Inflectional Identity OXFORD STUDIES IN THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS GENERAL EDITORS:DavidAdger,Queen Mary, University of London;Hagit Borer, University of Southern California. ADVISORY EDITORS:StephenAnderson, Yale University; Daniel Büring, University of California, Los Angeles;NomiErteschik-Shir,Ben-Gurion University; Donka Farkas, University of California, Santa Cruz;AngelikaKratzer,Univer- sity of Massachusetts, Amherst;AndrewNevins,Harvard University;Christopher Potts, University of Massachusetts, Amherst;BarrySchein,University of Southern California;PeterSvenonius,University of Tromsø;MoiraYip,University College London. RECENT TITLES 10 The Syntax of Aspect: Deriving Thematic and Aspectual Interpretation edited by Nomi Erteschik-Shir and Tova Rapoport 11 Aspects of the Theory of Clitics by Stephen Anderson 12 Canonical Forms in Prosodic Morphology by Laura J. Downing 13 Aspect and Reference Time by Olga Borik 14 Direct Compositionality edited by Chris Barker and Pauline Jacobson 15 A Natural History of Infixation by Alan C. L. Yu 16 Phi Theory: Phi-Features Across Modules and Interfaces edited by Daniel Harbour, David Adger, and Susana Béjar 17 French Dislocation: Interpretation, Syntax, Acquisition by Cécile De Cat 18 Infectional Identity edited by Asaf Bachrach and Andrew Nevins PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE SERIES The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces edited by Gillian Ramchand and Charles Reiss For a complete list of titles published and in preparation for the series, see pp. 367. Inflectional Identity Edited by ASAF BACHRACH AND ANDREW NEVINS 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ©EditorialmatterandorganizationAsafBachrachandAndrewNevins2008 ©Thechapterstheirauthors2008 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published by Oxford University Press 2008 All rights reserved. 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ISBN 978–0–19–921925–4 (Hbk.) 13579108642 Contents General Preface ix The Contributors x Abbreviations xiii 1 Introduction: Approaching inflectional identity 1 Asaf Bachrach and Andrew Nevins 1.1 Overview 1 1.2 The identification of base of identity and scope of identity effects 3 1.3 Paradigm-based explanations, their pitfalls, and alternatives 7 1.4 Sources of identity effects: Shared morphological features 13 1.5 Sources of identity effects: Asymmetric dependence on a base 20 1.6 Conclusions 25 2 Paradigms (Optimal and otherwise): A case for skepticism 29 Jonathan David Bobaljik 2.1 Introduction 29 2.2 OP and morphological relatedness 31 2.3 Stems, bases, and morphemes 35 2.4 Itelmen and the source of noun-verb asymmetries 42 2.5 Conclusion 52 3 Clarifying “Blur”: Paradigms, defaults, and inflectional classes 55 Morris Halle and Alec Marantz 3.1 Structure of paradigms or organization of inflectional classes 55 3.2 Blurring, contrast, and the information content of affixes 56 3.3 Blurring in the Polish nominal declension 60 3.4 Syncretism, impoverishment, and a Distributed Morphology analysis 67 3.5 Inflectional classes and features 71 4 Paradigm generation and Northern Sámi stems 73 Peter Svenonius 4.1 Introduction 73 4.2 The nature of the alternation 78 vi Contents 4.3 The phonological manifestations of Strong and Weak Grade 82 4.4 The nominal paradigm 89 4.5 Derivation 92 4.6 Ï in the verbal paradigms 95 4.7 Conclusion 99 5 Class features as probes 101 Artemis Alexiadou and Gereon Müller 5.1 Introduction 101 5.2 Class features in morphology 102 5.3 Class features in syntax 132 5.4 Proposal 138 5.5 Further issues 143 5.6 Concluding remarks 147 6 On absolute and contextual syncretism: Remarks on the structure of case paradigms and on how to derive them 156 Andrea Calabrese 6.1 Case paradigms: Introduction 156 6.2 Case paradigms 159 6.3 Analysis 170 6.4 A model without restrictions and repairs 195 6.5 Conclusions 202 Appendix: Case features 202 7 Afeature-geometricapproachtoAmharicverbclasses 206 Jochen Trommer 7.1 Introduction 206 7.2 The framework: Minimalist