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Universals in Comparative Morphology : Suppletion, Superlatives, and the Structure of Words / Jonathan David Bobaljik

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Universals in Comparative Morphology : Suppletion, Superlatives, and the Structure of Words / Jonathan David Bobaljik Universals in Comparative Morphology Current Studies in Linguistics Samuel Jay Keyser, general editor A complete list of books published in the Current Studies in Linguistics series appears at the back of this book. Universals in Comparative Morphology Suppletion, Superlatives, and the Structure of Words Jonathan David Bobaljik The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec- tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in Times Roman by Westchester Book Composition. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bobaljik, Jonathan David. Universals in comparative morphology : suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words / Jonathan David Bobaljik. p. cm. — (Current studies in linguistics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01759-6 (alk. paper) 1. Grammar, Comparative and general—Morphology. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general—Syntax. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general—Word formation. 4. Linguistics. I. Title. P241.B63 2012 415’.9—dc23 2011048955 10987654321 Für Susi und Leo Contents Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations xi 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Distributed Morphology 6 1.3 Constructing the Database 15 1.4 Comparative Typology 18 2 Comparative Suppletion 2.1 Introduction 27 2.2 *ABA: Explaining a Gap 31 2.3 Universal Grammar versus the European Sprachbund 39 2.4 Summary 47 3 The Containment Hypothesis 3.1 Introduction 49 3.2 Transparent Containment 49 3.3 Comparison and the Synthetic/Analytic Divide 67 3.4 The Synthetic Superlative Generalization 79 3.5 Containment and Semantic Considerations 95 3.6 Chapter Summary 103 4 The Comparative-Superlative Generalization: The Data 4.1 Adjectives 105 4.2 Adverbs 116 4.3 Quantifiers 123 4.4 Chapter Summary 135 5 Theoretical Refinements 5.1 Introduction: Taking Stock 137 5.2 Conditions on Suppletion: Exponence versus Readjustment 139 5.3 Adjacency, ABC, *AAB 144 viii Contents 5.4 AAB Ablaut 158 5.5 Merger, Rule Ordering, Diacritics, and Acquisition 163 6 Getting Better: Comparison and Deadjectival Verbs 6.1 Introduction 169 6.2 Preliminary Remarks 172 6.3 Deadjectival Degree Achievements: Doubting Dowty 176 6.4 To Good, to Badden, and to Many 187 6.5 Summary: What’s the Difference? 205 7 Complexity, Bundling, and Lesslessness 7.1 Introduction 209 7.2 Lesslessness 213 7.3 Conservative Decomposition: Adjacency and Bundling 221 7.4 Concluding Remarks 224 Appendixes 227 A The Broad Sample 229 B The Focused Survey 243 C Principal Sources 257 References 269 Index Acknowledgments The research reported here has occupied me for a number of years, and in that time, I have benefited (and I hope the book has as well) from the comments, questions, and suggestions of a large number of linguists. I would like to sin- gle out in particular the following, whose suggestions (whether I was able to address them or not) were of particular importance in shaping my thinking at one point or another in the course of this work: Susi Wurmbrand, Edwin Williams, Ken Safir, Andrew Nevins, Jason Merchant, Alec Marantz, Chris Kennedy, Harry van der Hulst, Jon Gajewski, David Embick, Miloje Despic,´ Andrea Calabrese, Mark Baker, and two reviewers. I also received useful comments from Greville Corbett, Wolfang U. Dressler, Danny Fox, Michael Wagner, Roger Schwarzschild, Ljiljana Progovac (and members of her reading group), and others mentioned in notes below. I owe a special debt of grati- tude to the many linguists and/or language experts who have helped me with particular languages (see appendix C). In addition, I thank all those who have sat through presentations of parts of this material and provided feedback, including audiences at the University of Connecticut, the Jersey Syntax Circle (Princeton), Universitetet i Tromsø, the Workshop on Theoretical Morphology (Leipzig), GALANA-2 (McGill), the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), the Georgetown University Round Table, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Chicago, Cornell University, Universität Stuttgart, the Wiener Sprachgesellschaft, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, GLOW 34 (Vienna), the Roots III Workshop (Jerusalem), and the Comparative Germanic Syntax Work- shop 26 (Amsterdam). I also thank participants who heard and commented on extended presentations in a seminar on comparatives