Phonological Resolution of Syntactic Feature Conflict

• Published in: Language (Baltimore) 1986-12, Vol.62 (4), p.751-773
• Main Authors: Pullum, Geoffrey K., Zwicky, Arnold M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Coordinate systems; Descriptive studies and applied theories; Grammatical gender; Linguistics; Nouns; Phonology; Syntactic ambiguity; Syntactic theory; Syntactics; Syntax; Verbs; Words
• ISSN: 0097-8507; 1535-0665
• DOI: 10.2307/415171

Agreement and government can give rise to syntactic feature conflicts; e.g., a verb may have to agree in gender with a coördinate NP composed of NP's of differing genders. The resolution of such conflicts is to some extent determined by general semantic or syntactic principles ('principled resolution'). In addition, the existence of a governed or agreeing form that is neutral with respect to the features in question always permits a conflict to be resolved. There is idiolectal variation as to when principled resolution occurs, and also as to which neutral forms appear in the lexicon. But there are also cases (examples are provided from English, Xhosa, and German) in which resolution is permitted on the basis of a purely phonological resemblance; i.e., the fact that the conflicting morphosyntactic requirements lead accidentally to similar phonological consequences is sufficient to prevent the conflict from causing ungrammaticality. Four major claims are made here about the phenomenon of phonological resolution. First, it does not imply that there can be language-particular phonological conditions on syntactic rules; a universal statement is involved. Second, phonological identity cannot compensate for syntactic feature distinctness in general, even in those languages that clearly exemplify phonological resolution; the conflicting items must also differ only in syntactically imposed features. Third, it is not the underlying phonological form of an item that determines whether it can count as phonologically identical to another item in cases of true phonological resolution; these items must be identical at a more superficial level (conjectured to be identical to the 'lexical stratum' of lexical phonology). Fourth, a small sampling of data (from Icelandic and Finnish, as well as the languages already listed) suggests variation with respect to the number of syntactic feature differences that can be surmounted in phonological resolution.