Abstract
AbstractThis article shows how affixal scope and precedence relations fall out in a natural way from properties of the computational system. Using Asymmetry Theory (Di Sciullo 2005), it is proposed that: (i) roots and affixes form minimal trees; (ii) minimal trees compose with each other to form morphological phases; (iii) features of a morphological phase edge that are legible at Phonetic Form (PF) determine affix-root linearization; and (iv) ordering of affixes relative to each other follows the Hierarchy of Homogeneous Projections, which constrains scope relations at Logical Form (LF). Three languages are considered: English (which has prefixing and suffixing), Yekhee (strongly prefixal), and Turkish (strongly suffixal). The findings presented here support a parallel model of grammar: morphological derivations (DM) parallel syntactic derivations (DS), with restricted interactions between them.
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics