Explorations in Nominal Inflection 9783110197501, 9783110182873

Citation preview

Explorations in Nominal Inflection

≥

Interface Explorations 10

Editors

Artemis Alexiadou T. Alan Hall

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Explorations in Nominal Inflection edited by

Gereon Müller Lutz Gunkel Gisela Zifonun

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

ISBN 3-11-018287-4 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at ⬍http://dnb.ddb.de⬎. ” Copyright 2004 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Contents Introduction Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun

1

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure Artemis Alexiadou

21

Inflection Classes and Economy James P. Blevins

51

Left of Number. Animacy and Plurality in German Nouns Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

97

Feature Sharing in DPs Peter Gallmann

121

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

161

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features: Syncretism in Russian Noun Inflection Gereon Müller

189

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking in Noun Phrases: The Tension between Economy and Faithfulness Albert Ortmann

229

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs Wolfgang Sternefeld

269

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German Rolf Thieroff

301

Categories and Paradigms. On Underspecification in Russian Declension Bernd Wiese

321

vi

Contents

Is There Any Need for the Concept of Directional Syncretism? Dieter Wunderlich

373

Index

397

Contributors

405

Introduction Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun* 1.

Nominal Inflection as an Interface Phenomenon

Nominal inflection is a prototypical interface phenomenon. The morphological component of a grammar determines the inventory of nominal inflection markers in a given language (which is further constrained by the phonological component), and the syntactic component regulates their actual distribution. The connection between the inventory and the distribution of nominal inflection markers in inflecting languages is made by morpho-syntactic features which play a role in both components: Case features, gender features, and number features. A straightforward and simple assumption might be that these morpho-syntactic features are in fact identical in the morphological and syntactic components. On this view, the morphological component ensures that, e.g., the nominal inflection marker for a German demonstrative determiner dies (‘this’) bearing the feature specification [+dat,+masc,–pl] would be -em: dies-em.1 The relevant morphological information can be read off the paradigm in table 1. Accordingly, one may then assume that the syntactic component ensures that the form dies-em shows up in positions that bear a specification [+dat,+masc,–pl], as a consequence of, e.g., lexical requirements of an embedding verb and inherent properties of a noun that follows the determiner. Thus, in (1), the verb trauen (‘trust’) requires a dative object NP, and NP* We

would like to thank Darcy Bruce Berry for her meticulous reading of (the main bulk of) the text, and for the numerous comments on both content and style that have significantly improved the quality of the present volume. 1 Following standard practice, [–pl] encodes the singular here; [+pl] stands for plural. Furthermore, the question arises of whether case and gender features should be taken to be binary (cf. [±nom]), as assumed in the text, or should be considered privative (cf. [nom]), or should be reanalyzed as values of multi-valued features (like [case:nom]; see Gazdar et al. (1985)). For the purposes of the present discussion, we can neglect this issue; see Adger (2003, ch. 2) for a recent overview. Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 1-20 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

2

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

Table 1: Determiner inflection in German [–pl] [+pl] z }| { }| { z [+masc] [+neut] [+fem] [+masc] [+neut] [+fem] [+nom] -er -es -e -e -e -e [+acc] -en -es -e -e -e -e [+dat] -em -em -er -en -en -en [+gen] -es -es -er -er -er -er

internal agreement requires the determiner to share not only case, but also gender and number features with the noun ([+masc], [–pl], in the case at hand).2 (1)

CP C dass

VP NP Fritz

V0 NP

V

[+dat,+masc,–pl]

DP

N

[+dat,+masc,–pl]

[+dat,+masc,–pl]

diesem

Mann

traut

‘that Fritznom trusts thisdat mandat .’

2.

Inflection Classes

However, upon closer inspection things turn out not to be that simple. A first complication is the existence of inflection classes in many languages. Despite some claims to the contrary (e.g., in Wunderlich (1996)) it seems likely that case, gender, number, and other independently motivated features do not suffice to correctly predict the shape of a nominal inflection marker for any 2 (1) has

an NP-over-DP (rather than a DP-over-NP) structure and is simplified in a number of respects (e.g., concerning a possible subject position above the VP); but nothing hinges on this in the present context.

Introduction

3

given noun stem in any syntactic context, in languages like Latin, Greek, Polish, or Russian. Consider, e.g., the situation in Russian. Masculine noun stems in Russian can belong to two different inflection classes: to a first inflection class (here called [1]) that has no marker in the nominative singular, and u in the dative singular (compare student-ø, student-u (‘student’)); or to a second inflection class ([2]) that has a in the nominative singular and e in the dative singular (compare mužˇcin-a, mužˇcin-e (‘man’)). Similarly, feminine noun stems (ending in a soft consonant) can belong to two different inflection classes: either to class [2] (compare the nominative and dative forms nedelj-a, nedelj-e (‘week’)), or to a third inflection class ([3]) that has no marker in the nominative singular, and i in the dative singular (and that contains only stems ending in a soft consonant; compare kost’-ø, kost-i (‘bone’)). The relevant morphological paradigms are shown in table 2. 3 Table 2: Noun inflection in Russian [–pl] [+pl] z }| { z }| { class [1] class [2] class [3] class [1] class [2] class [3] [+nom] -Ø -a -Ø -i -i -i [+acc] -Ø/-a -u -Ø -i/-ov(-ej) -i/-Ø -i/-ej [+dat] -u -e -i -am -am -am [+gen] -a -i -i -ov(-ej) -Ø -ej [+inst] -om -oj -ju -ami -ami -ami [+loc] -e -e -i -ax -ax -ax

Thus, we face the following situation. On the one hand, it can hardly be denied that there are certain tendencies correlating gender and inflection class in Russian. For instance, nearly all nouns in class [3] are feminine; all nouns in class [1] are masculine; and the number of non-feminine nouns in class [2] is comparatively small. On the other hand, however, a strict one-to-one correspondence does not hold. Hence, it seems that the postulation of a morphological inflection class feature is unavoidable (see Aronoff (1994), Corbett & Fraser (1993), Fraser & Corbett (1994), Halle (1994)). However, whereas gender is a feature that must play a role in syntax (after all, the gender feature of a given noun stem can only be determined by looking at an agreeing item 3 The

paradigms are presented here in a simplified form that ignores many complications. In particular, neuters are missing; furthermore, most morpho-phonological variation and the effects of systematic phonological rules are ignored.

4

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

in its syntactic context), this does not seem to hold for inflection class in any obvious way: There are no syntactic operations (like agreement, government, etc.) that refer to inflection classes. 4,5 Incidentally, the same kind of problem shows up in a language like German, whose inventory of noun inflection markers is otherwise much poorer than that of Russian. Table 3 gives an overview of the inflection classes that must be assumed for nouns in German. 6 Table 3: Noun inflection in German [1]m,n [2]m [3]n,m [+nom,–pl] -Ø -Ø -Ø [+acc,–pl] -Ø -Ø -Ø [+dat,–pl] -Ø -Ø -Ø [+gen,–pl] -(e)s -(e)s -(e)s [+nom,+pl] -(e) -”(e) -”er [+acc,+pl] -(e) -”(e) -”er [+dat,+pl] -(e)n -”(e)n -”ern [+gen,+pl] -(e) -”(e) -”er

[4]m,n -Ø -Ø -Ø -(e)s -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n

[5]m -Ø -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n

[6] f -Ø -Ø -Ø -Ø -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n -(e)n

[7] f -Ø -Ø -Ø -Ø -”(e) -”(e) -”(e)n -”(e)

[8] f -Ø -Ø -Ø -Ø -(e) -(e) -(e)n -(e)

As indicated by the indices m(asc), f(em), and n(eut) in table 3, gender information does not suffice to predict the inflection class of noun stems in German. Most of the variation concerns the choice of the correct plural marker. However, even if one confines attention to the highly impoverished system 4 This holds true almost by definition; if inflection clases were visible in syntax, they would

have the status of genders. However, see Bernstein (1993) for a different view according to which inflection class does play a role in syntax after all, in the realm of head movement. 5 At first sight, one might assume that a similar problem arises with a feature [±animate], which is crucial for the correct determination of accusative forms of members of inflection class [1] of Russian nouns, and of accusative forms of plural nouns in general. (The generalization is that [+animate] singular noun stems of class [1] and all [+animate] nouns stems in the plural use the genitive marker in accusative contexts, whereas the respective [–animate] noun stems use the nominative marker in accusative contexts.) However, in this case one can plausibly argue that a feature [±animate] also plays a role in syntax – e.g., for the determination of unmarked word order. 6 Parts of a marker that have been put in brackets (like “(e)”) remain without overt realization in certain contexts, as a consequence of fully predictable morpho-phonological variation. A marker accompanied by the diacritic ” triggers obligatory umlaut of a ([+back]) stem vowel. Note that the table is still somewhat incomplete; for instance, the plural marker -s that is standardly attached to loan-words and proper names (plus stems ending in a non-schwa vowel) is missing throughout.

Introduction

5

in the singular, inflection class membership cannot be predicted from gender information of a noun stem. Whereas all feminine stems remain without an inflection marker in the singular, and all neuter stems take an -s in the genitive and no marker otherwise (at least not in modern Standard German; see below), things are slightly more complex for masculine stems: There is a distinction between “strong” and “weak” masculine noun inflection; compare Mann-es (‘man’, genitive singular), which belongs to one of the strong classes (viz., [3]) in table 3 and thus takes a genitive marker -s, with Dirigenten (‘conductor’, genitive singular), which belongs to the “weak” class [5] and takes an -(e)n in genitive contexts (as well as in all other non-nominative cases). Again, there are tendencies that correlate the choice of inflection marker with independently given features (as concerns the case currently under consideration, weak masculines tend to be [+animate]). However, these correlations are not strict (for instance, strong masculines can be either [+animate] or [–animate], and weak masculines can in principle be [–animate] as well, as in Planet-en (‘planet’, genitive singular)). Consequently, even if one considers only the reduced system of noun inflection markers in the singular, it is hard to deny the existence of two separate, non-predictable inflection classes for masculines in German noun inflection. 7 In sum, irreducible inflection class features appear to be unavoidable in morphology, which gives rise to systematic mismatches between morphology and syntax with regard to the inventory of features employed in the two components. 3.

Syncretism and Underspecification

A second potential problem for a simple view of the role of nominal inflection between morphology and syntax (according to which the morpho-syntactic features relevant in the two components are identical) is more theory-internal: It arises under a well-motivated approach to instances of syncretism in inflection marker paradigms that relies on a decomposition of morpho-syntactic case, gender, and number features into more primitive features. Consider, e.g., the following example: By cross-classifying standard case, gender, and number features, we end up with twenty-four different combinations that make up the paradigm for determiner inflection in German; see table 1. However, 7 Unless one is willing to introduce a fourth gender, that is; see Eisenberg (2000). Also see Wurzel (1998), Cahill & Gazdar (1999), Blevins (2000), Wiese (2000) for comprehensive treatments of the system of noun inflection classes in German.

6

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

closer inspection reveals that there are only five different forms: -e, -er, -en, -es, and -em. Thus, there is massive syncretism. 8 While there is disagreement as to the extent to which this syncretism is systematic, and to what extent it is accidental, it is widely believed that at least some cases of inflection marker homonymy in the determiner paradigm have a common basis, and should be treated uniformly. For instance, there is a single inflection marker for [+dat,+masc,–pl] and [+dat,+neut,–pl] contexts, viz., -em; this marker differs from the markers in all other paradigm cells in table 1. Given the restricted distribution of the marker, and the similarity of the contexts in which it shows up, it seems extremely unlikely that this is an accident. And indeed, all existing theoretical analyses of German determiner inflection that we are aware of strive to capture this instance of syncretism. A straightforward way to do this is to postulate a common source for multiple occurrences of inflection markers in different paradigm cells. Such a “common source” can be identified by means of the concept of natural class: [+dat,+masc,–pl] and [+dat,+neut,–pl] contexts differ only in the gender information, and the -em syncretism (plus, ultimately, several other phenomena) can then be taken to show that masculine and neuter gender have some property in common that sets them apart from feminine gender; i.e., masculine and neuter form a natural class. Natural classes of grammatical categories (like gender or case) can be formally captured by decomposing the standard categories into combinations of more primitive features. Thus, for the case at hand, we might want to dispense with a primitive [+neut] feature altogether, and rather assume that the combination of [±masc] and [±fem] gives rise to the three genders in German: [+masc,–fem] captures masculine gender; [–masc,+fem] describes feminine gender; and [–masc,–fem] represents neuter gender, thereby corresponding to the word’s etymology (the fourth a priori possible combination [+masc,+fem] would then remain unused). Crucially, we can now say that the marker -em in the system of determiner inflection in German is not characterized by reference to fully specified morpho-syntactic features like [+dat,+masc,–fem,–pl] and [+dat,–masc,–fem,–pl]; rather, it is characterized only by the feature set [+dat,–fem,–pl]. Thus, there is an underspecification with respect to gender 8 At

least for the purposes of this introduction, the notion of syncretism can be understood in a broad sense, as homonymy of inflection markers in some grammatical domain.

Introduction

7

features, and this underspecification makes it possible to systematically account for the syncretism with -em in table 1. 9 The same point can be made for case features. As an example, consider again the system of determiner inflection in German in table 1. It is difficult to imagine that the -es markers used for both nominative and accusative in neuter contexts are unrelated; and the same goes for the -e markers used for both nominative and accusative in feminine (and plural; see the last footnote) contexts. Similarly, -er markers are used for both dative and genitive in the feminine determiner declension; and again, this does not look accidental. To systematically account for such kinds of syncretism spanning different cases in Slavic, it has been proposed by Jakobson (1962) that case features should be decomposed into combinations of primitive features that are somewhat more abstract. Taking this tradition initiated by Jakobson as a point of departure, a decomposition of case features in German has then been proposed by Bierwisch (1967) and, following him, Blevins (1995), Wunderlich (1997), and Wiese (1999). According to these analyses, standard case features like [+nom], [+acc], [+dat], and [+gen] are decomposed into the more primitive features [±gov(erned)], [±obl(ique)]. A cross-classification of these two binary features yields the four cases: Nominative is encoded by the feature specification [–gov,–obl], accusative by [+gov,–obl], dative by [+gov,+obl], and genitive by [–gov,+obl]. Thus, nominative and accusative on the one hand, and dative and genitive on the other, form natural classes – the nonoblique ([–obl]) vs. oblique ([+obl]) cases. An inflection marker can then bear underspecified (rather than full) case information that refers to a natural class of cases (rather than to a single case). For instance, the inflection marker -er that shows up in the dative and genitive of feminine (singular) 9 In principle, underspecification with respect to gender features can also derive the systematic absence of gender distinctions in the plural. However, since gender distinctions are neutralized in general in the plural in German (i.e., in other domains as well, so that there is no such thing as gender agreement in the plural), it is not clear whether such an assumption would ultimately prove necessary. Note also that Wiese (1999) sets up a system of primitive features [±standard], [±special] which avoids the surplus specification arising under the proposal in the text ([+masc,+fem]): The cross-classification of these two binary features yields the three genders plus an additional plural category. By thus treating plural on a par with gender, it becomes possible in principle to refer to feminine and plural as a natural class; this does not seem a priori implausible in view of the instances of syncretism with -e (in the nominative and accusative) and -er (in the genitive) that affect feminine and plural in the system of determiner inflection in German; see table 1.

8

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

contexts may now be assumed to be characterized by the feature specification [+obl,–masc,+fem,–pl]; similarly, the inflection marker -es that shows up in the nominative and accusative of neuter (singular) contexts can be characterized by underspecified case information: [–obl,–masc,–fem,–pl]. We take it that an underspecification approach to syncretism can be viewed as a well-established and interesting research program. 10 However, it raises questions concerning the interface of morphology and syntax. As a result of underspecification and feature decomposition, many word forms may now initially end up with impoverished feature specifications – involving, say, [+obl] instead of [+gov,+obl] (dative) or [–gov,+obl] (genitive); or [–fem] instead of [+masc,–fem] (masculine) or [–masc,–fem] (neuter); or, indeed, the empty specification [ ]. If morphology and syntax do not necessarily employ identical feature specifications, a first task is to guarantee that the morphological specification is compatible with the syntactic specification. A standard means to achieve this is to adopt a constraint that requires the morpho-syntactic feature specification in morphology (i.e., of the inflection marker or the inflected word form, depending on specifics of the analysis) to be a subset of the morpho-syntactic features provided by the syntactic context that the inflected word form (hence, the marker) shows up in; see Halle (1997), among many others. A second, arguably less straightforward task arising with underspecifi10 We hasten to add that this this should not be taken to imply that other approaches to syncretism are inherently inferior. An interesting alternative research tradition derives cases of syncretism by invoking the notion of paradigm geometry, where concepts like adjacency and distance of paradigm cells play a crucial role. See Johnston (1997), McCreight & Chvany (1991), and Postma (1994), among others; and for an integrated approach that combines underspecification and paradigm geometry, Gallmann (this volume). A second important alternative research strategy accounts for instances of syncretism by relying on rules of referral; these rules basically state that the inflection marker for some morpho-syntactic feature specification is identical to the inflection marker determined for some other feature specification. See Zwicky (1985) for the original concept, and Corbett & Fraser (1993) and Stump (2001) for slightly different implementations. Again, an underspecification approach is by no means inherently incompatible with the simultaneous adoption of referral rules; but an informal overview suggests that there is a tendency to primarily focus on one of the two concepts in actual analyses. Finally, a third principled approach to syncretism relies on syntactic impoverishment operations that manipulate (typically, simplify) syntactic feature specifications for the purposes of morphology (see Bonet (1991), Halle & Marantz (1993), Noyer (1997; 1998), Bobaljik (2002), and Frampton (2002), among others). This kind of approach is usually complemented by a simultaneous adoption of underspecification.

