Abstract
This paper incorporates morphological markedness constraints into a framework in which morphology and phonology directly interact, modeled with interleaving of morphological and phonological constraints in serial OT (Wolf 2008, 2009). Morphological markedness constraints are constraints against realization (or spell-out) of morphologically marked feature sets. The empirical data motivating this proposal mainly come from the case-study of Russian genitive plural allomorphy, which is analyzed as involving tradeoffs between morphological markedness and other constraints in the grammar, including the purely phonological ones. This proposal explains the otherwise apparently arbitrary and unnatural transderivational dependency between the nominative singular and the genitive plural in Russian. Additionally, this account of the genitive plural allomorphy provides a unified explanation for several seemingly exceptional sub-generalizations which upon examining lexical statistics turn out to be regular. Implications and predictions of an interleaved model with morphological markedness constraints are discussed throughout the article.
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Notes
Vowel and consonant alternations seen in these and other examples are due to the processes of vowel reduction and final consonant devoicing. For a discussion of these alternations see Jones and Ward (1969).
While an exceptional behavior (lack of neutralization) in a single cell in a paradigm is not ruled out by any theory that I know of, it is considered to be a deviation from the norm. For example, in the paper “Canonical Inflectional Classes” Corbett puts forth a number of principles that a canonical, unmarked system of inflectional classes must follow (Corbett 2009). Among them is a principle dictating that “forms differ as consistently as possible across inflectional classes, cell by cell,” and that “the existence of shared or default cells gives reduced canonicity” (p. 5). So, the plural paradigm in which five out of six inflectional class distinctions were neutralized (or shared) would be highly marked or non-canonical.
Another stance (similar to a suggestion in Booij 1998) is to handle optimizing allomorphy within OT and non-optimizing allomorphy as subcategorization restrictions.
This term refers to a situation in which a conditioning factor for some allomorph x appears in a morpheme that is derivationally more peripheral to x.
Given the reverse ranking, only part of the restriction is captured, and the grammar predicts that it is possible for a morpheme containing extra features (those that are not in the input) to beat a morpheme that does not contain such extra-features. For example, suppose that the input includes a node with features [nom. masc. pl.], and suppose that the lexicon contains two entries, one specified for Nominative Plural, and one specified for Masculine Singular. The Subset Principle predicts that the first entry should always win. However, if M-Max(masc.) outranked M-Dep(sg.), M-Max(nom), and M-Max(pl), the second entry would win. This might be viewed as problematic because it predicts the existence of languages in which a morpheme specified for Masculine Singular would occur in the Nominative Masculine Plural context. However, the implausibility of such languages can perhaps be explained by implausibility of such competing lexical entries as those assumed above. If, in fact, the same morpheme was used in the nominative masculine plural and a number of masculine singular contexts (as predicted by the above ranking), it is not clear why a learner would ever specify a lexical entry for this morpheme as Masculine Singular. That is, why would a learner decide that a morpheme known to be used in a plural context must be specified as singular? Of course to make this argument more convincing, one would have to work out precisely what the learner does when it learns feature specifications given that the distribution of morphs can depend not only on the lexical items but also on the constraint ranking.
This is consistent with the Jakobsonian assumption that a phonetic Ø can only be an exponent of an unmarked morphological category (Calabrese 2011).
It is possible that the ranking between the two constraints *nom-pl and *gen-sg may be determined on a language specific basis, or according to a feature prominence hierarchy in which Case is considered more important than Number or vice-versa (as suggested in Noyer 1992).
This analysis assumes that the morphological markedness constraints are violated whenever a morphologically marked morpheme (in the syntactic representation) is morphologically realized in the process of lexical insertion. Thus, even if -u is underspecified for case, an output structure in which -u was connected by M-Correspondence to the node ObliqueCase would violate a *OblCase constraint.
Gen-Pl can also be realized syncretically with another cumulative case-number morpheme due to feature underspecification of lexical entries which I do not discuss here.
However, it is entirely possible (and, perhaps, likely) that speakers analyze these nouns as containing the Gen-Pl suffix -/ej/ as in nouns such as [noƷ] – [naƷ-ej] ‘knife, nom.sg.-gen.pl.’
Shapiro (1971) even claims that for some nouns denoting military units different genitive plural allomorphs may be observed depending on whether the noun appears in the collective or individuated context (e.g., polk dragun ‘a regiment of dragoons’), but (e.g., dvux dragun-ov ‘two dragoons’). I did not find support for this claim in my search of the Russian National Corpus.
For example, according to the National Russian Corpus plural forms of the nouns “eye,” “boot,” and “gramm” make up 90 %, 81 %, and 78 % of all inflectional forms of these nouns correspondingly.
There are several examples of such morphological patterning. First, the inflectional class of some nouns depends of the quality of the stem-final consonant. In particular, third declension is comprised of nouns that are feminine and end in a soft consonant. Nouns ending in [ʃ] and [ʒ] also belong to this declension. Second, stems ending in these consonants behave like other soft-stems with respect to triggering the realization of unstressed /o/ as [
] rather than [
], although admittedly the two reduced versions of this vowel are often hard to distinguish from each other (cf. góst
j-
, 
vs. róst-əm). Third, as will be discussed later in this paper, palatalization determines the choice of the overt genitive plural allomorphs. The overt allomorph -/ej/ always follows soft consonants and [ʃ], [ʒ], while the allomorph -/ov/ always follows hard consonants and [j] (which is phonologically soft). It is possible that the exceptional behavior of [j] in this case is due to a dissimilatory process (avoidence of a jVj sequence), but I will not pursue this possibility further.Two such nouns with -/ov/ could be explained on the grounds that they had stems ending in an illegal Cj cluster.
It is possible that -/ov/ should also be specified as [−fem] since no feminine noun in the lexicon has -/ov/ in the Gen-Pl. Speakers could notice this fact and lexically represent it. However, since my account will not be greatly affected by positing such a feature, I will not pursue this possibility here.
A minority of nouns have further stress alternations within the singular or plural subparadigm. I assume that such nouns are exceptional.
] rather than [
], although admittedly the two reduced versions of this vowel are often hard to distinguish from each other (cf. góst
j-
, 
vs. róst-əm). Third, as will be discussed later in this paper, palatalization determines the choice of the overt genitive plural allomorphs. The overt allomorph -/ej/ always follows soft consonants and [ʃ], [ʒ], while the allomorph -/ov/ always follows hard consonants and [j] (which is phonologically soft). It is possible that the exceptional behavior of [j] in this case is due to a dissimilatory process (avoidence of a jVj sequence), but I will not pursue this possibility further.References
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for useful discussion and feedback at various stages of this project: Adam Albright, Donca Steriade, Elliott Moreton, Jennifer Smith, Laura Janda, Tore Nesset, and the anonymous reviewers.
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Pertsova, K. Interaction of morphological and phonological markedness in Russian genitive plural allomorphy. Morphology 25, 229–266 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-015-9256-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-015-9256-1