Universals in Comparative Morphology i ii Universals in Comparative Morphology Suppletion, superlatives, and the structure of words Jonathan David Bobaljik Draft. January-February 2011 iii iv Contents Abbreviations ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction............................ 1 1.2 DistributedMorphology . 6 1.3 ConstructingtheDatabase . 16 1.4 ComparativeTypology . 18 2 Comparative Suppletion 27 2.1 Introduction............................ 27 2.2 *ABA-Explainingagap. 31 2.3 UGvs. theEuropeanSprachbund . 39 2.3.1 The insignificance of the evidence . 40 2.3.2 Countingcognates . 41 2.3.3 (In)stabilityandchange . 44 2.4 Summary ............................. 48 3 The Containment Hypothesis 51 3.1 Introduction............................ 51 3.2 TransparentContainment . 52 3.2.1 TransparentNesting . 52 3.2.2 The Fennic Superlative: Branching Affixes? . 58 3.2.3 Aside: Morethananything. 63 3.2.4 InterimConclusion . 69 3.3 Comparison and the Synthetic/Analytic Divide . 70 3.3.1 Periphrasis, Suppletion, and Locality . 71 3.3.2 Aside: Romance suppletion and Poser blocking . 76 3.3.3 Periphrastic superlatives again . 80 v 3.4 The Synthetic Superlative Generalization . 84 3.4.1 Armeniansuperlatives . 92 3.5 Containment and semantic considerations . 99 3.6 Chaptersummary. .108 4 CSG: The Data 109 4.1 Adjectives .............................109 4.1.1 TheBasqueproblem . .116 4.2 Adverbs ..............................120 4.3 Quantifiers.............................128 4.3.1 Many–morecounterexamples . 131 4.3.2 What’s more?.......................134 5 Theoretical Refinements 139 5.1 Introduction: TakingStock. 139 5.2 Conditions on Suppletion: exponence versus readjustment . .142 5.3 Adjacency,*AAB,ABC . .146 5.3.1 Getting worse: portmanteaus and locality . 148 5.3.2 Adjacency - Outstanding Issues . 154 5.4 AABablaut ............................157 5.5 Merger, Rule Ordering, Diacritics and Acquisition . 163 6 Getting better: Comparison and deadjectival verbs 169 6.1 Introduction............................169 6.2 Preliminaryremarks . .173 6.3 Deadjectival Degree Achievements: Doubting Dowty . 176 6.4 Togood,tobadden,andtomany . 186 6.4.1 Ancient Greek goods ...................191 6.4.2 Baddening(up) . .192 6.4.3 Moral goodness and ambiguity in Serbian . 193 6.4.4 Russian: badfeelings . .195 6.4.5 Multiplicity . .197 6.4.6 Compoundsandroots . .198 6.4.7 Outstandingexamples . .201 6.5 Summary: What’s the Difference? . 203 vi 7 Complexity, Bundling, and Lesslessness 205 7.1 Introduction............................205 7.2 Lesslessness ............................209 7.3 Conservativedecomposition . 214 7.3.1 Adjacency and Decomposition . 215 7.4 ConcludingRemarks . .218 Appendices 220 A The Broad Sample 223 B The Focussed Survey 239 C Principal Sources 251 C.1 Selected dictionaries consulted: . 262 Bibliography 263 vii viii Abbreviations 1/2/3 s/p first/second/third person singular/plural a.sprl absolute superlative abl ablative acc accusative add additive adess adessive adj adjective adnom adnominal adv adverb Anc. Greek Ancient Greek CGEL Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston and Pullum 2001) Cl. Greek Classical Greek cmpr comparative COCA Corpus of Contemporary American English http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ conv converb cop copula CSG The Comparative-Superlative Generalization C∆G The Comparative-Superlative Generalization dat dative decl declarative def definite dm Distributed Morphology dwb Das Deutsche Wörterbuch (Grimm and Grimm 1854-1961) elat elative emph emphatic fact factive fs feminine singular gen genitive ix incept inceptive infin infinitive inst instrumental intns intensifier intr intransitive loc locative lv linking vowel ms masculine singular neg negative neu neuter nml nominalizer nom nominative npi negative polarity item ns neuter singular obj object OCS Old Church Slavonic OED Oxford English Dictionary part U.R. Underlying Representation PIE Proto Indo-European pl plural pos positive prd predicator pref prefix pres present prog progressive pst past ptcp participle refl reflexive rev reverse RSG The Root Suppletion Generalization Scand. Scandinavian sg singular sprl superlative SSG The Synthetic Superlative Generalization subj subject top topic tv karel. Tikhvin Karelian x UG Universal Grammar v verb VIP The Vocabulary Insertion Principle vm verb marker wdg Wörterbuch der deutschen Gegenwartssprache http://www.dwds.de/ xi xii Chapter 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 supple- tion — the wholesale replacement of one stem by a phonologically unrelated stem — as in the comparative and superlative degree of adjectives (good – better – best). I argue, based on a large, cross-linguistic survey (xx lan- guages), 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 gen- eralizations. 