Introduction

9

cation is to ensure that syntax does not have access to the underspecified morpho-syntactic feature specifications that are motivated by morphological considerations but are of no use syntactically: Thus, verbs do not select NPs marked [+obl]; rather, they select NPs bearing, e.g., dative case. Adjectives do not agree with [–fem] (i.e., masculine or neuter) nouns; rather, they agree with, e.g., masculine nouns. However, it is a priori not clear why only fully specified features specifications seem to be available for syntactic operations, and underspecified information resulting from decomposition cannot be seen; and the question arises how these mismatches between morphology and syntax can or must be resolved. That said, closer scrutiny might reveal the existence of phenomena that do suggest an availability of underspecified morpho-syntactic information in syntax after all. Potential candidates are free relative clauses, across-theboard dependencies, and parasitic gaps in languages like Russian, Polish, and German (see Groos & van Riemsdijk (1981), Bayer (1988), McCreight (1988), and Franks (1995)). These constructions exhibit matching effects that seem to be sensitive to a morphological (rather than syntactic) notion of case, which might be amenable to an analysis in which underspecified case information is available in syntax. Evidence from parsing might point in the same direction: Instances of syncretism act as the source of local ambiguities in parsing (see, e.g., Fanselow & Frisch (2004)); and parsing effects triggered by local ambiguities might offer clues as to whether morphological underspecification is or is not visible in syntax. 4.

Morphology-Syntax Interactions

In addition to the question of how morpho-syntactic features can link morphology and syntax in nominal inflection, the question arises whether one component can directly be held responsible for properties of the other. It seems that a case can be made that there is an influence in both directions. On the one hand, it has been argued that the system of nominal inflection markers as determined by the morphology can have a direct impact on the syntax, e.g., in permitting syntactic operations that would otherwise not be available (cf., e.g., the idea that head movement takes place only in the presence of a sufficiently rich morphological paradigm); see Bernstein (2001) and Longobardi (2001) for overviews. Similarly, it has been proposed that there is a direct correlation between features that must be assumed in morphology to account

10

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

for the inventory of inflection markers and the presence of an appropriate functional head in the syntax (see Alexiadou (this volume) for overview and discussion). On the other hand, properties of the paradigm of strong adjective inflection in German, and the very existence of the so-called “mixed” adjective paradigm, directly argue for the influence of the syntactic context on the shape of morphological inflection markers (see Eisenberg (1999)). Furthermore, as Gallmann (1998) has observed, there are cases in German where an a priori expected nominal inflection marker must disappear in a specific syntactic context (viz., when there is no preceding NP-internal item that bears an overt inflection marker). Compare, e.g., (2-a) with (2-b), and (3-a) with (3-b). 11 (2) a. b. (3) a. b.

ohne Dirigent-Ø/*-en without conductoracc ohne dies-en Dirigent*-Ø/-en without thisacc conductoracc aus Holz-ø/*-e of wooddat aus dies-em Holz-Ø/-e of thisdat wooddat

At least at first sight, this phenomenon of case-marker drop would seem like a clear case of syntax determining morphological shape (but see Thieroff (2000; this volume), Sternefeld (this volume) for critical discussion). Comparable phenomena in the domain of number marking in a variety of languages which illustrate how syntax may determine morphological realization are addressed by Ortmann (this volume). 11 The judgements are Gallmann’s; they are somewhat subtle. As noted above, Dirigent (‘conductor’) is a weak masculine noun belonging to inflection class [5] in table 3; the ending one might expect in (2-a) is -en rather than -Ø, on a par with what can be seen in (2-b). The situation in (3) is slightly more involved: Holz (‘wood’) is a neuter noun belonging to inflection class [3] in table 3. The dative marker -e is archaic, and in any event optional, which is why it does not show up in table 3. However, the crucial point is that it may occur only in certain syntactic contexts, viz., when there is an immediately preceding agreeing item that bears a (non-null) inflection marker.

Introduction

5.

11

Theories of Inflection

Various theories of inflection have been proposed whose validity can be checked against the type of questions in the domain of nominal inflection that have just been mentioned. Following Stump (2001), we can distinguish between four general types of approach, which can be characterized by two pairs of notions. First, incremental theories postulate that inflection markers add information (features) to a stem that was not there before; in contrast, it is assumed in realizational theories that inflection markers do not add information – they simply realize information that is already present. Second, in lexical theories, inflection markers are always correlated with (perhaps abstract) morphemes that exist independently in the lexicon; in contrast, inferential theories do not posit a specific lexial entry for inflection markers. Theories like the lexical approach in Lieber (1992) or Wunderlich’s (1996; 1997) Minimalist Morphology belong to the class of lexical-incremental approaches. On this view, a Russian noun like student-u with a morphosyntactic feature specification like [+dat,+masc,–pl] (abstracting away again from a possible finer-grained specification resulting from feature decomposition), or a German demonstrative determiner like dies-em with a feature specification like [+dat,+masc,–pl] would consist of two morphemes each. On the one hand, there are the stems: student ([+N,+masc,class[1])] and dies ([+D]). On the other hand, there are the inflection markers -u ([+dat,+masc,–pl,class[1]) and -em ([+dat,+masc,–pl]), respectively. Distributed Morphology (see Halle & Marantz (1993), Halle (1994; 1997), and Harley & Noyer (1999) for an overview) is lexical-realizational. In this approach, the inflection markers -u, -em in the examples just given are not assumed to be morphemes that are stored in the lexicon; rather, they are realizations (more precisely, post-syntactic spell-outs) of an abstract Q-morpheme (or, in more recent versions of Distributed Morphology, f-morpheme) that bears the relevant morpho-syntactic features. It seems that theories of the inferential-incremental type have rarely been pursued; but theories of the inferential-realizational type include most of what has been done in word and paradigm approaches (see Matthews (1991), Anderson (1992), Corbett & Fraser (1993), Aronoff (1994), Stump (2001), and literature cited in these works). Under an inferential-realizational approach, nominal inflection markers like -u and -em in the above examples would neither be morphemes in their own right, nor would they function as

12

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

realizations of morphemes. Rather, rules of the morphological component simply predict the word forms studentu, diesem for the stems student, dies if the latter items carry the appropriate morpho-syntactic feature specifications. These various kinds of morphological approaches to inflection marking clearly make different predictions for the way in which the interaction with the syntactic component can take place. Lexical-incremental approaches at least open up the possibility that the inflection marker occupies a separate head position in syntax where it is in principle accessible for syntactic rules (like the operations Move or Agree in the Minimalist Program; see Chomsky (2001)), and from where it can project its morpho-syntactic features. The lexical-realizational theory of Distributed Morphology crucially assumes (abstract) inflection markers to be syntactic heads (with spell-out operations applying after syntax). In contrast, there is no way that an inflection marker could be syntactically active in inferential-realizational approaches. Similarly, there is an important difference with respect to the classic issue of whether inflectional morphology should be allowed to recognize the concept of null morphemes or null endings: There does not seem to be a possibility to do without null morphemes in lexical-incremental and lexical-realizational approaches (even though the kinds of null morphemes that must be assumed may be different). However, whereas they have no recourse to the concept of null morpheme, inferential-realizational approaches are free to either postulate or deny the existence of null endings. (Still, there seems to be a clear preference for the latter strategy.) These differences notwithstanding, it is worth noting that the various approaches also converge on a number of fundamental issues. A particularly conspicuous instance of convergence is the assumption that the concept of competition plays a role in inflectional morphology. Essentially, this is due to the fact that most approaches to nominal inflection rely on underspecification of inflection marker specifications to at least some extent, which almost invariably leads to theoretical indeterminacies that are not well supported by the empirical evidence. Thus, underspecification brings with it the problem that more than one inflection marker would often be compatible with a given morpho-syntactic feature specification. However, in the vast majority of cases, only one inflection marker is eventually appropriate for any given specification. In order to solve conflicts of this type, recourse is made to extrinsic ordering in analyses like those of Bierwisch (1967), Wurzel (1984; 1998), and

Introduction

13

Halle (1994). Alternatively, it has often been suggested that the notion of specificity plays a role (see, e.g., Kiparsky (1973), Lumsden (1992), Halle (1997), Noyer (1997), Wiese (1999), and Gunkel (2003)): In the case of conflict, the most specific inflection marker is chosen. According to a simple understanding of the notion, an inflection marker is more specific than another one if it is characterized by more morpho-syntactic features. Thus, if, e.g., dies-e, dies-er, dies-es, and dies-em would all be a priori possible forms for a [+dat,+masc,–pl] specification (as, e.g., they are in Blevins’ (1995) approach), dies-em is preferred over the other options because it is the most specific form (characterized by the features [+dat,–fem,+obl], as opposed to, say, dies-e, which is specified as [ ] in Blevins’ analysis, or dies-er, which is specified as [+obl] only). In some cases, though, the simplest concept of specificity may not suffice to unambiguously predict the sole grammatical form because the two forms in question are characterized by the same number of morpho-syntactic features. In cases like these, an additional resort to feature hierarchies may be called for, as it has been proposed by Lumsden (1992), Noyer (1997), and Zifonun (2003), among others. With the advent of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky (1993)), a framework exists that has in fact been designed to handle instances of competition among various forms. Optimality Theory is more flexible and powerful (hence, less restrictive) than other approaches that also incorporate a notion of competition. Consequently, analyses that rely on extrinsic ordering, specificity, or feature hierarchies can all be translated into an optimality-theoretic framework without much ado. Of course, the question arises as to whether an optimality-theoretic approach to nominal inflection can be more than merely a translation of existing approaches, and is justifiable on its own grounds (see, e.g., Müller (2001) for an analysis of German determiner inflection, and Stiebels (2002), Wunderlich (2003) for more comprehensive studies that attempt to show that this might be the case). 6.

Paradigms

A final important issue to be mentioned here concerns the status of inflectional paradigms. There are two basic possibilities. First, inflectional paradigms exist as genuine grammatical objects. Second, inflectional paradigms do not exist; they are epiphenomena, and their only relevant status is that of generalizations that need to be derived. The first view is

14

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

adopted in word and paradigm approaches, in Minimalist Morphology (where a paradigm is conceived of as a “multi-dimensional, potentially recursive matrix whose dimensions are defined by the morphological features of word forms”; Wunderlich (1996, 96)), and elsewhere; it also seems to be predominant in Optimality Theory (see McCarthy (2001)). Arguments for this view can be gained if one can show that certain constraints can only be formulated for paradigms, fully specified or underspecified (not for smaller units like morphemes or word forms), or that there are general properties or patterns that hold only of paradigms (and cannot be stated for smaller units). Arguments to this effect can be found in Carstairs(-McCarthy) (1987; 1991; 1994) (cf. in particular his Paradigm Economy and No Blur Principles), Wurzel (1987), Plank (1991) (and other contributions in the same volume), Williams (1994), Wiese (1999), McCarthy (2001), Blevins (this volume), and elsewhere. However, if arguments of this type can be shown to be spurious, there is no reason to maintain paradigms as genuine grammatical entities, and considerations of theoretical parsimony may then suggest dispensing with the concept in toto. Such an attempt is made by Bobaljik (2002), who shows that a meta-constraint on paradigms proposed by Williams (1994) (what he calls the “Instantiated Basic Paradigm Requirement”) is falsified by evidence from noun inflection in Russian. Furthermore, it is worth noting that paradigms cannot have any theoretical status whatsoever in certain approaches because of the architecture of the framework; most notably, this holds for Distributed Morphology. 7.

The Contributions

The contributions to this volume tackle questions of the type illustrated above from different points of view. Most of the articles collected here are based on talks given at the workshop “Feature Distribution in the Noun Phrase” (“Merkmalsverteilung in der NP”) that was part of the 24th annual DGfS conference in Mannheim (February 27–March 1, 2002), or at the workshop “Inflectional Paradigms: Primitives and Structures” at IDS Mannheim (May 23–24, 2003). The contributions cover many typologically diverse languages (see the entry “languages” in the index). Still, it turns out that there is a certain bias towards Russian (which figures prominently in the papers by Blevins, Müller, Wiese, and Wunderlich) and German (which the papers by Eisenberg

Introduction

15

& Sayatz, Gallmann, Karnowski & Pafel, Sternefeld, and Thieroff are mainly concerned with); and this bias is, to some extent, mirrored in this introduction. Given the interface nature of nominal inflection, it does not come as a surprise that some of the contributions focus more on the syntactic component, and some more on the morphological component. Among the former are the papers by Alexiadou, Karnowski & Pafel, Ortmann, Sternefeld, and Thieroff; among the latter, the papers by Blevins, Eisenberg & Sayatz, Gallmann, Müller, Wiese, and Wunderlich. However, attention is paid to both components throughout; syntactic analyses are developed with an eye on morphology, and vice versa. Major morpho-syntactic features that play a role in nominal inflection are (i) case, (ii) gender, (iii) inflection class, and (iv) number. Since many of the languages under consideration in this book are fusional in the sense that they involve portmanteau markers that encode several morpho-syntactic features in one form, all four feature types are addressed in most of the contributions. Still, there are differences in focus. For instance, gender features play a special role in the papers by Alexiadou, Thieroff, Wiese, and Wunderlich; inflection classes in the papers by Alexiadou, Blevins, Müller, and Wiese; case features in the papers by Gallmann, Sternefeld, and Wunderlich; and number features in the papers by Eisenberg & Sayatz and Ortmann. In several of the papers, the focus is extended from the inflectional domain proper to the stem: Alexiadou, Blevins, Wiese, and Wunderlich are all concerned with issues relating to both the forms of inflection markers and the forms of stems, which includes phenomena like stem alternation and theme vowel distribution; and Eisenberg & Sayatz make a case for a non-categorical transition from number marking to derivational morphology. Finally, we consider it an attractive feature of the present volume that many of the theoretical approaches mentioned above are adopted or discussed here. This holds, for instance, for word and paradigm models (Blevins, Wiese); Distributed Morphology (Alexiadou, Müller); Optimality Theory (Gallmann, Ortmann, Wunderlich); the Minimalist Program (Alexiadou, Müller, Sternefeld); lexical approaches (Alexiadou, Müller, Sternefeld, Wunderlich), inferential approaches (Blevins, Thieroff, Wiese), and even what may be classified as mixed lexical/inferential approaches (Karnowski & Pafel). It follows from these considerations that the articles collected in the present volume can be grouped in various ways – according to language

16

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

(-type); according to the grammatical component that dominates the perspective (morphology vs. syntax); according to the empirical domain or phenomenon in focus (e.g., case vs. gender/class vs. number); according to the theoretical framework chosen; etc. In view of this, we deemed it best to settle for an alphabetical order. *** Before his death, Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel (1940-2001) had agreed to participate in the DGfS workshop on feature distribution in NPs. This volume is dedicated to his memory. References Adger, David 2003 Core Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Stephen 1992 A-Morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aronoff, Mark 1994 Morphology by Itself. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Bayer, Josef 1988 Fortschritte der Syntaxtheorie. Linguistische Berichte 117, 410-426. Bernstein, Judy 1993 Topics in the Syntax of Nominal Structure across Romance. Dissertation, CUNY. 2001 The DP Hypothesis: Identifying Clausal Properties in the Nominal Domain. In Mark Baltin & Chris Collins (eds.), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, 536-561. Oxford: Blackwell. Bierwisch, Manfred 1967 Syntactic Features in Morphology. In To Honour Roman Jakobson, 239-270. Mouton: The Hague/Paris. Blevins, James 1995 Syncretism and Paradigmatic Opposition. Linguistics and Philosophy 18, 113152. 2000 Markedness and Blocking in German Declensional Paradigms. In Barbara Stiebels & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), Lexicon in Focus, 83-103. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Bobaljik, Jonathan 2002 Syncretism without Paradigms: Remarks on Williams 1981, 1994. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2001, 53-85. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Bonet, Eulalia 1991 Morphology after Syntax. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.

Introduction

17

Cahill, Lynne, & Gerald Gazdar 1999 German Noun Inflection. Journal of Linguistics 35, 1-42. Carstairs, Andrew 1987 Allomorphy in Inflection. London: Croom Helm. Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew 1994 Inflection Classes, Gender, and the Principle of Contrast. Language 70, 737787. 1998 Paradigm Structure: Inflectional Paradigms and Morphological Classes. In Andrew Spencer & Arnold Zwicky (eds.), Handbook of Morphology, 322334. Oxford: Blackwell. Chomsky, Noam 2001 Derivation by Phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale. A Life in Language, 1-52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Corbett, Greville, & Norman Fraser 1993 Network Morphology: A DATR Account of Russian Nominal Inflection. Journal of Linguistics 29, 113-142. Eisenberg, Peter 1999 Grundriß der deutschen Grammatik. Band 2: Der Satz. Stuttgart & Weimar: Metzler. 2000 Das vierte Genus? In Andreas Bittner, Dagmar Bittner, & Klaus Michael Köpcke (eds.), Angemessene Strukturen, 91-105. Zürich & New York: Olms. Fanselow, Gisbert, & Stefan Frisch 2004 Effects of Processing Difficulty on Judgments of Acceptability. Ms., Universität Potsdam. Frampton, John 2002 Syncretism, Impoverishment, and the Structure of Person Features. Ms., Northeastern University. To appear in Papers from the 2002 Chicago Linguistics Society Meeting. Franks, Steven 1995 Parameters of Slavic Morphosyntax. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, Norman, & Greville Corbett 1994 Gender, Animacy, and Declensional Class Assignment: A Unified Account for Russian. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1994, 123-150. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Gazdar, Gerald, Ewan Klein, Geoffrey Pullum, & Ivan Sag 1985 Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Gallmann, Peter 1998 Case Underspecification in Morphology, Syntax and the Lexicon. In Artemis Alexiadou & Chris Wilder (eds.), Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, 141-175. Amsterdam: Benjamnis. Groos, Anneke, & Henk van Riemsdijk 1981 Matching Effects in Free Relatives. In Adriana Belletti, Luciana Brandi, & Luigi Rizzi (eds.), Theory of Markedness in Generative Grammar, 171-216. Pisa: Suola Normale Superiore.

