Abstract
What is the nature of the interaction between scope, phonological conditions and morphologically specified precedence relations in determining affix combinatorics in morphologically complex languages? In depth studies of affix ordering patterns in typologically diverse languages reveal intricate interactions among multiple factors. Mixed scope/template systems, for instance, have been characterized as either involving scope taking precedence over templates [Athabaskan (Rice 2000)], or templates overriding scope [Chichewa (Hyman 2002, 2003) and Pulaar (Paster 2005)]. This paper makes an empirical contribution by documenting a novel type of affix order system of a previously unstudied language, Choguita Rarámuri, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Mexico, which features free affix permutation, and which cannot be characterized as either ‘template-emergent’ or ‘scope-emergent’. In this agglutinating language, scope and morphological constraints are freely ranked, with phonological subcategorization overriding all other constraints. This paper also documents how semantically non-compositional suffix sequences may arise through priming effects and morphophonologically conditioned multiple exponence.
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I would like to thank Andrew Garrett, Larry Hyman, Sharon Inkelas, Johanna Nichols, Lynn Nichols, Nicholas Fleisher, Teresa McFarland and the audiences at the Workshop on Affix Ordering at the 13th International Morphology Meeting in Vienna, the Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Forum, the Linguistics Department colloquium at the University of California, San Diego and the Linguistics Department colloquium at Rice University for valuable comments and suggestions. I am extremely grateful to my Rarámuri colleagues and teachers, especially Sebastián Fuentes Holguín, Bertha Fuentes Loya and Luz Elena León Ramírez for their patience and insights about their language. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers and the editors for detailed comments and criticisms. All remaining errors and omissions are my sole responsibility. This study was made possible by fellowships by Mexico’s Science and Technology Council (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)), The University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UCMEXUS) and the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project.
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Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
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Caballero, G. Scope, phonology and morphology in an agglutinating language: Choguita Rarámuri (Tarahumara) variable suffix ordering. Morphology 20, 165–204 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-010-9147-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-010-9147-4