Coyote Papers 18 (2011) served as the proceedings for Arizona Linguistics Cirlce 4. ALC4 was held October 15-17, 2010. The theme for ALC6 was "Morphology in Linguistic Theory".
Contents
Haugen, Jason D. Reduplication in Distributed Morphology. [download]
The two extant approaches to reduplication in Distributed Morphology (DM) are: (i) the readjustment approach, where reduplication is claimed to result from a readjustment operation on some stem triggered by a (typically null) affix; and (ii) the affixation approach, where reduplication is claimed to result from the insertion of a special type of Vocabulary Item (i.e. a reduplicative affix–“reduplicant” or “Red”) which gets inserted into a syntactic node in order to discharge some morphosyntactic feature(s), but which receives its own phonological content from some other stem (i.e. its “base”) in the output. This paper argues from phonologically-conditioned allomorphy pertaining to base-dependence, as in the case of durative reduplication in Tawala, that the latter approach best accounts for a necessary distinction between “reduplicants” and “bases” as different types of morphemes which display different phonological effects, including “the emergence of the unmarked” effects, in many languages. I also defend a blended model of DM which incorporates a constraint-based Correspondence Theoretic vision of Phonological Form. In this model the syntax builds morphological structure as per standard DM assumptions, which in turn leads to local and cyclic restrictions on allomorph selection, as argued in Embick (2010). I argue contra Embick (2010), however, that the phonology must be an essential part of the grammar in order to account for surface form-oriented (or “output-centered”) prosodic morphology such as reduplication and mora affixation. In this model, the output of Morphological Structure serves as an input into PF, which I construe as Optimality Theoretic tableaux as in Correspondence Theory, thus accounting for surface-oriented phonological copying effects like base-dependence.
Jung, Hyun Kyoung. Nominative/accusative case alternation in the Korean siph-ta construction. [download]
This paper investigates the mechanism for nominative/accusative Case alternations in the siph-ta ‘want-to’ construction in Korean. I argue that the Case alternations in the Korean siph-ta construction are motivated by the peculiar property of siph- that it has dual argument structures and restructuring properties. Specifically, the structural Case on the embedded object is determined by 1) the type of the matrix vP that siph- takes—vP(DO) or vP(BE) - and 2) the presence/absence of the functional category responsible for accusative Case checking, which is selected by the matrix predicate siph-. In so doing, it is demonstrated that the dual argument structure analysis can be extended to account for the same type of Case alternations exhibited by Korean psych-verbs as well as the incompatibility between a nominative object and an embedded psych-verb in the siph-ta construction.
Kharytonava, Olga. The morphology of affix sharing in Turkish. [download]
This paper analyses the phenomenon of Suspended Affixation (SA) which refers to a situation in coordinated constructions when affixes on the final conjunct have scope over all the non-final conjuncts. The main goal of this paper is to look at the structure of SA for Noun Compound Coordination and to find out how pl and poss suffixes behave regarding suspension. Previous studies have shown that in N and NP coordination poss cannot be suspended leaving pl on the non-final conjunct. This study tests the suspendability of poss in the context of Noun Compound coordination. Since SA seems to represent gradient judgment data two acceptability judgment studies were conducted to find out the (un)grammaticality of Noun Compound constructions. The results show that pl and poss suffixes cannot be suspended for independent reasons. The suspendability of poss does not depend on the presence/absence of pl in the structure due to its structural position. This article proposes an analysis of SA in N and NP coordination which represents a combination of two approaches on SA already proposed in literature and is based on the idea of Parallel Merge proposed by Citko (2005). SA in N and NP coordination is considered to be a coordination of fully inflected conjuncts where the inflections are parallel-merged with two conjuncts (final and non-final). I show that due to the structure of Noun Compound coordination constructions, pl and poss cannot be parallel-merged because of a minimality condition: a non-final conjunct has to be a Minimal Morphological Word.
Miyagawa, Shigeru. Blocking and causatives: unexpected competition across derivations. [download]
The Japanese causative verb exhibits the effects of blocking, whereby a causative verb (V-sase) is blocked from taking on lexical meaning if there is a competing lexical causative verb (Miyagawa (1980, 1984)). Given that the causative verb is most reasonably viewed as being formed in syntax, the blocking effect leads to the conclusion that the lexical causatives also are formed in syntax, contrary to the traditional view. A similar blocking effect is observed with English causatives formed with make, and this, together with what we can observe in Japanese, suggest that blocking is best viewed as one that arises in the process of deriving the causative verb (e.g., Embick and Marantz (2008)), and not as a result of a filter on the output of the generative component (e.g., Kiparsky (2005)).
Pham, Mike. Idiomatic Root Merge in Modern Hebrew blends. [download]
In this paper I use the Distributional Morphology framework and semantic Locality Constraints proposed by Arad (2003) to look at category assignments of blends in Modern Hebrew, as well as blends, compounds and idioms in English where relevant. Bat-El (1996) provides an explicit phonological analysis of Modern Hebrew blends, and argues against any morphological process at play in blend formation. I argue, however, that blends and compounds must be accounted for within morphology due to category assignments. I first demonstrate that blends are unquestionably formed by blending fully inflected words rather than roots, and then subsequently reject an analysis that accounts for weakened Locality Constraints by proposing the formation of a new root. Instead, I propose a hypothesis of Idiomatic Root Merge where a root can be an n-place predicate that selects at least an XP sister and a category head. This proposal also entails that there is a structural difference between two surface-similar phrases that have respectively literal and idiomatic meanings.
Sui, Yanyan. The placement of second-position subject clitics in Alsea. [download]
This paper aims to spell out the post-syntactic operations involved in the placement of second-position subject clitics in Alsea, an extinct language of the central Oregon coast. It assumes that the subject clitic is a syntactic head that is moved to a complementizer position in syntax, but is linearized in a post-syntactic morphological component in PF; operations in morphology account for the deviation of the subject clitic from its syntactic output position. Based on Buckley (1994), this paper proposes a two-stage post-syntactic derivation to account for the subject clitic distribution in Alsea: (i) concatenation, in which the subject clitic adjoins to an adjacent head of the same type to satisfy its suffixal requirement, (ii) prosodic readjustment, whereby a clitic whose morphological host is non-overt, leans rightward to procliticize to the first prosodic constituent.
Volume Summary:
Schertz, Jessamyn, Alan Hogue, Dane Bell, Dan Brenner, and Samantha Wray (eds.), Coyote Papers 18: Proceedings of the Arizona Linguistics Circle 4. October 15-17, 2010.