18

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

Gunkel, Lutz 2003

Syncretism and Case Underspecification in Polish Noun Paradigms. In Piotr Banski & Adam Przepiórkowski (eds.), Generative Linguistics in Poland: Morphosyntactic Investigations. (Proceedings of the GLiP-5 Conference held in Warsaw, Poland, 30 November – 1 December 2002), 47-62. Warsaw: Inst. Podstaw Informatyki PAN. Halle, Morris, & Alec Marantz 1993 Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection. In Ken Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20, 111-176. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Halle, Morris 1994 The Russian Declension: An Illustration of the Theory of Distributed Morphology. In Jennifer Cole and Charles Kisseberth (eds.), Perspectives in Phonology, 29-60. Stanford: CSLI Publications. 1997 Distributed Morphology: Impoverishment and Fission. In Benjamin Bruening, Yoonjung Kang, & Martha McGinnis (eds.), Papers at the Interface, 425-449. MIT, Cambridge, Mass.: MITWPL, vol. 30. Harley, Heidi, & Rolf Noyer 1999 Distributed Morphology. GLOT International 4/4, 3-9. Jakobson, Roman 1962 Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre. Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus. In Selected Writings. Vol. 2, 23-71. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Kiparsky, Paul 1973 “Elsewhere” in Phonology. In Steven Anderson & Paul Kiparsky (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 93-106. New York: Academic Press. Johnston, Jason 1997 Systematic Homonymy and the Structure of Morphological Categories: Some Lessons from Paradigm Geometry. Doctoral dissertation, University of Sydney. Lieber, Rochelle 1992 Deconstructing Morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Longobardi, Giuseppe 2001 The Structure of DPs: Some Principles, Parameters, and Problems. In Mark Baltin & Chris Collins (eds.), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, 562-603. Oxford: Blackwell. Lumsden, John 1992 Underspecification in Grammatical and Natural Gender, Linguistic Inquiry 23, 469-486. McCarthy, John 2001 Optimal Paradigms. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. McCreight, Katherine 1988 Multiple Case Assignments. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. McCreight, Katherine & Catherine Chvany 1991 Geometric Representation of Paradigms in a Modular Theory of Grammar. In Frans Plank (ed.), Paradigms, 91-111. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Introduction

19

Matthews, Peter 1991 Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Müller, Gereon 2001 Remarks on Nominal Inflection in German. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebels (eds.), More than Words: A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 113145. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Noyer, Rolf 1997 Features, Positions and Affixes in Autonomous Morphological Structure. New York: Garland Publishing. 1998 Impoverishment Theory and Morphosyntactic Markedness. In Steve Lapointe, Diane Brentari, & Patrick Farrell (eds.), Morphology and its Relation to Phonology and Syntax, 264-285. Palo Alto: CSLI. Plank, Frans 1991 Of Abundance and Scantiness in Inflection: A Typological Prelude. In Frans Plank (ed.), Paradigms, 1-39. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Postma, Gertjan 1994 Agreement, Anti-Agreement, and the Structure of the Verbal Paradigm. In Zwart, Jan-Wouter (ed.), Minimalism and Kayne’s Asymmetry Hypothesis, 169-194. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen: Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik (GAGL), vol. 37. Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky 1993 Optimality Theory. Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Ms., Rutgers University. Erscheint: Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Stiebels, Barbara 2002 Typologie des Argumentlinkings: Ökonomie und Expressivität. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Stump, Gregory 2001 Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thieroff, Rolf 2000 Morphosyntax nominaler Einheiten im Deutschen. Habilitation thesis, Universität Bonn. Wiese, Bernd 1999 Unterspezifizierte Paradigmen. Form und Funktion in der pronominalen Deklination. Linguistik Online 4, 3/99. 2000 Warum Flexionsklassen? Über die deutsche Substantivdeklination. In Rolf Thieroff, Matthias Tamrat, Nanna Fuhrhop & Oliver Teuber (eds.), Deutsche Grammatik in Theorie und Praxis, 139-153. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Williams, Edwin 1994 Remarks on Lexical Knowledge. Lingua 92, 7-34. Wunderlich, Dieter 1996 Minimalist Morphology: The Role of Paradigms. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1995, 93-114. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 1997 Der unterspezifizierte Artikel. In Christa Dürscheid, Karl Heinz Ramers & Monika Schwarz (eds.), Sprache im Fokus, 47-55. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

20 2003

Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel & Gisela Zifonun

Optimal Case Patterns: German and Icelandic Compared. In Ellen Brandner & Heike Zinsmeister (eds.), New Perspectives on Case Theory, 331-367. Stanford: CSLI. Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich 1984 Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin: Akademieverlag. 1998 Drei Ebenen der Struktur von Flexionsparadigmen. In Ray Fabri, Albert Ortmann & Teresa Parodi (eds.), Models of Inflection. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Zifonun, Gisela 2003 Aspekte deutscher Reflexivkonstruktionen im europäischen Vergleich: Pronominale Paradigmen und NP-interne Reflexiva. In Lutz Gunkel, Gereon Müller & Gisela Zifonun (eds.), Arbeiten zur Reflexivierung, 267-300. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Zwicky, Arnold 1985 How to Describe Inflection. In M. Niepokuj, M. V. Clay, V. Nikiforidou & D. Feder (eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 372-386. BLS, Berkeley, University of California.

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure Artemis Alexiadou* 1.

Overview

In this paper I discuss (a) the relation between nominal features such as gender and inflectional class, and (b) the question of whether these project a functional projection in the extended projection of the noun or not. In the recent literature phenomena such as noun movement and noun ellipsis have been taken as evidence suggesting that gender as well as class features are syntactically active. I show that this is not the case. Class features constitute inherent properties of noun stems. On the other hand, nouns do not necessarily carry inherent gender specification. In several occasions such specification is assigned to nouns via morphological rules. This choice is available not only across languages, but also within a language. I further demonstrate that while both gender and class features are not relevant for the syntactic computational system, gender, unlike class, is relevant for the purposes of agreement, in the sense of concord. 2.

Grammatical Features and Functional Categories in the Noun Phrase

Traditionally noun phrases were taken to be the maximal projections of nouns, as depicted in (1) (see Jackendoff (1977) among others): * For

helpful comments and discussion, I would like to thank David Embick, Gereon Müller, Melita Stavrou, Gisela Zifonun, and the participants of the DGfS Workshop on “Merkmalsverteilung in der Nominalphrase”. The DFG grant AL 554/1-1 is hereby acknowledged for partially supporting my research. Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 21-49 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

22

Artemis Alexiadou

(1)

NP Determiner

N0 N

The extension of the X-bar schema to the sentential functional elements (Chomsky (1986)) and increasing work on head movement have led researchers to elaborate a more articulated syntactic representation for the noun phrase. Arguing that the nominal functional material should fit into the X-bar schema, Abney (1987), Fukui & Speas (1986), Horrocks & Stavrou (1987), and Szabolcsi (1983) among others hypothesized that noun phrases, like clauses, are headed by a functional element. This functional head was labeled Art by Horrocks and Stavrou (1987) and D by Abney (1987), who proposed that noun phrases are the maximal projections of Art/D, the base position of articles. In particular Abney proposes that in the same way the noun phrase should be seen as a projection of N dominated by a functional projection, as shown in (2): (2)

DP D0 D

NP

Subsequent studies of mainly Semitic and Romance languages have suggested that the structure of noun phrases is indeed more articulated and includes additional inflectional structure between DP and NP (see, e.g., Ritter (1991), Valois (1991), Cinque (1993), Bernstein (1993), Fassi-Fehri (1993) among many others). In particular, Ritter (1991) provides evidence for the existence of a different type of functional projection between D and N in Hebrew. The projection is labeled Number Phrase and is taken to be the locus of plural affixes (3). According to Ritter, the affixation of plural marking on nouns is similar to the affixation of tense and agreement affixes on the verb. (3) [ DP [ NumP [ NP ]]]

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

23

The aforementioned proposals suggest a strict parallelism between C and D(eterminer) Phrase and I and Numb(er) Phrase. This parallelism is based on semantic, morphological, as well as distributional criteria. These have the following form: (i) Semantic criteria. CP and DP both link an entity (proposition or argument) to discourse and specify the nature of this link. They both constitute the locus of A’-movement. In a similar vein TP is responsible for temporal reference, while NumberP specifies reference to one or more than one entities. (ii) Morphological criteria. In the verbal system, inflectional morphemes related to mood, agreement, tense, aspect and voice are invoked as evidence for postulating the relevant heads, Agr, T, Asp, Voice. Nouns inflect for Number. Hence we can postulate the presence of NumberP. (iii) Distributional criteria. (a) Evidence that N/V is not in its base position leads us to postulate N/V-movement and hence specific head positions as landing sites for N/V. The main criterion used is the respective order of adjectives and nouns (Cinque (1993)), and adverbs and verbs in the clausal domain. (b) Evidence for XP-movement may make it necessary to postulate a specifier position as a landing site for XP, and hence, by implication, a related head position. A case in point is the construct state construction in Hebrew which provides distributional evidence for the presence of NumberP DP-internally (see Ritter (1991)). Similar arguments to these have been put forth for Gender. For instance, in, e.g., Spanish generally masculine nouns end in -o, while feminine ones in -a. The plural morpheme, -s, is added after -o/a: (4)

a. b. c. d.

hij-o-s hij-a-s muchach-o-s muchach-a-s

son.m.pl daughter.f.pl boy.m.pl girls.f.pl

On the basis of this distribution, Picallo (1991) claims that Gender as well as Number are functional projections in the extended projection of Romance nouns. The order in which the number and gender suffixes appear at Sstructure reflects that successive cyclic movement of the head N up to Num 0 has applied: (5) a. b.

[ DP la [ NumbP s [ GenderP a [ NP muchach ]]]] [ DP el [ NumbP s [ GenderP o [ NP muchach ]]]]

head raising head raising

24

Artemis Alexiadou

Picallo makes this claim by capitalizing on the similarity between the nominal system and the verbal system of Romance. Romance verbs contain different theme vowels which characterize the different conjugations (6). Theme vowels can be analyzed as instantiating vP (Chomsky (1995); Picallo analyzes them as heading VP, which dominates a L(exical) Phrase). This is exactly parallel to the theme vowels within the nominal system, which instantiate Gender; hence GenderP is parallel to vP (see (7)): (6) Verbal Conjugations I: cant-a-mos II: tem-e-mos III: part-i-a-mos (7) a.

vP v a/e/i

b.

we sing we fear we left

VP

GenderP Gender a/o

NP

However, matters are not that simple, because of the ((in-)direct) link between Gender and Inflection Class, see Aronoff (1994, 64f.) for extensive discussion. Harris (1991) shows that these vowels are actually not gender markers; rather, they are inflectional class markers. Consider table 1. 1 The members of a given class uniquely share nothing other than class membership, that is the property of having a particular word marker or none. In general, see, e.g., Aronoff (1994, 64/66), class and gender are not features of the same type. This can be seen in the definitions given in (8) and (9): (8) Inflection Class: A set of lexemes whose members each select the same set of inflectional morphemes 1 Note here that Harris (1991) recognizes two further classes. Class IV contains feminine and masculine nouns ending in -Vs. Class V contains miscellaneous nouns, e.g., nouns such as taxi, chef, golf, etc.

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

25

Table 1 Marker -o -o -a -a Ø Ø Ø (e inserted) Ø (e inserted)

Class 1 1 2 2 3 3 3 3

Gender masculine feminine masculine feminine masculine feminine masculine feminine

Example muchacho mano dia muchacha cid sed padre madre

Gloss ’boy’ ’hand’ ’day’ ’girl’ ’cid’ ’thirst’ ’father’ ’mother’

(9) Gender: Nominal agreement class While gender provides a grouping of nouns into classes, these determine different agreement patterns; that is lexical elements sharing the same gender agree in a particular manner. As is well known, languages with gender distinctions show very robust systems of such agreement. But it is a rather different question whether this type of agreement is to be understood as a syntactic operation. On the other hand, inflection class, as we will see below, is never relevant for the purposes of agreement. It merely groups nouns into classes, which do not determine any further properties. The information of whether or not a given noun in, e.g., Spanish is class 1 or class 2 is merely a diacritic, and nothing more. In the recent literature, however, it has been proposed that class marking bears a syntactic role. We can distinguish two main views on the role of class markers in the syntax. According to Bernstein (1993), their status is parameterized. Only languages that provide the morphological evidence for class markers, i.e., Spanish, have a functional projection in the DP, associated with them in addition to DP and NumbP. I label this projection CMP here. As (10) shows, CMP corresponds to the position of GenderP in (7-b) above: (10)

NumberP CMP CM o/a/e

NP

26

Artemis Alexiadou

According to Bernstein, these languages (a) are characterized by the presence of head movement within the DP and (b) exhibit indefinite noun ellipsis. Evidence for this comes from the following Spanish vs. English contrast. (11) shows that in Spanish nouns precede adjectives, and the language has indefinite noun ellipsis. (12) shows that both options are not available in English; nouns follow adjectives, and English must insert ‘one’ in the ellipsis context: (11) a.

la muchacha americana the girl american uno pequeño a small (one)

b.

(12) a. a red ball/*a ball red b. *a small Assuming that both in English and Spanish adjectives are located in the specifier of NP (Cinque (1993)), in the Spanish example (11-a) the head noun moves from its base position to a higher head in the functional domain, at least the head hosting the class marker, while it remains in its base position in English: (13)

DP D

NumP N

CMP t

NP Adj

t

Bernstein attributes this difference to the presence of class markers in Spanish, as opposed to their absence in English. In other words, the overtness of this nominal feature necessarily leads to its treatment as a functional layer in Spanish. On the other hand, Haegeman (1998) claims CMP is universal, and their presence DP-internally does not necessarily correlate with any syntactic operations.

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

27

In this paper I provide evidence against the above mentioned views as far as the “functional” nature of gender and class is concerned on the basis of Romance, Greek and Hebrew data. Class markers do not occupy independent projections DP internally not even in the languages that seem to provide the relevant morphology (see also Alexiadou & Müller (2004), Müller (this volume)). Neither does gender. My argumentation is partially couched within the following set of assumptions. Following Chomsky (1995), and others, I assume that Universal Grammar provides a universal set of features. A subset of these is chosen by a language and packaged into the terminal nodes of the syntax. There are two reasons why certain features are active syntactically. First, the presence of semantic content can be seen as the relevant property determining which features can be represented in syntactic terminal nodes. In other words, features are represented independently in the syntax only if they are relevant for interpretation purposes, as is the case with Tense (±Past) and Aspect (±Perfective) for instance. Second, features that are not relevant for semantic interpretation such as Case on nouns are still present in the syntactic computation as they trigger specific syntactic operations such as movement and/or Agree (Chomsky (2001)). The morphological realisation of a given feature, however, does not bear on its syntactic/interpretative function. Even features that do not seem to be relevant for or interpretable in the syntax are morphologically realized, and vice versa features that do not receive morphological realisation as, e.g., case on English nouns are syntactically active. Thus the relevant distinction here is between features that are syntactically active and features that are not. The latter will never head functional projections in structure or be involved in core syntactic operations, i.e., displacement/Agree. Note here that Agree and Agreement are crucially not taken to be synonyms. I will use the term Agree to refer to the abstract operation in the syntactic computation, as defined in Chomsky (2001). Agreement refers to surface, morphological properties of the inflectional, and in the case in point nominal, system of the languages under discussion and is not syntactically active. On this view, the features introduced above can be partitioned as follows. Number is a type of feature which clearly has a semantic effect, is presumably relevant for DP-internal displacement, and it has been argued to function as a case assigner/licencer, see, e.g., Ritter (1991), di Domenico (1997), Alexiadou (2001a) among others. Class and Gender differ, however. Class

28

Artemis Alexiadou

membership is arbitrary and unpredictable, an idiosyncratic property of each lexical item. Gender, like class, is not relevant for semantic interpretation and it does not seem to be relevant for displacement/Agree either; I show that nouns either carry inherent gender specification, or are assigned such a specification, under identification with their referent. This view relates to the proposals made in, e.g., Noyer (1992) and Harley & Ritter (2000), who posit hierarchies of nominal features, whereby the prominence of number over gender and class is recognized (see also Eisenberg & Sayatz (this volume) and references therein). Number is functionally prominent, since it is represented syntactically, while gender and class are (partially) intrinsic features, cf. Lecarme (2002). The paper is organized as follows. In section 3 I present evidence that the presence of class markers does not correlate with any syntactic phenomena. In section 4 I examine the inflectional system of three different language groups in detail. I show how gender and class marking are independent from one another, and how gender distinctions come about. In section 5 I discuss the consequences for the functional make up of noun phrases. Finally, in section 6 I turn to the syntactic evidence discussed in Bernstein and show how the correct generalization is one that makes reference to gender agreement. Section 7 concludes my discussion. 3.