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 irregular of linguistic domains provides compelling evidence for Universal Grammar (UG). The core theoretical claim will amount to say- ing 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 superlative morpheme that attaches to adjectival roots. Apparent examples, such as English -est, have in fact a richer struc- ture, where the superlative-forming element always embeds a comparative, (roughly): [[[ adjective ] comparative ] superlative ]. This structure is transparent in many languages (see Chapter 3). The argument for UG here 1 constitutes in some ways a twist on the familiar logic of the poverty-of-the- stimulus. Within any one language, suppletion is far too scant a phenomenon for any patterns observed to emerge as significant. Thus, if there are uni- versal generalizations to be had (as I contend there are), the significance of these can only be appreciated in their cross-linguistic scope. Thus a second goal of the book is a contribution to the search for the basic building blocks of grammatical meanings — morphological primitives. Over the course of the book I contend that the following generalizations have the status of linguistic universals. Various clarifications are discussed as we proceed, and apparent counter-examples are addressed, with alternative accounts provided. The first generalization is the Comparative-Superlative Generalization (CSG), in two parts, extending observations in Ultan (1972). (1) The Comparative-Superlative Generalization, part I (CSG1): If the comparative degree of an adjective is suppletive, then the su- perlative is also suppletive (i.e., with respect to the positive). (2) The Comparative-Superlative Generalization, part II (CSG2): If the superlative degree of an adjective is suppletive, then the com- parative is also suppletive (i.e., with respect to the positive). The two parts of the CSG require that an adjective that is suppletive in gradation will be suppletive in both the comparative and superlative grades (relative to the basic, positive root). The CSG allows for patterns such as bad – worse – worst, with the a suppletive root common to both comparative and superlative, and for patterns such as Latin bonus – melior – optimus ‘good – better – best’, with distinct roots in all three grades. What is disallowed (and virtually unattested) is a pattern in which only the comparative *good – better – goodest or only the superlative *good – gooder – best shows sup- pletion. Two important terminological clarifications should be made here. First, by superlative here and throughout I refer only to relative superla- tives, meaning ‘more X than all others’; the generalizations do not extend to what are sometimes called absolute superlatives (also called elatives in some traditions). These latter have the meaning ‘X to a very high degree’. For ex- ample, in Italian, there is a distinction between relative superlatives (formed by adding the definite article to the comparative): il migiore ‘the better’ = ‘(the) best’, and absolute superlatives (marked by the suffix -issim-) buon- issim-o ‘very, extremely good’. Absolute superlatives are not subject to the generalizations laid out here, evidently because they lack the comparative component of meaning (and hence structure). 2 A second clarification regards the term suppletion itself. I take suppletion not to represent a point on a cline of irregularity (contrast Wurzel 1985), but instead see a categorial divide between suppletion (a relation holding among distinct exponents, or vocabulary items, as in go – went) and other forms of irregularity such as ablaut (which involve phonological changes to a single underlying exponent, as in tell – told. I return to these points in more detail below, in particular presenting arguments for a distinction between suppletion and readjustment rules in Chapter 5. For now, I simply mention these clarificatory points as they are important to understanding the scope of the generalizations under scrutiny. On suppletion generally, as well as differing uses of the