co-taught with Yael Sharvit, a morphology seminar at the University of Connecticut, and a mini- course at Rutgers University. x Acknowledgments I am also grateful to the reviewers whose comments on an earlier, much shorter manuscript led me to rethink the project in important ways and to con- clude that a monograph format was needed to avoid skimping on the empirical or theoretical front (or both). My thanks to Jay Keyser and Ada Brunstein for working with me to make this happen, and to Anne Mark for her invaluable editorial advice. For research assistance, I thank Carlos Buesa García, Miloje Despic,´ Natalia Fitzgibbons, Zhanna Glushan, Gísli Rúnar Harðarson, I-Ta Chris Hsieh, Nina Radkevich, Oksana Tarasenkova, and the University of Connecticut Inter- library Loan Service. Funding for portions of this work was provided by the National Science Foundation (BCS–0616339), the Alexander von Hum- boldt Stiftung (a Transcoop project with Uli Sauerland), a sabbatical grant from the American Philosophical Society, and a grant from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation for acquiring a collection of descriptive grammars. Above all, I am grateful to Susi and Leo Wurmbrand for their support—and patience—throughout this project. Abbreviations 1/2/3 first/second/third person A.SPRL absolute superlative ABL ablative ACC accusative ADD additive ADESS adessive ADJ adjective ADNOM adnominal ADV adverb CGEL Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston and Pullum 2001) CMPR comparative COCA Corpus of Contemporary American English CONV converb COP copula CG Comparative–Change of State Generalization CSG Comparative-Superlative Generalization DAT dative DECL declarative DEF definite DEG degree DIM diminutive DM Distributed Morphology DWB Deutsches Wörterbuch (Grimm and Grimm 1854–1961) xii Abbreviations ELAT elative EMPH emphatic F feminine FACT factive GEN genitive HON honorific INCEPT inceptive INFIN infinitive INFL inflection INST instrumental INTNS intensifier LOC locative LV linking vowel M masculine N neuter NEG negative NML nominalizer NOM nominative NPI negative polarity item OBJ object OBL oblique OED Oxford English Dictionary PART partitive PL plural POS positive PRD predicator PREF prefix PRES present PROG progressive PST past PTCP participle RED reduplicant REFL reflexive Abbreviations xiii REL relational particle RSG Root Suppletion Generalization SG singular +SPE specific SPRL superlative SSG Synthetic Superlative Generalization STD.MKR standard marker SUBJ subject TOP topic TV theme vowel UG Universal Grammar VIP Vocabulary Insertion Principle VM verb marker WDG Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction Morphology is sometimes characterized as the domain of the lawless, and among the miscreants, no process epitomizes irregularity more than suppletion—the wholesale replacement of one stem by a phonologically unre- lated stem—as in the comparative and superlative degree of adjectives (good – better – best). On the basis of a large, crosslinguistic survey (just over 300 languages), I argue that there are nevertheless strikingly robust patterns in this domain, robust enough to be solid contenders for the status of linguistic universals. One goal of this study is to offer theoretical explanations for these gener- alizations, thereby setting out a formal generative typology (in the sense of Baker and McCloskey 2007; Baker 2009) of suppletion in adjectival compari- son. In the course of developing an analysis, I will argue that the assumptions needed bear on choices among theoretical frameworks, with the framework of Distributed Morphology having the right architecture to support the account. In addition to the theoretical implications of the generalizations, I suggest that the striking patterns of regularity in what otherwise appears to be the most irregu- lar of linguistic domains provide compelling evidence for Universal Grammar (UG). The core theoretical claim will amount to saying that certain types of meaning cannot be expressed monomorphemically. A central example is the superlative, as in English biggest. I contend that no language has a true superla- tive morpheme that attaches to adjectival roots. Apparent examples, such as English -est, in fact have a richer structure, where the superlative-forming element always embeds a comparative: (roughly) [[[ADJECTIVE] COMPAR- ATIVE] SUPERLATIVE]. This structure is transparent in many languages (see chapter 3). The argument for UG here constitutes in some ways a twist on the familiar logic of the poverty of the stimulus. Within any one language, 2 Chapter 1 the evidence from suppletion is far too scant for any observed patterns to emerge as significant.
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