Class Features are Not Syntactically Active

That class features are not relevant for LF is obvious (see also Alexiadou & Müller (2004), and Müller (this volume) for discussion). There can be no plausible way to argue that being a class 1 noun means anything at that level. That they are not relevant for syntax can be seen in the following set of data. As discussed in Alexiadou (2001b), and Alexiadou, Haegeman & Stavrou (2001), Bernstein’s correlation is problematic even within Romance. For instance, French is similar to Spanish, although its noun morphology differs from that of Spanish considerably, i.e., it has no obvious class markers: (14) Un cube rouge est sur le coin gauche de cette table. Un bleu a cube red is on the left corner of this table, a blue (one) est sur le coin droit is on the right corner

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

29

Moreover, in Greek no noun movement seems to take place, given that the head noun always follows the adjectives that modify it, independently of the adjective type involved. This is shown in (15a-b). Nevertheless, Greek nouns manifest robust inflection, as well as noun ellipsis (15c-d): (15) a. *to spiti meghalo/paljo/oreo the house big/old/nice b. to meghalo/paljo/oreo spiti c. i amerikanid-a ginek-a the-fem:sg:nom American-fem:sg:nom woman-fem:sg:nom d. mia amerikanida one american.fem.sg.nom But, although the language has a rich system of inflectional classes, these are not comparable to those of Spanish (see also section 4.2. below). In a language that lacks class markers such as Hebrew, adjectives follow nouns and agree with them in gender, number and definiteness (16-a). As can be seen in (16-b), Hebrew exhibits noun ellipsis (Danon (1996)) and it has been argued to have both N-to-D and N-to Numb raising (Ritter (1991)): (16) a. b.

ha smalot ha yapot the dresses the nice ra ti šloša praxim adumim ve arba a sgulim (I) saw three flowers red and four purple

Table 2 summarizes this distribution. Table 2 Language Spanish Greek Hebrew French

Indefinite Ellipsis + + + +

NA Order + – + +

Class Markers + + – –

Immediately we observe that these properties do not directly correlate with the presence of class markers: Hebrew is like Spanish although it lacks class markers, and the arguments for noun movement that have been presented in the literature related to the presence of N-to-D movement in the

30

Artemis Alexiadou

language; Greek is like Spanish with respect to ellipsis but not with respect to head movement. Greek has inflectional classes, but they are not marked via a specific vowel (see section 4.2). French has no class markers but both ellipsis and N-movement. Note here that Bernstein’s correlation as it stands is puzzling. On the one hand, it relates the presene of class markers to a pure syntactic operation such as head movement. On the other hand, it suggests that class marking is related to or licenses ellipsis. It is not clear whether the two are subject to similar constraints. For instance, ellipsis (or at least certain types of ellipsis) seems to be very much sensitive to superficial/phonological properties, which enable recoverability of the ellided item. It is not straightforward how this is accounted for by the presence of class markers. 2 4.

Gender and Inflectional Class Features Across Languages

In this section I investigate three language groups, which all make grammatical gender distinctions, namely Romance, taking Spanish and Italian as representatives, Greek and Hebrew. The individual languages differ from one another in very important respects. On the one hand, the Romance languages (Spanish and Italian) and Hebrew lack case morphology. The Romance languages make use of an elaborated system of theme vowels signaling class (and number) distinctions. But again the Romance languages are not identical to one another. Spanish has grammatical gender as well as class markers. Italian makes gender distinctions but has nothing comparable to the class markers of Spanish. Hebrew lacks class distinctions altogether. Greek is a language with case, class and gender distinctions; but class membership is not signaled by theme vowels, which, to the extent that they exist, have been re-analyzed as being rather part of the nominal stem. In fact Greek has a nominal paradigm similar to that of Russian (see Müller (this volume)). My results can be summarized as follows. In the languages that make class distinctions, class membership and gender do not coincide. With respect 2 It

should be noted here that Bernstein took the fact that the form of the masculine article changes in Spanish as evidence for her claim. In Spanish the article becomes uno instead of un, when the noun is omitted. For Bernstein -o moves to D0 in that case. It is not clear to me how this generalizes to the other languages, and whether or not this is merely a phonological effect.

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

31

to gender, certain nouns in all languages are inherently specified for gender, others are not. 4.1. 4.1.1.

Romance Spanish

As already seen in section 2, Spanish has five inflection classes. None of the class markers is associated with gender. Harris (1991) notes that almost without exception nouns referring to human beings have both masculine and feminine forms. This is expressed in (17) below, Harris’ (14): (17) Human nouns are “mated”: Both a masculine and a feminine form exist for each human noun. In the class of human nouns Harris distinguishes between several sub-types: (18) a.

Masculine muchach-o amig-o criad-o

b. c. d. e. f. g.

jef-e monje poet-a actor

homber

Feminine muchach-a amig-a criad-a

boy

estudiante cómplice chief

patriota testigo man

jef-a monja poetisa actriz

girl friend servant student accomplice chiefe monk/nun poet actror/actress

mujer

woman

patriot witness

Harris refers to the nouns in (18-b) as outer core nouns. These lack class markers. Each can be either masculine or feminine. The class in (18-a) contains nouns which alternate in the sense that -o form signals masculine and the -a form signals feminine gender. The nouns in (18-c) are related to female nouns ending in -a. In (18-d) masculine and feminine are related by derivational suffixation. This list is small. In (18-e) the nouns end in -a, while in (18-f) they end in -o. Both groups of nouns could be feminine or masculine. Finally, the class illustrated in (18-g) contains suppletive “mates”.

32

Artemis Alexiadou

For animals, Harris notes that in the unmarked case one form is used for both male and female, as shown in (19-a). Others, either contain suppletive form, or rarely show an alternation familiar to that of prototypical human nouns, i.e., class (18-a): (19) a.

b. c.

Masculine camello erizo *foco *jirafo toro carnero perro

Feminine *camella *eriza foca jirafa vaca oveja perra

camel seal giraffe bull/cow ram/ewe dog/cat

Inanimate nouns naturally do not enter such alternations and change in class markers results mostly in a non-related word: (20) Masculine paso step

Feminine pasa raisin

In this class, the only clear case of the word marker -o being attached to a nonanimate feminine noun is mano (‘hand’). But, we can definitely not regard -o as a gender marker since, it attaches to, e.g., adverbs, as is the case with the other class markers as well. (21)

dentro ‘inside’ fuera ‘outside’ adrede ‘intentionally’

On the basis of this description, we can then conclude that the crucial distinction in Spanish with respect to gender specification in the grammar is the human vs. non-human distinction. On the one hand, non-human, and nonanimate nouns are inherently specified for gender; on the other hand, the only human nouns that carry inherent gender specification are the ones with suppletive forms. Finally, human nouns which do not have suppletive forms do not contain gender specification as part of their inherent lexical properties. I distinguish between two sub-types here: i) type muchach-o/a and ii) type patriot-a and testig-o. In the second class gender is assigned through a process of identification with the human referent and is not visible morphologically. In the former case, in most case feminine gender specification is made

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

33

morphologically visible through -a suffixation, but again gender assignment must take place via identification with a human referent. Hence the main distinction is between nouns that carry gender specification, and nouns that do not. The former group comprises non-animate nouns, as well as animals and certain human nouns. The latter group seems to contain exclusively human nouns, which instantiate gender distinctions occasionally via the presence of class markers. But as the above examples showed once again, class markers do not bring about gender distinctions. In addition, there is a crucial difference between gender and class features. In Spanish, adjectives agree with nouns in number and gender. The class markers of the nouns and these adjectives are similar in certain cases. (22) a.

libr-o roj-o book red plum-a roj-a pen red

b.

libr-o-s roj-o-s books red plum-a-s roj-a-s pens red

But agreement in class is not necessary, while agreement in gender always is. As shown in (23), the noun and the adjective can belong to different classes, although they belong to the same gender: (23) a.

la chica inteligente the girl intelligent el chico inteligente the boy intelligent

b.

How does gender assignment work for nouns that are not inherently specified for it? I will come to this question in section 4.4, as this question is relevant for all the languages discussed here. To conclude, class specification is an inherent property of Spanish nouns. 3 In other words, every noun in this 3 Harris

(1991, 56-59) claims that the role of class markers in Spanish is to perform a phonological service permitting syllabification of otherwise impossible clusters. This idea is further elaborated in Oltra Massuet (1999), and Oltra Massuet & Arregi (2001). According to their analysis, class markers are well-formedness requirements on a syntactic functional head relating to stress placement in non-verbal environments. In particular, in Spanish stress is on the vowel that precedes the theme vowel and can be described as follows: (a) in V-final words stress is penultimate and (b) in C-final words stress is final. The examples in (i) illustrate this: (i)

a. b. c.

més-a ‘table’ jug-ós-o ‘juicy’ animál-Ø ‘animal’

34

Artemis Alexiadou

language carries inherent specification for class features. As far as gender is concerned, there is a distinction between nouns that are marked for gender, “intrinsic gender” in di Domenico’s (1997) terms, and those which are not. 4.1.2.

Italian

Unlike Spanish, Italian lacks a single plural marker. However, the example in (24) is reminiscent of (18-a) above. (24) Masculine Feminine

Singular Plural ragazz-o ragazz-i boy/boys ragazz-a ragazz-e girl/girls

On the basis of (24), one could conclude that this distribution is regular in the sense of (25):

d.

ver-dád-Ø ‘truth’

According to Oltra Massuet & Arregi, class markers are not present in the syntactic representation but rather are added post-syntactically in Morphology and attach on functional heads, as represented in (ii). (ii)

F F

Th [o/a/e/Ø]

This analysis follows Oltra Massuet’s work on the verbal system of Romance. Romance verbs exhibit several theme vowels depending on the functional heads present in the structure, i.e., v, Tense, Mood etc. Hence in every case a thematic vowel is attached to the relevant functional category: (iii) cant-a- r-í amos sing-th- fut-th TØ-th Agr ‘We would sing.’ One could propose that in the domain of noun phrases the relevant category is Number, i.e., theme vowels attach to Number. This entails that in a system such as DM it is NumberP and not nP, as suggested in Oltra Massuet & Arregi, which nominalizes roots (see also Alexiadou (2001a) for such arguments on the basis of rather different evidence, cf. Lecarme (2002)). If DPs contained both nP as well as Number, we would expect nouns, like verbs, to exhibit at least two class markers. But nouns show only one marker, which is expected if the only functional projection to host that vowel is Number.

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

(25) Masculine Feminine

35

Singular Plural -o -i -a -e

However, a closer inspection of the Italian nominal system reveals further complications. Riente (2000, 12) distinguishes between different types of stems: (26) (i) (a)

stems with fixed gender (a1) stems whose referents do have sex (a2) stems which only refer to beings of one particular sex (b) stems whose referents do not have sex (ii) stems with variable gender: stems which can refer to beings of either sex

On this view, the items in (24) instantiate stems with variable gender. This class contains also nouns such as the ones in (27): (27) Masculine Feminine

Singular Plural padrone padroni owner/owners padrona padrone owner/owners

But it further contains noun pairs such as the ones in (28): (28) a. Masculine Feminine b.

Masculine Feminine

Singular collega collega Singular testimone testimone

Plural colleghi colleghe colleague/colleagues Plural testimoni testimoni witness/witnesses

In (28-b) in particular although the form is morphologically masculine, the syntactic behavior distinguishes between masculine and feminine through the use of the feminine article, e.g., la testimone. Fixed gender nouns include human and non-human nominals as was the case in Spanish. These end in -e in the singular but in -i in the plural: (29)

a. b.

padre padri father/fathers masculine madre madri mother/mothers feminine

Non-humans can be further divided into indeclinable and declinable nouns:

36

Artemis Alexiadou

(30) Masculine Feminine

Singular Plural baccalá baccalá cod cittá cittá city

Masculine Feminine

Singular Plural automobile automobili car/cars ragione ragioni reason/reasons

(31)

As was the case in Spanish, we can make the following distinction: On the one hand, we have nouns lexically specified for gender; on the other hand, we also find nouns which are not inherently specified for gender (di Domenico (1997)). For the nouns not inherently specified for gender, as in Spanish, there does not seem to exist a one to one mapping between gender marking and a specific theme vowel marking class. As in Spanish, nouns that are not fixed for gender are [+human], i.e., they have human referents. Similarly to Spanish, class marking does not have any syntactic effect as in cases of adjectival-noun agreement, the two do not agree in the type of theme vowel they contain (from Bates & al. (1996); they refer to nouns ending in -e as opaque): (32) a. b. c. d.

adjective & transparent noun brutta casa ugly house.f brutto piatto ugly plate.m grande casa big house.f grande piatto big plate.m

adjective and opaque noun brutta pace concordant ugly peace.f brutto cuore ugly heart.m grande pace neutral big peace.f grande cuore.m big heart.m

While agreement in gender is obligatory, agreement in class is not. Clearly, gender and class do not coincide. But what type of information do thematic vowels give? Class or number? Table 3 presents the class to number relation in the Italian paradigm. For the plural, one could interpret the above paradigm as suggesting that the terminal vowel is formed by a merger of word marker and plural marker. This, however, raises the question why such a merger would be necessary in the first place, since word-final [o+i], although somewhat restricted, is not excluded by the phonological rules of Italian (see Bernstein (1993)):

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

37

Table 3 Singular Plural -a -e -o -i -e -i Ø Ø (33)

a.

vuoi want-2sg

b.

poi then

Bernstein (1993) claims that the terminal vowels -e and -i are number markers, while the word markers -a and -o are not spelled out with plural forms. On this view, Italian is similar to Spanish in that it makes class distinctions in the singular, but unlike Spanish in that it only instantiates number distinction in the plural. From this point of view then, the endings in the plural are number morphemes, while they are class markers in the singular. However, as shown in the table above, Italian nouns do show a specific preference for a specific vowel marking plural morphology. Hence we cannot consider -e and -i as merely signaling number. Rather, theme vowels are port-manteau morphemes for class and number, at least in the plural. Summarizing, the Romance languages show a split between stems specified for gender, and stems not specified for gender. The latter are assigned gender values, which sometimes and sometimes only are instantiated by specific theme vowels. 4.2.

Greek

Greek has three genders. The distinction into inflectional classes is not based on gender, or animacy. Greek, unlike Spanish/Italian, has overt case markers hence each class is associated with a paradigm. The system is similar to that of Latin and Russian (see Aronoff (1994) and Müller (this volume)), and inflectional affixes are portmanteau morphemes. Ralli (1994) argues that gender is a feature on the stem. The main argument for this view is the observation that nouns with different gender values take the same set of inflectional affixes: 4 4 The criterion used

by Ralli for the separation of the stem from its inflection has to do with

38

Artemis Alexiadou

(34)

Singular kipos ‘garden.m’ Nom kip-os Gen kip-u Acc kip-o

Plural psifos ‘vote.f’ psif-os kip-i psif-i psif-u kip-on psif-on psif-o kip-us psif-us

(34) instantiates two non-human nouns, but it could be reproduced for human nouns, e.g., anthrop-os (‘man’), though arguably most feminine nouns in -os are non-human. Although I take this classification to be in principle correct, I elaborate on the gender distinctions of Greek below. According to one major structural distinction of Greek nouns, we can distinguish between nouns that take two inflectional suffixes both in the singular and in the plural vs. nouns that take three inflectional suffixes in the singular and the plural:5 1 father.m pater-as, -es pater-a, -on

(35)

2 country.f hor-a, -es hor-as, -on

present.n dor-o, -a dor-u, -on

3 street.m drom-os, -o drom-u, -on drom-oi, -us

A more detailed classification recognizes several inflectional classes: 6 the formation of diminutives and augmentatives. In these cases, there is a separation between stem, and number/gender/case marking: -ar = augmentative, -ak/-oul = diminutive: (i)

a. b. c. d. e.

ped-i ped-ak-i ped-ar-os child small child big child anthropos antrop-ak-os man little man barka bark-oul-a boat small boat pateras pater-oul-is father small father omad-a omad-ar-a team big team

Thus, -i, -os, -a, -is mark inflectional elements. 5 See Babiniotis (1986), Mackridge (1985) and Ralli (1994). For Ralli, Greek has 8 inflectional classes, while for Mackridge (1985) Greek has three classes. Traditional grammars also recognize three classes based on gender. Here I do not make a proposal on the class system of Modern Greek, see Alexiadou & Müller (2004). 6 Due to the phonological changes that took place from Ancient to Modern Greek certain endings look alike and are pronounced the same way, while this was not the case in earlier

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

39

(36) Inflectional Class 1 (feminine, masculine) 7 kipos (masc.) psifos (fem.) ‘garden.m’ ‘vote.f’ Singular Plural Nom kip-os psif-os kip-i psif-i Gen kip-u psif-u kip-on psif-on Acc kip-o psif-o kip-us psif-us As mentioned, human nouns also belong to this class, e.g., anthropos (‘man’). (37) Inflectional Classes 2, 3 and 4 (feminine, masculine) 8 maxit ∼ maxiti filaka ∼ filak (masc.) ‘fighter’ (masc.) ‘guard’ Singular Plural Nom maxiti-s filaka-s maxit-es filak-es Gen maxiti filaka maxit-on filak-on Acc maxiti filaka maxit-es filak-es avli ∼ avl (fem.) ‘yard’ Nom avli Gen avli-s Acc avli

thalassa ∼ thalass (fem.) ‘sea’ thalassa avles thalassa-s avlon thalassa avles

thalass-es thalass-on thalass-es

(38) Inflectional Classes 5 (vun) and 6 (kratos) vun kratos (neut.) ‘mountain’ ‘state’ Singular Plural Nom vun-o krat-os vun-a krat-i Gen vun-u krat-us vun-on krat-on Acc vun-o krat- os vun-a krati-i stages, but orthography still preserves the distinction. Note also that stress does not seem to influence class membership as words with final, penultimate and pre-penultimate stress are included in the same class. 7 Members of this class seem to have a thematic vowel -o. 8 These classes appear to have a thematic vowel (any vowel except o). To a certain extent this vowel was either part of the original form in Ancient Greek, or was developed analogically for nouns that lacked such a vowel in Ancient Greek, e.g., himonas (‘winter’) > heimon. This has been re-analyzed as part of the stem. As with class one, the vowel does not reflect gender distinctions.

