out, following Ó Sé (1987, 1990), that it expresses a combination of tense and mood information that is at present not well understood. Ó Sé (op. cit.) argues that its fundamental semantic role is to encode a distinction between realis and irrealis mood and as such I will use the label ‘Mood’ for this projection. Since our focus is on matters of morphological exponence, what matters most is that there is good evidence for the existence of such a category in the extended clausal projection in Irish, not what its semantic content is.

  10. Following Oda (2012), I consider the past form of ‘get,’ bhfuair, to be a suppletive dependent form. While it may seem like the expected eclipsed form of fuair, this eclipsis occurs even after complementizers which otherwise obligatorily lenite, such as ní, the matrix negative complementizer. Nor may it occur with overt exponents of Mood, like other dependent forms. See (38e).

  11. See also Bruening (2015) for arguments that ‘light verbs’ are indistinguishable from ‘lexical verbs.’ Additionally, Oda (2012) discusses further verbs which are best understood as having dependent forms, like clois ‘hear’ and tabhair ‘give,’ although these dependent forms are not exponed with suppletive allomorphs. Like   feic ‘see’ and   faigh ‘get,’ there is no reason to consider these verbs ‘functional.’

  12. As a reviewer observes, the assumption here is that the grammar of dependent morphology is constant across dialects. As discussed in fn. 3, I adopt this assumption here.

  13. Other theories allow for Insertion of multiple nodes simultaneously, such as ‘Insertion at Non-Terminal Nodes’ (Neeleman and Szendrői 2007; Caha 2009; Radkevich 2010) and Fusion of classical DM (Georgi 2011; Svenonius 2012). Importantly, these theories suffer from the same problems as Spanning: they rely on morphosyntactic constituency. As such, I discuss only Spanning here, as this illustrates the general problem in a particularly clear way. See Merchant (2015) and Embick (2015) for further challenges to these theories. See also Wescoat (2002) for an comparable account of portmanteaux in HPSG.

  14. The Spanning literature does not address how head-movement interacts with the determination of Spans. I assume that the definition in (35) is maintained regardless of head-movement.

  15. Ná in (38a) is a dialectal variant of nach. See (19d).

  16. There are several ways of formally implementing this Extended Projection requirement. First, it could be that Extended Projections correspond to Spell-Out domains, or phases (Chomsky 2001, 2008; Chesi 2007). Second, the system could somehow be enriched so that the morphological component differentially treats nodes in different Extended Projections within the same Spell-Out domain. Distinguishing between these, and other, alternatives, and whether the Extended Projection requirement is in fact empirically necessary, remains up to future research.

  17. This assumes that head-movement is a syntactic process. Alternatively, head-movement could be a post-syntactic process that precedes Linearization. This paper is not the right place to evaluate arguments for or against either position (though see Roberts 2010). The approach presented here suffices for the sake of expository simplicity.

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Acknowledgements

My thanks first and foremost to the Irish speakers who shared their time and friendship in helping me understand these data, especially Áine Ní Chróinín, Simon Ó Chróinín, and their family, Conal Mac Seáin, Diane and John Cannon, Hannah Ní Bhaoill and her family, Bríd Ní Chualáin, Lee Vahey, and Ailbhe Nic Giolla Chomhaill. Any and all errors are, of course, my own. On the theoretical end, this work grew from my first Qualifying Paper at UC Santa Cruz, under the guidance of Jim McCloskey, Sandy Chung, and Armin Mester. This work also benefitted greatly from conversations with Jason Merchant and Ryan Bennett, as well as the insightful advice from Daniel Harbour and four anonymous reviewers.

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    Jason Ostrove

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Ostrove, J. Stretching, spanning, and linear adjacency in Vocabulary Insertion. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 36, 1263–1289 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-9399-y

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