LING 512 — Morphological Analysis Spring 2023

Ömer Demirok Week 2

Harley & Noyer (1999). Distributed Morphology. Glot International 4(4).

• Three key features of DM

– Late insertion: Syntactic terminals are (bundles of) abstract morpho-syntactic features,
contain no phonology. Phonological expressions (i.e. exponents or Vocabulary Items)
are inserted into syntactic terminals. Insertion procedure is called Spell-Out.

– Syntax-all-the-way-down: ‘word’ is not a privileged derivational object as far as the ar-

chitecture of the grammar is concerned.
→ syntax is responsible for word-internal complexity

– Underspecification: exponents need not be fully specified for the syntactic positions where
they can be inserted. They are often ‘default signals’, inserted where no more specific
form is available.

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• Lexicon vs. DM

– There is no (generative) lexicon in DM, which is a crucial difference from earlier generative
theories, which were lexicalist.
– Nothing can be said to “happen in the lexicon”, or to be “lexical” or “lexicalized” (in
the sense of not-constructed-in-syntax).
– Instead, we have lists:
∗ pre-syntactic list of abstract morphosyntactic features
∗ list of Vocabulary items (exponents with phonology and with specifications about
where they can be inserted)
∗ (and . . . the Encyclopedia with instructions to the Conceptual-Intentional interface
- but this has not been explored in sufficient detail. )

• What is a morpheme in DM?

– morpheme properly refers to a syntactic (or morphological) terminal node and its content,
not to the phonological expression of that terminal
– The content of a morpheme active in syntax consists of syntactico-semantic features

(1) terminal nodes=morphemes

Xo ...

{feature1, feature2, }
(2) Vocabulary Item (or exponent)
/agagaga/ ↔ [feature2]

• When do we insert what?

– view1 [obsolete]: concrete morphemes, whose phonological expression was fixed, vs. ab-
stract morphemes, whose phonological expression was delayed until after syntax.
∗ ≈ you insert kiss in syntax, but -ed after syntax

(3)
To ...

{past} ... /kiss/

– view2 [debated]: some distinction between l-morpheme vs. f-morpheme (≈ concepts,

roots vs. functional elements) is maintained: deterministic insertion is only for the
latter.
∗ ≈ you insert both kiss & -ed after syntax. but only the insertion of f-morphemes is
deterministic.

(4)
To ...
√
{past} ...

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 – view3 [popular]: Deterministic Late Insertion of all exponents. [Harley 2004]

(5)
To ...
√
{past} ... 752

• Parts of speech/syntactic categories are derivative, related to syntactic context in which a

root/l-morpheme occurs

– view1: a root is a noun if c-commanded by f-morpheme D, a root is a verb if c-commanded

by f-morpheme T

(6) (7)
To ... Do ...
√ √
... 752 ... 752

– view2: there are categorizers like n, v, etc.

(8) nP (9) vP
√ √
n 752 v 752

• Subset Principle, competition

Subset Principle
The phonological exponent of a Vocabulary Item is inserted into a morpheme,
if the item matches all or a subset of the grammatical features specified in the terminal
morpheme.

Insertion does not take place if the Vocabulary Item contains features not present in
the morpheme.

competition: Where several Vocabulary Items meet the conditions for insertion, the
item matching the greatest number of features specified in the terminal morpheme must
be chosen.

(10) terminal nodes=morphemes

Yo
Xo ...
{feature3, feature4 }
{feature1, feature2, }
(11) Vocabulary Items (or exponents)
a. /agagaga/ ↔ [feature3]
b. /babababa/ ↔ [feature1, feature2]
c. /akakaka/ ↔ [feature1, feature2, feature 3]

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• What happens when Subset Principles cannot decide?

– feature hierarchies may be invoked.

(12)
Xo ...

{f1, f2, }
(13) a. /a-/ ↔ [f1]
b. /-e/ ↔ [f2]

idea: if in the feature hierarchy f1 > f2, then /a-/ wins.

• Is there competition for l-nodes/root nodes?

– view1: no! they are inserted freely.

– view2: yes. deterministic insertion just like for f-morphemes.
– these views make different predictions for suppletion, allomorphy in roots.
– raise vs. rise: may be explained by readjustment rules that apply to particular VIs in
certain contexts. but how about go vs. went?

Operations that manipulate syntactic structure

• by default: what syntax delivers is the morphological structure subject to Spell-out(exponent

insertion).
But there are also assumed to be Post-syntactic modifications on the structure Syntax delivers.

– dissociated (=ornamental) morphemes: post-syntactic insertion of nodes. (post-

syntactic because they are not relevant to LF)
– Merger (this is general label for a variety of operations )
∗ head-movement (in syntax: relevant categories are heads)
∗ lowering (post-syntax before VI insertion: relevant categories are morpehemes)
∗ Local displacement (post-VI insertion+linearization: relevant categories are VIs)
∗ Prosodic Inversion (in phonology: relevant categories are prosodic units)

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 (14) a. baseline XP

X YP

Y ZP

Z ...
b. head-movement XP

X YP

Y X t ZP

Z ...
c. lowering XP

X
Z+Y ...

– Impoverisment: deletes morphosyntactic features from morphemes in certain contexts.

(When a feature F is deleted, the insertion of VIs requiring that feature is blocked, and
a less specified item gets inserted instead.)

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– Fission: is used to account for situations where a single morpheme is expressed by
multiple VIs.
∗ A VI primarily expresses certain features in its entry, but it may be said to
secondarily express certain other features

(15) /-d/ ↔ [f1, (f2)]

/-d/ primarily expresses f1, secondarily expresses f2.
in practice: /-d/ can be inserted to express f1 only if f2 has already been
matched (=discharged) by another VI.

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– Readjustment Rules: these are contextual rules that phonologically alter a VI in a
certain context.
∗ readjustments cannot be done on stems but particular VIs.
∗ readjustments are not exponence rules but secondary in nature (some kind of side-
effect of another exponent)
· in O’odham the truncated verb stem allomorph is used in the perfective form,
and the property of perfectivity is primarily expressed in another morpheme,
namely an affix on the syntactic auxiliary.