40

Artemis Alexiadou

(39) Inflectional Classes 7 (spiti) and 8 (soma ∼ somat) spiti (neut.) soma ∼ somat (neut.) ‘house’ ‘body’ Singular Plural Nom spiti soma spitj-a somat-a Gen spitj-u somat-os spitj-on somat-on Acc spiti soma spit-a somat-a Class 7 contains a number of human nouns, e.g., pedi (‘child’), agori (‘boy’), koritsi (‘girl’). We can observe that in no class can Number and Case be distinguished from one another, they are fused. Adjectival agreement is on the basis of grammatical gender, number and case. The classes follow roughly those of the substantives. There is no agreement in class: (40) a. b.

kalos mahitis good.m.sg fighter.m.sg sosti psifos correct.f.sg. vote.f.sg

kali mahites good.m.pl fighter.m.pl sosti psifi correct.f.pl vote.f.pl

Although the above distribution suggests that stems are inherently specified for gender in Greek, the language has a number of nouns that are similar to Spanish poet-a, e.g., poiitis (‘poet’), where the feminine is derived via the addition of a derivational suffix poiitria (‘poetess’). But in addition one can find nouns which use the same form for both the feminine and the masculine, as was the case with testig-o type nouns in Italian and Spanish. Moreover, there are stems, crucially involving nouns with human reference that enter alternations, as shown in (41-b): (41) a.

b.

odigos ‘driver’ musikos ‘musician’ ipurgos ‘minister’ thios thia uncle adelfos adelfi brother anipsios anipsia nephew gatos gata cat.m

aunt sister niece cat.f

o ‘the.m’ vs. i ‘ the.f’ odigos o ‘the.m’ vs. i ‘ the.f’ musikos o ‘the.m’ vs. i ‘ the.f’ ipurgos

Nouns of type (41-a) denote professions. The gender is visible syntactically through the presence of determiners, e.g., o odigos (‘the driver-masculine’),

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

41

vs. i odigos (‘the driver-feminine’). For certain of these nouns the feminine form is available, i.e., daskalos vs. daskala (‘teacher.m’) vs. (‘teacher.f’); the nouns in (41-b) alternate on the basis of the ending. These two classes of stems must be analyzed as having variable gender, which is assigned to them via identification with their human referent. But clearly, the assignment to particular inflectional classes is independent of the gender reference. Again we observe that non-fixed gender nouns are necessarily [+human/+animate]. 9 4.3.

Hebrew

Hebrew lacks inflectional classes but has gender distinctions. Like Romance, it lacks case morphology. As Ritter (1993) discusses, gender marking derives new inanimate nouns from inanimate nouns. Various gender suffixes -et, -it, -a exist: (42) a. b. c.

Masculine magav ‘wiper’ magav-im ‘wipers’ maxsan ‘warehouse’ maxsan-im ‘warehouses’ amud ‘page’ amud-im ‘pages’

Feminine magev-et ‘towel’ magav-ot ‘towels’ masan-it ‘magazine’ masan-it ‘magazines’ amud-a ‘column’ amud-ot ‘columns’

This class of nouns is partially similar to the class of Spanish non-animate nouns we have seen above. The form of the suffix attached to any given noun is unpredictable. This is different from Spanish and Italian, where gender switching is restricted to nouns with human reference. Ritter argues that Hebrew plural suffixes are specified for number only. Consider (43), where both the noun and the adjective carry the same affix: (43)

a. b.

9 As

mor-im teacher.m.pl mor-ot teacher.f.pl

tov-im good.m.pl tov-ot good.f.pl

noted in Horrocks (1997, 313f.), dialects of Modern Greek such as Pontic and Cappadocian do not show gender distinctions of the type found in the standard language, but have a system that divides nouns on the basis of animacy.

42

Artemis Alexiadou

At first sight, this suggests that as in Italian, -im signals masculine plural, while -ot signals feminine plural. But there is evidence that the stem carries gender specification, since in (44) there is no such agreement between the two suffixes: (44)

a.

šan-a tov-a year.f good.f

b.

šan-im tov-ot year.f.pl good.f.pl

However, a look through the nominal paradigm of Hebrew suggests that the language also has nouns that seem to enter form alternations. These seeem to bear the feature [+human]: (45)

a.

yeled- boy

b.

yalda- girl

Generally, there are a number of roots that become feminine by the addition of -a and/or the use of a different vowel, i.e., -e vs. -a. Hence we cannot claim that roots such as yld carry inherent gender specification. I conclude that Hebrew like Greek and Spanish/Italian contains nouns that carry inherent gender specification as well as a number of nouns that receive gender specification via identification with a human referent. In the next section I turn to a brief discussion of the latter type of gender. 4.4.

Variable Gender

Confronted with a division between two types of gender, i.e., fixed vs. variable, there are in principle two options. We could assume that languages classify nouns as belonging to one gender via default, and rules of morphology specify the other gender. For instance, Harris (1991) claims that that the default specification in Spanish is the masculine gender and morphological rules specify feminine gender explicitly. For Italian, Riente suggests that feminine stems will be assigned feminine gender if and only if its referent is a female. No other type of stem will be assigned gender. However, in the previous sections we saw that the crucial distinction languages seem to make is one related to the feature [+human/+animate]. That is nouns that enter gender alternations and stems with variable gender are necessarily human, i.e., they necessarily have human referents. Non-animate, and non-human nouns do not enter such alternations. Hence it seems more reasonable to assume that the fixed vs. variable gender distinction is expressed as follows, siding with di Domenico (1997). On the one hand, languages have

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

43

nouns which are inherently specified for gender in the lexicon, i.e., gender is part of their intrinsic features. On the other hand, there are nouns which are simply marked as being [+human/+animate] in the lexicon. Being [+human/+animate], they need to be assigned a gender value in languages which distinguish between masculine and feminine. But in order to be assigned such a value they need to enter an agreement/concord relation with a human referent. That is for the features of their referent to get copied on them, they need to be part of a set that contains this referent. 10 So these nouns do not contain gender specification as an intrinsic property. On this view, gender has a mixed character. On the one hand, it is considered to be primarily a lexical property. Evidence from psycholinguistic experiments suggests that indeed gender patterns with lexical properties, as opposed to number which seems to be a syntactic property of the nominal system (see de Vincenzi & di Domenico (1999)). These studies show that gender is treated as being part of the nominal root, while number is treat as being independent from the root, cf. Antón-Mendéz & al. (2002). On the other hand, it is subordinate to a higher feature distinction, i.e., human vs. non-human, which takes prominence over masculine vs. feminine, and languages express the latter distinction as dependent on the former one. 5.

Consequences for the Syntactic Structure

The four languages examined here show significant differences in their nominal morphology, providing further support for the view that gender and class marking do not go hand in hand. Moreover, it has been shown that features such as gender are not distributed uniformly. In certain cases there are inherent properties of the noun, in other cases they are assigned by rules to animate nouns. On the basis of this, I conclude that the structure in (46) holds for all languages. 10 Di Domenico assumes that the gender of such nouns is assigned to them as they enter the numeration. One could argue that this happens once they are contained in a specific syntactic configuration with their referent.

44

Artemis Alexiadou

(46)

DP Spec

D0 D

NumbP Spec

Numb0 Numb

NP Spec

N0 N

In particular, while Number is present in all languages, gender and class are not. Certain noun stems carry gender specification, while others are assigned gender specification via identification with a human referent. For the languages that have inflectional classes, this is a property that is inherent to the noun. Hence the difference between class and gender features is the following: Although both are syntactically inactive, gender is not always an inherent property of the noun. It is occasionally assigned to it via rules of agreement. Class is never relevant for agreement and is never assigned via any other rule: It is an idiosyncratic property of noun stems. 6.

N-Ellipsis Across Languages

Recall that in sections 2 and 3 I discussed and rejected Bernstein’s (1993) correlation for the presence of Class markers within the extended projection. Bernstein suggested that languages which have class markers will have NA order and show indefinite noun ellipsis. In section 3 I argued that this does not hold, as noun-ellipsis and noun-movement seem to be independent of the presence of class markers. Table 4 summarizes this distribution with respect to the four nominal systems discussed in detail. Leaving head movement aside, as its status has been challenged in the recent literature (Alexiadou (2001b), Laenzlinger (2000) for Romance, Shlon-

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

45

Table 4 Language Indefinite Ellipsis NA Order Spanish + + Italian + + Greek + – Hebrew + + sky (2000), Sichel (2002) for Hebrew), let us consider what could be the trigger for the ellipsis facts. The only grammatical property these languages have in common is that in all of them nouns and adjectives agree. Recall that in the languages that make class distinctions, agreement is never in class, but is always in gender. Hence noun ellipsis is morpho-syntactically licensed by the identification of the missing noun through adjectival agreement, as has been suggested by Alexiadou, Haegeman & Stavrou (2001) and references therein. Consider the example in (47). The missing noun is made “visible” through adjectival agreement, which crucially involves case/number and gender markings on the adjective, quantifier and numeral, and in general on any modifier situated in a specifier position in the extended nominal projection; the missing noun always carries the same morpho-syntactic features as the overt specifier (the “remnant”) in the elliptical part (47). (47) I Maria ehi polus filus eno i aderfi tis the Mary has many-m.acc.pl friends.m.acc.pl while the sister her ligus [filus] few [friends] Note that the crucial feature for licensing ellipsis cannot be case, since with the exception of Greek the other languages lack case morphology. I would like to suggest that it is gender agreement which is responsible for licensing ellipsis. The West-Flemish data discussed in Haegeman (1998) provide evidence for this view. In West-Flemish, as in German, adjectives also inflect for Gender. Hence the presence of inflection is sufficient to license ellipsis (48). (48) a. b.

I een een rooijen oto en Valère ee nen groenen [oto] I have a red-m car and Valère has a green-m [car] Ich habe ein rotes Auto und Hans ein grünes Auto I have a red-n car and Hans a green-n car

46

Artemis Alexiadou

Table 5 summarizes the grammatical and syntactic properties across languages. Table 5 Language Ellipsis Class Gender Number Case A-N Agreement TVowel Spanish + + + + – + + Italian + – + + – + + Greek + + + + + + – Hebrew + – + + – + – But how exactly can we interpret gender agreement? Recent studies of ellipsis take this to be a PF related phenomenon (see, e.g., Merchant (2001) and references therein). This coupled with a view on agreement as being relevant for the PF side of the grammar (see, e.g., Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (1999)) suggests that gender is relevant for PF, but not for the syntactic computation. Agreement, interpreted as involving rules that constrain the forms of words, is what determines the presence of ellipsis. 7.

Conclusions

In this paper I argued that while number is universally present within the nominal structure, gender and inflectional class are not. While class features are inherent properties of nouns, languages use different mechanisms to manipulate/introduce, e.g., gender features. There are basically two options: Gender features are properties of noun stems or they are introduced via agreement with a human/animate referent. This choice is available not only across languages, but also within a language. Phenomena such as noun movement and noun ellipsis are independent of the status of gender and class markers. Noun ellipsis seems to be related to the presence of morphological gender agreement between nouns and the adjectives modifying them. References Abney, Steven 1986 The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure

47

Alexiadou, Artemis 2001a Functional Structure in Nominals: Nomialization and Ergativity Amsterdam: Benjamins. 2001b Adjective Syntax and Noun Raising: Word Order Asymmetries in the DP as the result of Adjective Distribution. Studia Linguistica 55, 217-248. Alexiadou, Artemis & Elena Anagnostopoulou 1999 Raising Without Infinitives and the Nature of Agreement. Proceedings of WCCFL 18. Alexiadou, Artemis, Liliane Haegeman & Melitta Stavrou 2001 On Nominal Functional Projections: Noun Morphology, Movement and Ellipsis. Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of the Israel Association for Theoretical Linguistics, 1-8. Alexiadou, Artemis & Gereon Müller 2004 Class Features as Probes. Ms., Universität Stuttgart & IDS Mannheim. Antón-Méndez, Inés, Janet Nicol, & Merrill Garrett 2002 The Relation Between Gender and Number Agreement Processing. Syntax 5, 1-25. Aronoff, Mark 1994 Morphology by Itself. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Babiniotis, George 1986 Brief History of the Greek Language. Athens: Athens University Press. Bates, Elizabeth, Antonella Devescovi, Arturo Hernandez & Luigi Pizzamiglio 1996 Gender Priming in Italian. Perception and Psychophysics 58(7), 992-1004. Bernstein, Judith 1993 Topics in the Syntax of Nominal Structure Across Romance. Doctoral dissertation, CUNY. Chomsky, Noam 1986 Barriers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 2001 Derivation by Phase. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.) Ken Hale: A Life in Language, 1-52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Cinque, Guglielmo 1993 On the Evidence for Partial N-Movement in the Romance DP. University of Venice Working Papers in Linguistics 3.2, 21-40. Danon, Gabi 1996 The Syntax of Determiners in Hebrew. MA Thesis, Tel-Aviv University. Delfitto, Denis & Jan Schroten 1991 Bare Plurals and the Number Affix in DP. Probus 3, 155-185. Domenico, Elisa di 1997 Per una Teoria del Genere Grammaticale. Padova: Unipress. Eisenberg, Peter & Ulrike Sayatz this volume Left of Number: Animacy and Plurality in German Nouns. Fassi-Fehri, Abdelkader 1993 Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Fukui, Naoki & Peggy Speas 1986 Specifiers and Projection. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 8, 128-172.

48

Artemis Alexiadou

Haegeman, Liliane 1998 Gender and Word Markers in West Flemish. Ms., University of Lille. Harley, Heidi & Elizabeth Ritter 2000 Person and Number in Pronouns: A Feature-Geometric Analysis. Ms., University of Arizona & University of Calgary. Harris, James 1991 The Exponence of Gender in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry 22, 27-62. Horrocks, Geoffrey 1997 Greek: a History of the Language and its Speakers. London: Longman. Horrocks, Geoffrey & Melitta Stavrou 1987 Bounding Theory and Greek Syntax: Evidence for Wh-Movement in NP. Journal of Linguistics 23, 79-108. Jackendoff, Ray 1977 X0 -Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Lecarme, Jacqueline 2002 Gender Polarity: Theoretical Aspects of Somali Nominal Morphology. In P. Boucher & M. Plénat (eds.), Many Morphologies, 109-141. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press. Laenzlinger, Christopher 2000 French Adjective Ordering: Perspectives on DP Internal Movement Types. Generative Grammar in Geneva 1, 55-104. Mackridge, Peter 1985 Modern Greek. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Merchant, Jason 2001 The Syntax of Silence: Sluicing, Islands and the Theory of Ellipsis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller, Gereon this volume On Decomposing Inflection Class Features: Syncretism in Russian Noun Inflection. Noyer, Rolf 1992 Features, Positions and Affixes in Autonomous Morphological Structure. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Oltra Massuet, Isabel 1999 On the Notion of Theme Vowel: A New Approach to Catalan Verbal Morphology. (MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 19). MA Thesis, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Oltra Massuet, Isabel & Karlos Arregi 2001 Stress by Structure in Spanish. Ms., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Picallo, Carme 1991 Nominals and Nominalizations in Catalan. Probus 3, 279-316. Ralli, Angela 1994 Feature Representations and Feature-Passing Operations: The Case of Greek Nominal Inflection. In Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on English & Greek, University of Thessaloniki: School of English Dept. of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics.

Inflection Class, Gender and DP Internal Structure Riente, Lara 2000

49

Ladies First: The Pivotal Role of Gender in the Italian Nominal Inflection System. Ms., UQAM. Ritter, Elizabeth 1991 Two Functional Categories in Noun Phrases: Evidence from Modern Hebrew. In Susan Rothstein (ed.), Syntax & Semantics 26, 37-62. San Diego: Academic Press. 1993 Where’s Gender? Linguistic Inquiry 24, 795-803. Shlonsky, Ur 2000 The Form of the Semitic Noun Phrase: An Antisymmetric, Non N-Movement Account. Ms., University of Geneva. Sichel, Ivy 2002 Phrasal Movement in Hebrew Adjectives and Possessives. In Artemis Alexiadou, Elena Anagnostopoulou, Sjef Barbiers & Hans-Martin Gärtner (eds), Dimensions of Movement: From Remnants to Features, 297-339. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Szabolcsi, Anna 1987 Functional Categories in the Noun Phrase. In Istvan Kenesei (ed.), Approaches to Hungarian 2, 167-190. Szeged: JATE. Valois, Daniel 1991 The Internal Structure of DP and Adjective Placement in French and English. Proceedings of NELS 21, 367-382. Vincenzi, Maria de & Elisa di Domenico 1999 A Distinction Among Phi-Features: The Role of Gender and Number in the Retrieval of Pronoun Antecedents. Ms., University of Pescara & University of Siena.

Inflection Classes and Economy James P. Blevins* 1.

Introduction

Inflection classes raise a number of basic questions of analysis. Which elements of a morphological system are assigned to inflection classes, and what types of principles govern class assignment? How are classes distinguished? Is there any bound on the number of possible classes within a given system? Why, in many languages, do these classes play no role in agreement or any other grammatical process? Word and paradigm models offer one set of answers, based on traditional principles of classification that assign full wordforms to inflectional paradigms, and group paradigms into inflection classes. The Paradigm Economy Principle of Carstairs (1983) approaches the same questions from a morpheme-based perspective, and frames an answer in terms of constraints on the deployment of affixal resources within a system. A comparison of these alternatives suggests that generalizations over affixal exponents are derivative of patterns of interdependence involving whole words, and, hence, that there is ultimately no need for dedicated stem- or affix-based economy principles. 1.1.

