University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 1-1-2016 Realizing Morphemes in the Icelandic Noun Phrase Anton Karl Ingason University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Ingason, Anton Karl, "Realizing Morphemes in the Icelandic Noun Phrase" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1776. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1776 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1776 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Realizing Morphemes in the Icelandic Noun Phrase Abstract This dissertation defends a strong version of the view that linguistic surface complexity is the product of interactions between deep syntactic mechanisms and shallow interface-specific mechanisms. I argue that current developments in the theory of locality in Distributed Morphology (Embick 2010, Marantz 2013) impose boundaries on syntactic analysis and that morphemes cannot be identified and analyzed without studying their realization at the interfaces of syntax with both phonology and interpretation. The mpe irical focus is on a series of phenomena which are attested in Icelandic noun phrases and involve the realization of roots, category-defining heads, inflection morphemes, and definite articles, all of which may appear in the same noun as shown below. (1) leik-end-ur-nir 'play'-nmlz-m.nom.pl-def Three main components of the dissertation involve applicative structures, definite articles and morphophonology. I argue for the existence of applicatives in noun phrases which do not include a verbal substructure based on the realization of morphemes in an Icelandic Caused Experience construction.