Deponency in morphology Laura Grestenberger
[email protected] 1 Summary Deponency refers to mismatches between morphological form and syntactic function (or “meaning”), such that a given morphological exponent appears in a syntactic environment that is unexpected from the point of view of its canonical (“normal” or “expected”) func- tion. This phenomenon is famously found in Latin, where some morphologically “passive” verbs appear in syntactically active contexts (for example, hort-or ‘I encourage’, with the same ending as in passive am-or ‘I am loved’), but it occurs in other languages as well. Moreover, the term has been extended to include mismatches in other domains, such as number mismatches in nominal morphology or tense mismatches on verbs (e.g., in the Ger- manic preterite-presents). Theoretical treatments of deponency vary from seeking a unified (and uniform) account of all observed mismatches to arguing that the wide range of cross- linguistically attested form-function mismatches does not form a natural class and does not require special explanatory devices specific to morphological theory. However, it is generally agreed that deponency, understood as “morphological mismatches”, has potential ramifi- cations for theories of the syntax-morphology interface and (depending on the theoretical approach) the structure of the lexicon. Keywords: deponency, morphosyntactic mismatches, morphology-syntax interface, voice, verbal morphology, morphological idiosyncrasy 1 2 Introduction Deponency refers to mismatches between morphological form and syntactic function (or “meaning”). The term “deponent” comes from traditional Latin grammar, where deponents are verbs with the “wrong” voice morphology: they are morphologically passive, but syn- tactically active. For example, the Latin non-deponent verb am¯o ‘love’ in row a.