Word and Paradigm Economy

The grammatically significant part-whole relations within a word and paradigm (WP) model hold between a paradigm and its constituent wordforms, not between a word and its component morphs. A classical WP model thus begins by recognizing the word as “the smallest meaningful unit”, and *I

am grateful to Farrell Ackerman, Andrew Spencer and Reeli Torn for comments on an earlier version of this paper. I also wish to thank the editors of this volume, as well as participants at the workshop on Inflectional Paradigms held at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in May 2003, for suggestions that have led to improvements in the present version. Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 51-95 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

52

James P. Blevins

approaches the task of morphological analysis essentially as a “problem of classification” (Matthews (1991, 188f.)). The inflected forms of a lexeme are classified according to the properties that they realize. Lexemes that inflect alike are assigned to a common conjugation or declension; i.e., inflection class. Each lexeme is represented by “a basic, unmodified or leading form”, whose “special status is that all the other forms are modifications, or “inflections”, of it” (Matthews (1991, 191)). These modifications are conventionally exhibited in the form of exemplary paradigms. Matching the leading form of a lexeme against its counterpart in an exemplary paradigm provides an analogical model for determining the inflected forms of the lexeme. Lieb (2003, 8) describes the deduction of a paradigm from a “designated form” (i.e., a leading form or Kennform), in the following terms: we start from a designated word form, and through a rule-governed procedure we obtain other word forms, and these word forms (including, since the Stoics, the designated form) . . . constitute “the paradigm of y”.

As Lieb (2003, 9) goes on to clarify, classical descriptions often “simply equate y with the (or a) designated form”. Hence a classical WP model permits a highly transparent and economical description of inflection class systems. Each distinct inflection class is represented by an exemplary paradigm, and each non-exemplary member of a word class is represented by a leading form. Analyzing an inflectional system into leading forms and exemplary paradigms also constrains the space of possible inflection classes in various ways. If a single leading form predicts the full paradigm of a lexeme, it follows that the number of different types of leading forms determines the number of classes. There cannot be more classes than there are types of leading forms, since this would mean that the forms in the “extra” exemplary paradigms are not predictable from any leading form. Conversely, there cannot be fewer classes than there are types of forms, since this would indicate that some properties used to distinguish types of leading forms were, in fact, of no predictive value. The extremely tight notion of inflectional economy imposed by classical WP models derives ultimately from their assumption that the inflection of a lexeme can be predicted from its leading form. This assumption incorporates two related claims about the organization of inflection class systems. The first is that a single form predicts the full paradigm — and thus determines

Inflection Classes and Economy

53

the inflection class — of any (non-suppletive) lexeme. Systems in which this is true exhibit lexical economy, since each lexeme can be represented by a unique form. The second claim is that the class of each lexeme can be determined from the same form, e.g., by the nominative singular. Systems that satisfy this second condition are lexically congruent, in that one can identify the same leading form for all members of a word class. In a congruent inflectional system, leading forms are associated with a paradigm cell whose form variants serve, in effect, to index the inflection classes of a system. The notions of lexical economy and congruence characterize the absolute limit of inflectional economy, in which each class is represented by a single exemplary paradigm and each lexeme by a unique form. Yet it is by no means obvious that all inflectional systems achieve this level of economy. In some systems, more than one “principal part” may be required to determine the inflectional paradigm of a lexeme. The Estonian declensional system, described in section 3, provides one example of such a system. Yet even in Estonian, one principal part often predicts another, so that a single form suffices to identify inflection class in two of the three major declensions. The highly economical structure of these declensions also illustrates how the economy of an inflectional system may derive from interdependent patterns of stem selection, rather than patterns of affixal exponence. The description of Estonian declensions in section 3 also highlights the fact that WP models need not treat inflectional economy as an all or nothing affair. There is no reason to believe that speakers cannot store more than a single principal part for each regular lexeme, nor are there any grounds for supposing that a system with multiple principal parts is inherently unstable, or presents any particular difficulties for language acquisition or use. Hence, while any approach should be able to characterize systems with maximally efficient “storage strategies”, this level of efficiency should surely not be regarded as a design property or teleological goal of morphological systems in general. At the same time, it is significant that a minimally economical inflectional system defies description in terms of the exemplary paradigms and leading forms of a WP model. A system is minimally economical if the realization of each cell in a paradigm is independent of the realization of every other cell, so that no form within the paradigm is of any predictive value. A system of fully independent forms cannot be factored into exemplary paradigms and leading forms, because no set of leading forms smaller than an entire paradigm will

54

James P. Blevins

suffice to identify the inflection class of a lexeme. That is, in a minimally economical system, the distinction between exemplary paradigms and sets of leading forms collapses altogether, and the forms of every lexeme must be listed in full. 1.2.

Affix and Paradigm Economy

Nothing prevents such pathologically uneconomical systems, if inflection classes serve merely to cross-reference separate inventories of stems and exponents. If the parts of an inflected wordform are associated solely by a common inflection class index of one sort or another, collections of fully independent exponents are in no way anomalous. Hence any model that disassembles wordforms into separate stem and affix entries admits a vast space of possible inflection classes. As Carstairs (1983) observes, although in somewhat different terms, the number of classes defined by an inventory of independent affixes corresponds to the product of the number of exponents in each paradigm cell. The clear challenge for a morpheme-based model is to exclude such uneconomical systems without placing an arbitrary numerical bound on the number of inflection classes in a language. In a series of influential studies, Carstairs (1983; 1987) and CarstairsMcCarthy (1991; 1994) sets out to meet this challenge by imposing extrinsic constraints on the distribution of the affixal resources of an inflectional system. Carstairs (1983) introduces an affix-based version of lexical economy in the form of the Paradigm Economy Principle (PEP). The PEP correlates C, the number of inflection classes in a morphological system with A, the number of affixal exponents associated with the paradigm cell that exhibits the most affixal allomorphy. In a system where all relevant exponence is affixal, each leading form will be marked by a distinct affix, so that there will be exactly as many affixes as leading forms, and either the forms or the affixes can be used to index inflection classes. The No Blur Constraint (NBP) refines the distributional constraints on affixes by treating “inflection class membership as part of the meaning of an inflectional affix” (Carstairs (1994, 741)) and stipulating that at most one class-neutral affix can be associated with any paradigm cell. Although there are parallels between affixal constraints and the economy conditions assumed within WP approaches, there are also important differences. Constraints on affixal distribution are purely extrinsic, and do not fol-

Inflection Classes and Economy

55

low from any property of a morpheme-based model. Both the PEP and NBP also have an “all or nothing” character, in that there is no intrinsic notion of economy to fall back on if they are violated. Hence apparent violations of the PEP are overcome by consolidating paradigms into “macroparadigms”, raising questions about the status of “paradigms” or “inflection classes”. Affixal principles must also confront the problem of deciding which types of exponents should count as an “inflexion proper” (Carstairs (1983, 118)), and which types can be disregarded as “stem vowels” or as exponents of lexical properties that do not fall under the PEP or NBP. More fundamentally, affixbased principles are wholly irrelevant to any stem-based patterns of economy. In short, Carstairs (1983, 127) identifies an important and, to a surprising degree, overlooked property of inflectional systems when he remarks that “there exists a real tendency . . . towards keeping the total of paradigms for any word-class close to the logical minimum”. Yet the need to invoke affixal constraints to capture this tendency is an artifact of abstracting exponents out of their classes and asking why they do not cooccur with exponents from other classes. A traditional response is that the choice of exponents in a paradigm is not free and independent, as suggested by lists of affixes. Rather, exponents are inextricably linked to paradigms and inflection classes, and it is the interdependence of forms in paradigm that ultimately determines the economy of an inflectional system. The body of the paper illustrates how a WP model captures the economy of inflectional systems and subsumes the effects of the PEP and NBP. Section 2 reviews notions of paradigm economy, and their application to patterns of affixal exponence. Section 3 presents an analysis of stem-based declensional economy in Estonian, and section 4 concludes with some general remarks about inflectional systems. 2.

Paradigm Economy

The point of departure for Carstairs (1983) is the observation that the number of inflection classes in a morphological system never approaches the maximum that could, in principle, be defined from the inflectional exponents of the system. Even a small set of exponents defines an implausibly large number of classes, as one can see by considering the classes defined by the case exponents in (1).

56

James P. Blevins

(1) Nominative and genitive exponents in Russian NOM GEN

S INGULAR P LURAL -Ø, -o, -a -y, -a -y, -a -Ø, -ov, -ej

As Carstairs (1983) notes, the number of distinct paradigms defined by a set of exponents is the product of the number of exponents in each cell. In the present case, the ten exponents in (1) define thirty-six (3 × 2 × 3 × 2) potential paradigms.1 The twelve distinct paradigms with a nominative singular in -a are listed in (2); the remaining twenty-four have a nominative singular in -o or -Ø. (2) Independent paradigms containing nominative and genitive exponents 1 SG NOM GEN PL NOM GEN

2

3 4

5

6 7 -a

8

9 10 11 12

-y -a -y -a -y -a -Ø -ov -ej -Ø -ov -ej -Ø -ov -ej -Ø -ov -ej

The most striking and unnatural feature of these paradigms is not their number, but the complete independence of their cells. For example, knowing that the nominative singular of a noun ends in -a in (2) implies nothing about any other nominative or genitive form. The same is true for the other exponents in (2). This is, of course, not at all how inflection classes tend to be organized. In Russian, knowing that the nominative singular of a noun ends in -a allows one to predict the other nominative and genitive exponents, along with the rest of the paradigm. Thus the feminine noun KOMNATA (‘room’) has the nominative singular komnata, the nominative plural komnaty, the genitive singular komnaty and the genitive plural komnat. Other forms are of less predictive value, and some — notably the dative, prepositional and instrumental plurals — are of no value at all.2 Nevertheless, regular paradigms never consist entirely of non-predictive forms, of the sort schematized in (2). 1 Adding

allomorphs for the four other cases in Russian merely multiplies the number of classes further. 2 In Russian, the dative, prepositional and instrumental plural endings are the same for all regular nouns and adjectives.

Inflection Classes and Economy

2.1.

57

The Status of Inflection Classes

Interdependence of forms is, rather, a general property of inflectional paradigms, and it is doubtful whether any morphological system exhibiting the independence in (2) would even be described in terms of inflection classes. Yet Carstairs (1983) appears to have been the first to point out, if indirectly, that paradigms with fully independent forms are in no way anomalous if one takes a purely taxonomic view of inflection classes. That is, if inflection classes merely enumerate the distinctive patterns of declension and conjugation in a language, there is no principled reason why the forms within any given class should be interdependent. Although a taxonomic view of inflection classes is most strongly associated with morpheme-based models, a similar perspective underlies any approach that uses diacritic class features to cross-reference lexical entries with exponents or rules. Within a morpheme-based approach, the independence of forms in a paradigm follows from the independence of their parts. In an “item and arrangement” (IA) model (Hockett (1954)), stems and exponents are both represented as lexical entries and associated by a relation of “selection”. 3 Thus the singular paradigm of KOMNATA in (3)a is factored into the stem and exponent entries in (3)b. (3) IA analysis of the singular forms of a. b. S INGULAR F ORMS NOM GEN ACC PREP DAT INST

komnata komnaty komnatu komnate komnate komnatoj

KOMNATA

S TEM E NTRY

E XPONENT E NTRIES

h[2, N , FEM ], komnati h[2, NOM , SG ], -ai h[2, GEN , SG ], -yi h[2, ACC , SG ], -ui h[2, PREP, SG], -ei h[2, DAT, SG ], -ei h[2, INST, SG ], -oji

Certain patterns of allomorph “selection” are conditioned by phonological properties of the stem. For example, the genitive exponent -y (IPA /i/) is realized as [i] following the “hard” unpalatalized consonant [t], but as [i] fol3 Stems and exponents are equally independent in what Hockett (1954) calls an “item and process” (IP) model, though in this case the “entry” for an exponent may specify a process or operation, rather than a morph.

58

James P. Blevins

lowing a “soft” palatalized consonant, as in nedeli, the genitive singular of NEDELJA (‘week’). However, the selection of the exponent set in (3)b is clearly not phonologically conditioned, as “hard stem” masculine and neuter nouns follow a different pattern. The selection of the exponents in (3)b also cannot be attributed to the fact that the stem is feminine in gender, given that ˇ masculine nouns in -a, such as MUŽ CINA (‘man’) decline in the same way as KOMNATA. Hence the stem and exponent entries (3)b are linked by a common declensional class feature [2]. Now it happens that the gender and form of komnat together determine the class of KOMNATA, since hard stem feminines belong to the second declension in Russian. However, what is “predictable” in this case is merely the association of the class feature “[2]” with KOMNATA. The fact that class is predictable does not reduce the dependence on diacritic class features. Moreover, as Corbett (1983; 1991) argues at some length, inflection class is not in genˇ eral predictable from gender in Slavic. For example, the class of MUŽ CINA is not predictable from mužˇcin, since most hard stem masculines belong to the ˇ first declension. Consequently, MUŽ CINA must be assigned “inherent” class features. The basic problem with inflection class features is their generality: They permit arbitrary indexings of stems and exponent sets. By disassembling inflectional paradigms into inventories of “independent” stems and exponents, an IA analysis loses the information that KOMNATA has a nominative singular in -a and that nouns with a nominative singular in -a form their accusative singular in -u, etc. Inflection class features restore the association between stems and exponent sets, but at the cost of expanding the space of potential classes. Given that class features are purely diacritic, there is nothing to prevent them from linking stems with the kinds of independent classes in (2). Hence the tendency towards economy noted by Carstairs (1983) remains wholly unexplained in an IA account. It is perhaps surprising that the same issue arises for the “stem and paradigm” (SP) models of Anderson (1992), Aronoff (1994), and Stump (2001). These approaches differ from morpheme-based models in a number of important respects. All SP models associate grammatical properties with words, rather than with component morphs, and Stump (2001) also treats paradigms as basic components of a morphological system. Yet, like IA accounts, SP models retain stems as the basic unit of lexical storage, and use inflection class features to cross-reference stem entries with classes of real-

Inflection Classes and Economy

59

ization rules. The stem and exponents in (3)b thus correspond transparently to the stem and rules in (4). (4) SP analysis of the singular forms of

KOMNATA

S TEM E NTRY R EALIZATION RULES h[2, N , FEM ], komnati h[2, NOM , SG ], Xai h[2, GEN , SG ], Xyi h[2, ACC , SG ], Xui h[2, PREP, SG ], Xei h[2, DAT, SG ], Xei h[2, INST, SG ], Xoji The rules in (4) are stated in the “realization pair” format of Aronoff (1994). The first element of each pair, e.g., [2, NOM , SG ], expresses the properties that are spelled out by the rule. The second element, e.g., Xa, specifies how the properties are spelled out, in this case by suffixing -a to a stem “X”. The class feature [2] is again associated with second declension nouns, and ensures that they are declined by the rules in (4). From the standpoint of inflectional economy, the cross-indexing of stems and rules in (4) is no different in principle from the indexing of stems and exponents in (3)b. Thus SP approaches again allow stems to be indexed to fully independent inflection classes. The difficulties that IA and SP models face in constraining inflection classes derive from a common source, namely the fact that inflection class is not, in general, predictable from the stem entry of a lexeme. The stem entry in (3)b and (4) represents the morphosyntactic properties and morphotactic base shared by the inflected forms of KOMNATA. This entry contains just “inherent” (Chomsky (1965, 171)) category and gender properties, and the common stem form komnat. Yet a lexical representation that contains only these shared characteristics excludes precisely the properties that identify KOMNATA as a second declension noun. Hence the entry must be augmented by class features. But then there is no reason in principle why inflection classes should not simply provide a systematic enumeration of the forms of a morphological system, as Carstairs (1983) notes. 2.2.

Affixal Economy

A traditional solution, outlined in section 2.3 below, is to reinstate words as the basic units of lexical storage. But Carstairs (1983) takes a different tack,

60

James P. Blevins

one which maintains independent entries for stems and exponents. Carstairs (1983, 127) proposes that a constraint on the distribution of inflectional exponents, which he calls the Paradigm Economy Principle (PEP), keeps “the actual paradigms” in a system “at or close to the minimum logically compatible with the inflectional resources” of the system. An example will help to clarify the PEP, along with the notions of “paradigm” and “economy” that it incorporates. Russian nouns are standardly assigned to the three basic declension classes in (5). The first declension is usually divided into the masculine and neuter subclasses represented by ŽUR NAL and SLOVO in (5). The second declension, as noted above, contains masculine and feminine nouns, but since they decline alike, this declension is not conventionally subdivided into gender classes. The third declension is represented by DVER 0 in (5). Apart from the masculine noun PUT 0 (‘way’) and ten neuter nouns in -mja, the third declension is exclusively feminine. 4 (5) Exemplary noun paradigms in Russian NUM CASE NOM GEN SING

ACC PREP DAT INST NOM GEN

PLU

ACC PREP DAT INST

G LOSS

F IRST ( MASC ) F IRST ( NEUT ) žurnal slovo žurnala slova žurnal slovo žurnale slove žurnalu slovu žurnalom slovom žurnaly slova žurnalov slov žurnaly slova žurnalax slovax žurnalam slovam žurnalami slovami ‘magazine’ ‘word’

S ECOND komnata komnaty komnatu komnate komnate komnatoj komnaty komnat komnaty komnatax komnatam komnatami ‘room’

T HIRD dver´ dveri dver´ dveri dveri dverju dveri dverej dveri dverjax dverjam dverjami ‘door’

4 Nouns of the first and second declension exhibit additional variation, conditioned by whether their stems end in a “soft” (palatalized) or “hard” (unpalatalized) consonant, but this is not treated as a basis for further paradigmatic subdivisions. Outside of the second declension singular paradigm, accusative is a “virtual” case in Russian. The accusative forms of a noun are identical to the nominative forms in inanimate nouns, and identical to the genitive forms in animate nouns. However, this syncretism is again not traditionally regarded as constituting animate and inanimate sub-paradigms.

