Root, Thematic Vowels and Inflectional Exponents in Verbs: A Morpho-Syntactic Analysis

A long-time generative tradition treats the functional domains of the verb and noun as a result of motion and affixing; however, assuming a close correspondence between the order in syntax and morphology, as in the Mirror Principle proposed by Baker seems to be too strong a hypothesis and empiricall...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Languages (Basel) 2022-06, Vol.7 (2), p.104
Main Authors: Savoia, Leonardo Maria, Baldi, Benedetta
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Distributed morphology
inflection
Inflection (Morphology)
Morphological complexity
morphological levelling
Morphology
Morphosyntax
Romance languages
Roots (Morphology)
Semantics
Syntactic analysis
Syntax
thematic vowel
Verbs
Vowels
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Summary:A long-time generative tradition treats the functional domains of the verb and noun as a result of motion and affixing; however, assuming a close correspondence between the order in syntax and morphology, as in the Mirror Principle proposed by Baker seems to be too strong a hypothesis and empirically unsustainable. Distributed Morphology (DM) incorporates this idea by translating it into rules manipulating syntactic nodes. The morphological phenomena we will investigate essentially concerns the thematic vowel (TV) and its interaction with agreement morphology. A complex micro-variation emerges, which provides us with a test bench in order to account for the word-internal morphological organization. We question the idea that morphology is an auxiliary and expensive post-syntactic component, DM, that conveys information separated from its original locus as assumed by Embick and Noyer. On the contrary, we think that a more adequate account is reached assuming that the morphology is governed by the same computational rules as the syntax, where the operation Merge combines fully interpretable sub-word elements forming complex inflected words.
ISSN:2226-471X
2226-471X
DOI:10.3390/languages7020104