Distributed Morphology 208 7.3 Decomposing verb classes 211 7.4 The feature geometry of verb classes 215 7.5 Class syncretism as impoverishment 227 7.6 Discussion and summary 233 8 Russian genitive plurals are impostors 237 John F. Bailyn and Andrew Nevins 8.1 Markedness and allomorphy within Distributed Morphology 237 8.2 The organization of Russian inflection 242 8.3 The genitive plural conundrum 249 8.4 The proposal 255 Contents vii 8.5 Productivity and the wug test 260 8.6 Apossiblecounterexampletogenderimpoverishment:Paucals 263 8.7 Conclusion 268 9 Inflectional paradigms have bases too: Arguments from Yiddish 271 Adam Albright 9.1 Introduction 271 9.2 Paradigm leveling in Yiddish nouns: Loss of final devoicing 274 9.3 Analysis of the change using inflectional bases 299 9.4 An OP + positional faithfulness account? 305 9.5 Conclusion 307 10 Apseudo-cycliceffect in Romanian morphophonology 313 Donca Steriade 10.1 Introduction 313 10.2 Inflection dependence in Romanian 315 10.3 The analysis 325 10.4 Inflection-dependence and related beyond K-Palatalization 338 10.5 The layered lexicon 345 10.6 Conclusion 355 Language Index 361 Topic Index 363 This page intentionally left blank General Preface The theoretical focus of this series is on the interfaces between subcom- ponents of the human grammatical system and the closely related area of the interfaces between the different subdisciplines of linguistics. The notion of “interface” has become central in grammatical theory (for instance, in Chomsky’s recent Minimalist Program) and in linguistic practice: work on the interfaces between syntax and semantics, syntax and morphology, phonology and phonetics, etc. has led to a deeper understanding of particular linguis- tic phenomena and of the architecture of the linguistic component of the mind/brain. The series covers interfaces between core components of grammar, including syntax/morphology, syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology, syntax/ pragmatics, morphology/phonology, phonology/phonetics, phonetics/speech processing, semantics/pragmatics, intonation/discourse structure as well as issues in the way that the systems of grammar involving these interface areas are acquired and deployed in use (including language acquisition, lan- guage dysfunction, and language processing). It demonstrates, we hope, that proper understandings of particular linguistic phenomena, languages, lan- guage groups, or inter-language variations all require reference to interfaces. The series is open to work by linguists of all theoretical persuasions and schools of thought. A main requirement is that authors should write so as to be understood by colleagues in related subfields of linguistics and by scholars in cognate disciplines. This volume is a counterpart to volume eight of the series (on paradigm uniformity) and focusses on morphology as an interface between syntax and phonology. The thrust of the book is to argue against output-dependent approaches to paradigm structure, and to propose a new understanding which depends on featural organization and the operations on representations. The editors have brought together a cohesive collection of papers arguing that identify effects in inflectional morphology can be understood as the outcome of interactions between learnability heuristics, syntactic feature organization and the associative structure of the lexicon. David Adger Hagit Borer The Contributors ADAM ALBRIGHT received his BA in linguistics from Cornell University in 1996 and his Ph.D. in linguistics from UCLA in 2002.HewasaFacultyFellowatUCSanta Cruz from 2002–2004,andiscurrentlyanAssistantProfessoratMIT.Hisresearch interests include phonology, morphology, and learnability, with an emphasis on using computational modeling to investigate issues in phonological theory. ARTEMIS ALEXIADOU’s research has concentrated on theoretical and comparative syn- tax, with special interest in the interfaces between syntax and morphology and syntax and the lexicon. Her books include Adverb Placement (Benjamins 1997),