Inflection Classes and Economy

61

To determine whether Russian complies with the PEP, one first identifies the paradigm cell that exhibits the greatest affixal allomorphy. Stripping the exponents off the forms in (5) (and ignoring the mainly syncretic accusative exponents) yields the affixal case inventory in (6) below. Four cells in (6) have three allomorphs, three cells have two allomorphs, and three cells have just one. Since no cell has more than three allomorphs, the PEP allows at most three inflection classes. The question is, then, how many “actual paradigms” does Russian have? Some descriptions, e.g., Corbett (1983; 1991), assign first declension masculines and neuters to separate declensions, and thus recognize a total of four. However, as Carstairs (1983) notes, the traditional practice of consolidating classes that differ solely in gender into “macroparadigms” often brings a system into conformance with the PEP. In the present case, combining first declension masculines and neuters yields a total of three classes, which exactly matches the largest number of allomorphs in the cells in (6). (6) Regular case exponents in Russian C ASE S INGULAR P LURAL NOM -Ø, -o, -a -y, -a GEN -y, -a -Ø, -ov, -ej PREP -e, -y -ax DAT -u, -e, -y -am INST -om, -oj, -u -ami On the face of it, Russian nouns provide a straightforward illustration of paradigm economy. The PEP plots C, the number of distinct ways of inflecting a stem (i.e., the number of inflection classes) against A, the number of ways of realizing the paradigm cell with the greatest affixal allomorphy. A language complies with the PEP if C is no greater than A, which in practice means that C = A. Given the cells in (6), A = 3; given a consolidated first declension, C = 3. Thus C = A = 3. Nevertheless, the manner in which Russian is brought into conformance with the PEP raises important questions about what constitutes “distinctness”. First declension masculine and neuter nouns exhibit superficially different patterns in (5), as they have different endings in the nominative, and in the genitive plural. These classes are, however, regarded as “nondistinct”, on the grounds that they differ in gender and share the remaining exponents

62

James P. Blevins

in common. Yet if one regards the variation between masculine and neuter paradigms in (5) as gender-related and hence “off-budget” for the purpose of determining C, the difference between masculine and neuter exponents in (6) must likewise be regarded as the realization of gender, and hence not relevant for determining A. One cannot maintain that paradigms are nondistinct because they differ in gender, and at the same time claim that the genderdifferentiated exponents in those paradigms count as inflectionally distinct. But then what are the nominative, and genitive plural exponents of the consolidated first declension, and how does one determine whether they are distinct from the exponents from the second and third declensions? 5 Irrespective of how these questions are resolved, the paradigms in (5) will remain in compliance with the PEP, since the dative and instrumental plural cells have three allomorphs in any case. The general point, however, is that one cannot establish an exponent inventory on the basis of unconsolidated paradigms and then determine class size on the basis of a consolidated system. The use of macroparadigms to bring systems into conformance with the PEP also raises questions about the limits of this strategy. Combining first declension masculines and neuters into a macrodeclension is a relatively conservative proposal, which is widely assumed in descriptive grammars of Russian. But what principle prevents the consolidation of unrelated paradigms that are never grouped together? Precisely the same considerations that justified the consolidation of masculines and neuters in (5) would appear to apply to first declension masculines and third declension feminines. These declensions again differ in gender, and even have more plural forms in common than first declension masculines and neuters do. So what blocks a first-third macrodeclension? Or, for that matter, what prevents the consolidation of both masculines and neuters with third declension feminines? It might be possible to justify particular decisions in individual cases, but the fact that this is nec5 One

could, for example, represent these exponents as {-Ø, -o}, {-y, -a}, and {-Ø, -ov}, and declare that each should count as “one allomorph” for the purpose of calculating A. But is the first declension nominative plural {-y, -a} distinct from the exponent -y, which marks nominative plural in the second and third declensions? One answer would be “yes”, on the grounds that one element of {-y, -a}, namely -a, is distinct from -y. Yet by allowing {-y, -a} to maintain the contrasts associated with each of its elements, this answer implicitly treats {-y, -a} as two exponents. Alternatively, {-y, -a} could be judged to be nondistinct from -y, on the grounds that not all of its elements contrast with -y. This answer reduces the nominative plural cell in (6) to one allomorph, and the nominative singular and genitive plural cells to two.

Inflection Classes and Economy

63

essary at all just highlights the essentially case-by-case character of the PEP and its descendant conditions. However, it is the way that “distinctness” is defined for “meanings” and “inflectional realizations” that has the most far-reaching consequences for the inflectional economy conditions investigated in Carstairs (1983; 1987) and Carstairs-McCarthy (1991; 1994). As noted above, nearly all stem-based accounts must use inflection class features to associate stems and exponents. Carstairs-McCarthy (1994, 741) makes a virtue of necessity, and suggests that “inflection class membership can count as part of the information content of an inflectional affix” under conditions that he goes on to specify. This claim effectively blurs the distinction between the properties that a form specifies and the characteristics that it, qua form, exhibits. An account that invokes inflection class “meanings” to account for inflectional economy thus sacrifices much of the intuitive plausibility of the original PEP. Yet it is important to recognize that this blurring of form and content does not derive from the search for inflectional economy conditions, but rather from the attempt to state these conditions in terms of morphemes. Inflection class “content” nicely illustrates the kinds of “meanings” that one ends up with by decomposing an inflectional system into inventories of “minimal meaningful units”. A morpheme-based perspective also underlies the characterization of “inflectional realization” in Carstairs (1983; 1987) and Carstairs-McCarthy (1991; 1994). Carstairs-McCarthy (1994, 739) states that “wordforms will be deemed inflectionally distinct if and only if they differ affixally”, and suggests two considerations that support this “provisional, but not . . . arbitrary decision”. The first is that other morpheme-based accounts (including his own previous work) assumes “that there is an important difference between affixal and nonaffixal . . . morphology”. The force of this observation is weakened by a number of factors. To begin with, the fact that one has not changed position on an issue can hardly be regarded as evidence for the correctness of that position. One might also object that the distinction between affixal and nonaffixal exponence is forced on morpheme-based approaches, particularly IA accounts, which encounter familiar difficulties in describing nonaffixal patterns. Quite apart from these kinds of issues, it is far from clear that the decision to “consider only affixal inflection” is parallel in the cases that Carstairs (1994, 739) cites. For example, Halle & Marantz (1993, 124ff.) are able to disregard nonaffixal alternations because they tag every form that exhibits

64

James P. Blevins

such an alternation with a proxy “zero” affix. This affix then triggers a “readjustment rule” that effects the desired nonaffixal alternation. One’s view of this type of analysis will tend to reflect more general views about structuralist morphophonemics and lexically restricted “rules”. Carstairs-McCarthy (1994, 760f.) acknowledges a problem that this use of zero affixes raises for his account, and thus argues against the Halle & Marantz (1993) analysis. But again, whatever one thinks about zero affixes in general, it is the use of zeros that permits Halle & Marantz (1993) to ignore nonaffixal patterns. By disregarding nonaffixal patterns and excluding their zero proxies, CarstairsMcCarthy (1994) eliminates entire verb classes that are distinguished by Halle & Marantz (1993). One might wonder whether this sort of thing should matter. The answer is that it does, for reasons that relate to the second type of consideration that Carstairs-McCarthy (1994) raises. The decision to “consider only affixal inflection” permits a description of the English verb system that conforms to what Carstairs-McCarthy (1994, 742) terms in (7) the “No Blur Principle”. (7) No Blur Principle (Carstairs-McCarthy (1994, 742)): Within any set of competing inflectional affixal realizations for the same paradigmatic cell, no more than one can fail to identify inflection class unambiguously. Blur “avoidance” in the English verb system entails recognizing a verb class containing GIVE, because it has a past participle form in -n, while “ignor[ing] entirely the inflection class of verbs such as sing” on the grounds that they “display no overt affix for either the past or the passive participle” (CarstairsMcCarthy (1994, 760)). Further support for the exclusion of nonaffixal exponents comes, Carstairs-McCarthy (1994, 740) suggests, from the fact that “the ‘affixes only’ decision has the helpful practical consequence of usually yielding clearcut answers to questions about inflectional and paradigmatic distinctness”, and that “some apparent breaches of paradigm economy dissolve when nonaffixal inflection is ignored” (p. 759). So, in short, restricting attention to affixes is useful, because affixal exponents can — at least usually — be isolated, and convenient, because it provides a basis for ignoring patterns that would otherwise violate economy principles. These sorts of considerations cannot be regarded as serious support for an “affixes only” policy. At best they provide a rationale for provisional assumptions that are vindicated by the results they yield. But what is the purpose of

Inflection Classes and Economy

65

an analysis that gerrymanders English verbs into five classes by just ignoring other patterns? One might want to draw a principled distinction between open and closed classes, and disregard the SING pattern as frozen, as it surely is (Clahsen (1999)). Yet the same criterion would exclude GIVE, and, besides, productivity plays no role in any affixal economy principle. The apparent capriciousness of excluding SING clarifies the import of the “affixes only” decision. This methodological choice completely severs the connection between inflectional allomorphy and inflection classes. A system may have indefinitely many classes, provided that they are not affixally distinct. In language families, such as Germanic, in which productive inflection is almost exclusively affixal, this decision merely restricts the scope of the PEP or the “No Blur Principle” to a subclass of inflectional patterns. In other families, such as Balto-Finnic, in which productive stem alternations distinguish inflectional patterns, the emphasis on affixation renders these principles almost wholly irrelevant. It may be possible to give “economical” descriptions of such systems, but these descriptions will have almost nothing to say about the number, type or structure of inflection classes. This may seem surprising, but it is fully consistent with the formulation of the PEP and subsequent economy principles. These principles do not, as is sometimes supposed, constrain the number of inflection classes in a system. What they constrain, rather, is the distribution of inflectional affixes: Paradigm economy provides at least a partial answer to a question . . . about how, in any inflected language, the inflexional resources available in some word-class or part of speech are distributed among members of that wordclass (Carstairs (1983, 161)).

In short, economy principles rehabilitate the notion of a “paradigm”, but only in a supporting role. Paradigms are not the “complex whole” (Matthews (1991, 204)) of WP models, but serve merely as a domain over which one can state generalizations or constraints governing the distribution of affixes. 2.3.

Lexical Economy

From a traditional perspective, the need to constrain the distribution of “the inflectional resources available in some word-class” is an artifact of a method. The “availability” of inflectional resources is the result of dissecting inflected forms into independent stems and exponents. Once these elements have been

66

James P. Blevins

assigned to separate entries, the analyst faces the problem of reconstituting the original system. The markers of inflection class have usually been removed from stems, so that class features or other diacritic properties are needed to re-index stems and exponents. But the generality of the indexing mechanism makes it seem that the system is not fully exploiting the resources at its disposal. So economy principles are introduced to confine exponents to their own inflection classes. The critical step in this process is the decision to treat stems and exponents as independent units. This is precisely the step that a WP model does not take, as Matthews (1991, 204) points out: In the ancient model the primary insight is not that words can be split into roots and formatives, but that they can be located in paradigms. They are not wholes composed of simple parts, but are themselves the parts within a complex whole.

That is, the inflected forms in a morphological system are not broken down into inventories of “free” stems and “bound” exponents. Words are, rather, assigned to paradigms, which are in turn organized into inflection classes. There is no need to restrict the distribution of inflectional exponents, since these elements have no independent status. One can investigate the conditions under which patterns of exponence in one class come to be extended, but this is a diachronic, not a synchronic question. The claim that inflected wordforms are listed as wholes in the lexicon does not, of course, entail that all inflected words must be listed. In principle, it would suffice to list a single exemplary paradigm for each inflection class, together with leading forms for each of the lexemes of that class. In a WP model, an exemplary paradigm functions simultaneously as “data” and “program”. While representing the forms of a particular lexeme, the paradigm also exhibits the inflectional patterns characteristic of its class, and thus provides an analogical base for the inflection of other lexemes of that class. For example, the paradigm for KOMNATA in (8) provides a model for the inflection of GAZETA (‘newspaper’). Matching the nominative singular leading form gazeta against its counterpart komnata establishes a correspondence that determines each of the remaining entries of GAZETA. These derived entries will preserve the “inherent” properties of the leading form: the lexeme index GAZETA, mnemonically represented by the citation form in small capitals (Matthews (1991, 26)), and the category and gender properties associated with the lexeme. The inflectional properties and form of these entries

Inflection Classes and Economy

67

will likewise exhibit the same correspondence as the cells of the exemplary paradigm. (8) Traditional WP analysis of Russian second declension nouns Leading Form Exemplary Paradigm h[GAZETA , N , FEM , h[NOM , SG ], komnatai h[NOM , PL ], komnatyi NOM , SG], gazetai h[GEN , SG ], komnatyi h[GEN , PL ], komnati h[ACC , SG ], komnatui h[ACC , PL ], komnatyi h[PREP, SG ], komnatei h[PREP, PL ], komnataxi h[DAT, SG ], komnatei h[DAT, PL ], komnatami h[INST, SG ], komnatoji h[INST, PL ], komnatamii 2.3.1.

Leading Forms

It is straightforward to schematize the exemplary paradigm in (8) to abstract out the stems that are implicit in the use of the forms of KOMNATA as an analogical base. Section 2.3.2 presents a system of schematic declensions, along the lines suggested for Latin in Bender (2000). The same patterns could be described by means of pairwise correspondences, of the sort given in Matthews (1991, 193), or in terms of the Kennformen and “paradigm structure conditions” proposed by Wurzel (1990, 207): Thus paradigm-structure conditions specify, on the whole, the predictable inflectional properties of words, due to the properties of certain “Kennformen”. In German noun declensions the (nominative) plural functions as the canonical “Kennform”. In the unmarked cases, the lexical base form is also the only “Kennform”; in the marked cases, reference to further “Kennformen” is necessary. The various inflectional systems differ regarding which inflectional forms represent “Kennformen”.

Each of these alternatives factors an inflectional system into two components: an abstract representation of predictable inflectional patterns, and a form or set of forms that predict which pattern a given lexeme follows. It is the interdependence of elements in a paradigm that underlies the economy achieved by these patterns and forms. It is not only that inflectional exponents are “encapsulated” in classes in a WP analysis, but also that they cannot, in principle, be exhaustively distributed over these classes. In order to factor an inflectional system into exemplary paradigms and leading forms, a high

68

James P. Blevins

degree of interdependence is, in fact, necessary, as Matthews (1991, 197) remarks. The most general insight [of the classical WP approach] is that one inflection tends to predict another . . . Traditionally, it is the basis for the method of exemplary paradigms.

Fully independent paradigms, of the sort illustrated in (2) cannot, in principle, be described in terms of exemplary paradigms and leading forms. It is, of course, possible to establish exemplary paradigms for each of the independent classes in (2). Yet no form is a reliable predictor of any other form in these paradigms. Hence no set of leading forms smaller than a whole paradigm is sufficient to identify the class of any other noun. The forms of each paradigm must therefore be listed in full, so that the distinction between exemplary paradigms and leading forms collapses entirely. In short, a WP analysis requires an interdependency between forms that excludes the pathological paradigms in (2). The key premise of any WP model is just that some set of forms smaller than a whole paradigm will suffice to identify the class of a lexeme. The tighter notions of economy assumed in classical WP models can, as noted earlier, be characterized in terms of the inventories of leading forms required to identify inflection class. A system is lexically economical if exactly one leading form suffices to identify the inflection class of an open-class lexeme. A system is lexically congruent if, for every lexeme in a given word-class, the same form (or set of forms) suffices. A description of Russian that uses the nouns in (5) as exemplary paradigms is both lexically economical and congruent. Nouns can be assigned to classes based on the form of their nominative singular, reflecting the traditional view that “the nominative is clearly the basic case” (Corbett (1991, 35)), or, at any rate, the most highly differentiated case form in Russian. A noun with a nominative singular in -a belongs to the second declension, a noun with a nominative singular in -o is a first declension neuter, while a noun ending in a “hard” consonant is a first declension masculine. Nouns with nominative singulars ending in a “soft” palatal consonant likewise belong to the first declension if they are masculine, and to the third declension, if they are feminine. Hence a nominative singular entry that includes inherent features, such as gender, will uniquely identify the class of a noun. In other systems, such as the Estonian declensional system in section 3.1, a single form may not suffice. However, from a WP perspective, there is no

Inflection Classes and Economy

69

principled reason why each lexeme must be identified by a single leading form. One can perhaps attribute the tendency toward lexical economy as a strategy for reducing memory load. However, there is no reason to believe that storing more than one entry per lexeme imposes an excessive memory burden. Moreover, it is evident that systems exhibiting a high degree of stem allomorphy are perfectly stable, as Estonian again indicates. A WP model thus provides a graded notion of economy. In any system that is sensibly described in terms of inflection classes, there will be a correlation between the number of leading forms and inflection classes. In a system that is lexically economical and congruent, such as Russian, the number of classes will be bounded by the number of leading forms. In other systems, the correlation will be more indirect, depending on the number and type of forms needed to identify classes. Hence there is no need to consolidate or exclude paradigms whenever there is a shortfall of leading forms. 2.3.2.

Inflection Classes

The correspondence between leading forms and exemplary paradigms remains largely implicit in traditional WP accounts. However, this notion can be made explicit by schematizing exemplary paradigms to extract the patterns that characterize the classes that they represent. Abstracting the lexical content of KOMNATA out of the paradigm in (8) yields the paradigm schema in (9)b. (9) a. b.

Leading Entry: h[GAZETA , N , FEM ,

NOM , SG ], gazetai

Schematic Second Declension Paradigm R([λ , NOM , SG ]) = X + a R([λ , NOM , PL ]) = X + y R([λ , GEN , SG ]) = X + y R([λ , GEN , PL ]) = X R([λ , ACC , SG ]) = X + u R([λ , ACC , PL ]) = X + y R([λ , PREP, SG ]) = X + e R([λ , PREP, PL ]) = X + ax R([λ , DAT, SG]) = X + e R([λ , DAT, PL ]) = X + am R([λ , INST, SG ]) = X + oj R([λ , INST, PL ]) = X + ami

As in a classical WP model, matching the leading form gazeta against the nominative singular cell in (9) identifies gazet as the base for the remaining forms of GAZETA. The schematization in (9)b merely clarifies that the pro-

70

James P. Blevins

cesses of “matching” a leading form against an exemplary paradigm in order to derive new entries involves “solving for” the lexeme variable “λ ” and the stem variable “X”. It might be thought that this schematization covertly reintroduces stems and exponent entries. This is an understandable misinterpretation, but a misinterpretation just the same. The “leading form” in (9)a is, in fact, a “leading lexical entry”, which identifies the morphosyntactic properties of the wordform gazeta. The nominative singular cell in the schematic paradigm, on the other hand, does not represent an entry, but rather expresses a constraint on entries. The constraint “R([λ , NOM , SG ]) = X + a” states that an entry containing the properties NOM and SG is realized by a form that ends in a. Finding a leading entry that satisfies this constraint establishes values for λ and X that permit the forms of the remaining entries to be deduced analogically. The fact that “R([λ , NOM , SG ]) = X + a” is satisfied by h[GAZETA , N , FEM , NOM , SG ], gazetai implies that “R([GAZETA , NOM , PL ]) = gazety” will be satisfied by the nominative plural entry, and so on. Leading entries and schematic paradigms allow one to deduce the form of stems and exponents in a system, and it would be implausible to claim that speakers are unaware of these sub-word patterns. However, although stems and exponents emerge as implicit “units of analysis” in a WP model, the important thing is that these elements do not function as “units of storage”. Inflectional exponents do not have independent entries; they are encapsulated in schematic paradigms, and do not have the freedom to associate with exponents from other paradigms. One can ask why certain exponents cooccur within a given inflectional system, but this is again primarily a historical question. Instantiating stem variables in a schematic paradigm also defines stem forms, but yet again these forms have no independent status, and, in particular, are not “cached out” in separate stem entries. The constraints in (9)b are, in effect, “realization rules” (Zwicky (1985)) that specify the formal “spell out” of a set of grammatical properties. However, unlike the rules proposed in stem and paradigm models, such as Anderson (1992), Aronoff (1994) and Stump (2001), the constraints in (9)b are not interpreted as “structure building rules”. Instead, like the “morphological transformations” of Matthews (1991), or, indeed, the rapports associatifs of Saussure (1916), these constraints represent “entry admissibility conditions”. These constraints characterize general patterns within a lexicon of inflected

Inflection Classes and Economy

71

wordforms, and provide the base for deducing new entries. It is particularly useful to regard these deductions as defeasible predictions about unlisted entries, rather than as inviolable constraints. This interpretation tolerates suppletion, and other variation within a class of nouns that otherwise inflect alike, and thereby avoids the need to introduce a separate paradigm for every deviation. But the key point is that the lexicon of a WP account contains inflected wordforms, and that inflectional stems and affixes are abstractions over this lexicon, as Kuryłowicz (1949, 159) proposes: Car la notion du thème est postérieure aux formes concrètes composant le paradigme: on trouve le thème en dégageant les éléments communs à toutes les formes casuelles du paradigme (quand il s’agit de la déclinaison). 6

A lexicon containing inflected wordforms does not need to assign inflection class features to Russian nouns, because wordforms retain the exponents that identify class. In the examples considered above, a nominative singular in -a suffices to identify KOMNATA and GAZETA as second declension nouns. A nominative singular in -o likewise identifies SLOVO as a first declension neuter in (10). (10) a. b.

Leading Entry: h[SLOVO , N , NEUT,

NOM , SG ], slovoi

Schematic First Declension Neuter Paradigm R([λ , NOM , SG ]) = X + o R([λ , GEN , SG ]) = X + a R([λ , ACC , SG ]) = X + o R([λ , PREP, SG]) = X + e R([λ , DAT, SG ]) = X + u R([λ , INST, SG ]) = X + om

R([λ , NOM , PL ]) = X + a R([λ , GEN , PL ]) = X R([λ , ACC , PL ]) = X + a R([λ , PREP, PL ]) = X + ax R([λ , DAT, PL ]) = X + am R([λ , INST, PL ]) = X + ami

The first declension masculine noun ŽURNAL is identified by the fact that its nominative singular ends in a “hard” unpalatalized consonant. Since this consonant is part of the noun stem, it will be useful to have a way of referring to the final segment of a stem. Let Y c represent a consonant-final stem. Adapting the standard transliterations of “soft” and “hard” signs, let Y c 0 represent 6 ‘For

the notion of the stem is dependent on the concrete forms composing the paradigm: One finds the stem in disengaging the elements common to all the case forms of a paradigm (when dealing with declination)’ [JPB].

72

James P. Blevins

a stem that ends in a soft consonant and Y c 00 represent a stem that ends in a hard consonant. Then the nominative singular constraint in (11)b indicates that the stem X ends in a hard consonant in (11)b. (11) a. b.

Leading Entry: h[ŽURNAL , N , MASC ,

NOM , SG ], žurnali

Schematic First Declension Masculine Paradigm R([λ , NOM , SG ]) = (X = Y c00 ) R([λ , NOM , PL ]) = X + y R([λ , GEN , SG]) = X + a R([λ , GEN , PL ]) = X + ov R([λ , ACC , SG ]) = X R([λ , ACC , PL ]) = X + y R([λ , PREP, SG ]) = X + e R([λ , PREP, PL ]) = X + ax R([λ , DAT, SG ]) = X + u R([λ , DAT, PL ]) = X + am R([λ , INST, SG ]) = X + om R([λ , INST, PL ]) = X + ami

There is, as noted above, only one place in the regular noun system where the nominative singular form does not uniquely identify class, and that is with nouns ending in “soft” palatalized consonants. The nominative singular forms of third declension nouns, such as DVER 0 (‘door’) and “soft stem” first declension nouns, such as SLOVAR 0 (‘dictionary’) both end in a soft palatalized consonant (indicated by the right quotation mark, which transliterates the “soft sign”). However, a leading entry will still suffice, as first declension nouns ending in a soft consonant are masculine, while regular third declension nouns are feminine. Hence representing gender in the third declension paradigm in (12)b will distinguish soft stem leading forms. Feminines like DVER0 will follow the pattern in (12)b. (12) a. b.

Leading Entry: h[DVER 0 , N , FEM ,

NOM , SG ], dver 0 i

Schematic Third Declension Paradigm R([λ , FEM , NOM , SG ]) = (X = Y c0 ) R([λ , FEM , NOM , PL ]) = X + y R([λ , FEM , GEN , SG ]) = X + y R([λ , FEM GEN , PL ]) = X + oj R([λ , FEM , ACC , SG ]) = X R([λ , FEM , ACC , PL ]) = X + y R([λ , FEM , PREP, SG ]) = X + y R([λ , FEM , PREP, PL ]) = X + ax R([λ , FEM , DAT, SG ]) = X + y R([λ , FEM , DAT, PL ]) = X + am R([λ , FEM , INST, SG ]) = X + u R([λ , FEM , INST, PL ]) = X + ami

Inflection Classes and Economy

73

Soft-stem masculines like SLOVAR 0 follow the pattern in (11)b, except that y and o surface as the regular alternants i and e (Unbegaun (1957, 39)), and the genitive plural is marked by -ej. 2.3.3.

Declension-Neutral Patterns

The schematic paradigms in (9)b–(12)b are conservative in various respects. They represent the four declension classes proposed in Corbett (1991, 36), rather than the three recognized in many grammars. Moreover, since these paradigms simply extract the patterns of exponence from each of the exemplary paradigms in (5), they fail to capture the class-independent patterns exhibited in (13). As (13) illustrates, dative, prepositional and instrumental plural exponents do not vary across declensions. Accusatives also exhibit a highly general animacy-sensitive alternation. Both patterns are also characteristic of adjectives, which inflect for gender, not inflection class in Russian. (13)

1 ST MASC 1 ST NEUT 2 ND FEM 3 RD FEM NOM X = Y c00 X = Y c0 Xo Xa X = Y c0 GEN Xa Xy ACC ANIM ( ATE ) Xa Xu Xy SING INANIM X Xo X PREP Xe Xy DAT Xu Xe Xy INST Xom Xoj Xu NOM Xy Xa Xy GEN Xov Xoj X Xoj ACC ANIM Xov Xoj X Xoj PLU INANIM Xy Xa Xy PREP Xax DAT Xam INST Xami

Hence it is appropriate to remove each of these declension-neutral patterns from the schematic paradigms in (9)b–(12)b, and declare them as constraints on nouns in general. The constraints that sanction prepositional, dative and instrumental plural forms of nouns are stated in (14).

74

James P. Blevins

(14) General exponence constraints a. R([λ , PREP, PL ]) = X + ax b. R([λ , DAT, PL ]) = X + am c. R([λ , INST, PL ]) = X + ami A similar strategy is applicable to the “virtual” accusative in Russian. Only second declension singular nouns have distinctive accusative forms. All other accusative forms are syncretic: The accusative forms of inanimate nouns are identical to their nominative forms, while accusative forms of animates are identical to their genitive forms. Within a WP approach, these relations are naturally expressed by “referral” rules of the sort proposed by Zwicky (1985) and Stump (1993). The referral rule in (15)a defines the accusative form of an inanimate noun in terms of the corresponding nominative. The deduction of an accusative form is thus “parasitic” on a nominative constraint that is satisfied in all respects except in that it specifies a NOM feature where the deduced entry has an ACC. The referral in (15)b likewise relates the accusative forms of animate nouns to the corresponding genitives. (15) Accusative case constraints a. R([λ , INANIM , ACC]) = R([λ , NOM ]) b. R([λ , ANIM , ACC]) = R([λ , GEN ]) c. R([λ , ACC , SG ]) = X + u If animacy is taken to be the marked property in Russian, the INANIM property can be omitted from (15)a, so that (15)b will be more specific than (15)a, and take priority. However, neither (15)a nor (15)b is intrinsically less specific than the constraint in (15)c that defines second declension accusative singulars in -u. There are various ways to regulate the interaction of these constraints, but the most straightforward is to assign class-specific constraints priority over general constraints. 2.3.4.

Schematic Macroparadigms

Given the generality of the patterns in (14), (15)a and (15)b, the forms that they sanction are of no predictive value. Removing these constraints from individual schematic paradigms thus isolates the patterns that distinguish the four basic declensions in (13), and also clarifies the basis for constructing traditional macroparadigms. For example, hard and soft stem masculines inflect

Inflection Classes and Economy

75

alike except in the genitive plural, where the alternation between the -v in hard stems and the -j in soft stems does not reflect any regular phonological alternation. Hence both of the constraints in (16) are required. (16) First declension masculine genitive plural constraints a. R([λ , GEN , PL ]) = Y c00 + ov b. R([λ , GEN , PL ]) = Y c0 + oj Although the alternation between -v and -j is not attributable to a regular phonological process, it is nevertheless phonologically conditioned. Since the application of the constraints in (16) is conditioned by the stem of a leading form, there is no contradiction in assigning both constraints to the genitive plural cell of a schematic first declension masculine paradigm. First declension masculine and neuters can also be consolidated into a more abstract class, though at the cost of complicating the interpretation of schematic paradigms. The trade-off between the number and complexity of schematic paradigms is illustrated by the first declension macroparadigm in (17), which combines the neuter paradigm in (10)b and the masculine paradigm in (11)b. (17) Consolidated WP analysis of Russian first declension nouns R([λ , MASC , NOM , SG ], (X = Y c) R([λ , MASC , NOM , PL ]) = X + y R([λ , NEUT, NOM , SG ]) = X + o R([λ , NEUT, NOM , PL ]) = X + a R([λ , GEN , SG ]) = X + a R([λ , MASC , GEN , PL ]) = Y c00 + ov R([λ , PREP, SG]) = X + e R([λ , MASC , GEN , PL ]) = Y c0 + oj R([λ , DAT, SG ]) = X + u R([λ , NEUT, GEN , PL ]) = X R([λ , INST, SG ]) = X + om The complementarity of the constraints in the multiply-filled cells in (17) avoids conflict or indeterminacy. First declension masculine and neuters may thus be consolidated, reducing the number of paradigms. Yet this reduction complicates the relation between paradigms and leading forms. The matching between a leading form and paradigm cell in (17) no longer “instantiates” all stem variables in the paradigm, but only those in cells with compatible gender values. So, in effect, the distinction between masculines and neuters reemerges in the way that (17) is interpreted. Merging (17) with the third declension in (12) would introduce even greater complications of this sort. None of the stem variables in the gender-

76

James P. Blevins

neutral cells in (17) could be instantiated when a third declension entry was matched against the consolidated macroparadigm. Thus the elements of the original paradigms would have to be kept apart in some way. As these examples suggest, the conventions needed to interpret macroparadigms invariably reintroduce “virtual” declension classes. Hence the false economy achieved by macroparadigms comes out plainly in a WP description. 2.3.5.

Patterns and Predictability

The schematization of exemplary paradigms raises questions about the level of abstractness that is appropriate for the description of inflection classes. Consider the patterns summarized in (18). (18) Declension-specific patterns of affixal exponence in Russian 1 ST NOM GEN SING ACC

MASC

X = Y c00 X = Y c0 Xa —

Xo

INST

Xy

NOM

Xov

Xa Xoj

2 ND FEM 3 RD FEM Xa

Xu Xom

DAT

GEN

NEUT

Xe

PREP

PLU

1 ST

X

X = Y c0 Xy Xu — Xy Xe Xy Xoj Xu Xy Xoj

Declension classes are traditionally defined in terms of shared patterns of exponence. According to this criterion, first masculine clearly comprises a distinct declension, first masculine and neuter make up a somewhat less uniform declension, and no other groupings show more similarities than differences. However, if one were to approach the same question from a morphosyntactic perspective, the second and third declensions might appear more uniform, as they are predominantly feminine. More abstract patterns of form variation might also suggest a different organization. 7 Thus the third declension exhibits a distinctive syncretism between prepositional and genitive singular, while the second and third declensions both exhibit a syncretism between da7 See,

for example, Wiese (2000) for a proposal regarding the organization of German declensions into natural classes.

Inflection Classes and Economy

77

tive and prepositional singular. If these types of patterns of co-variation were treated as the basis for defining paradigms and inflection classes, one might again be led to combine the traditional second and third declensions. The way that declension classes are defined will likewise determine whether particular exponents or patterns are regarded general or classspecific. If the second and third declension are grouped together, then shared patterns within these declensions will count as class-specific; they are treated as separate declensions, shared patterns will be class-neutral. Hence the status of principles such as the NBP depend on the criteria that are applied to define paradigms and inflection classes. As discussed above, this is a point on which the paradigm economy literature is not altogether clear. It is perhaps also worth mentioning in this context that the genitive plural exponents in (18) provide a prima facie violation of the NBP, as this principle is formulated in (7). In the second declension and in first declension masculines the genitive plural is realized by the noun stem; in the third declension, and in soft stem first declension masculines, genitive plural is realized by the exponent -oj. Hence more than one affixal exponent fails to “identify inflection class unambiguously”. One can, of course, reconcile this pattern with the letter of the NBP by exempting the phonologically-conditioned selection of -oj. However, any move of this sort salvages the NBP at the cost of severing the connection between blur avoidance and predictability. It remains the case that neither the lack of an exponent (alternatively, a “zero” exponent), nor -oj identifies the inflection class of a form. From a WP perspective, this type of “blurring” is no more problematic than the existence of exponents, such as -ax, -am and -ami, which are uniform across declensions. The phenomenon that Carstairs-McCarthy (1994) terms “blurring” is merely an instance of non-predictive exponence. The fact that one might be able to construct blur-free descriptions of inflectional systems arguably reveals more about the descriptive flexibility that is gained by recognizing diverse types of macroparadigms and by granting various kinds of exemptions than it does about the organization of inflection classes. Furthermore, as discussed in section 3.5, a language can exhibit pathologically uneconomical patterns of inflectional exponence and still satisfy the NBP, provided that the exponents are non-affixal. A WP approach differs from an account that imposes an affix-based economy constraint like the NBP in requiring that some form or set of forms must be of predictive value. A central question for WP approaches thus concerns

78

James P. Blevins

the basis for selecting leading forms. The use of the nominative singular as a citation form reflects its predictive value in many Indo-European declensions. One might want to relate the use of nominative singular as a leading form to the unmarked morphosyntactic status that Jakobson (1936) attributes to nominative singular properties. Yet there are languages in which the nominative singular is not of great predictive value. In some, such as Estonian (described in section 3 below), the nominative singular may even be the least predictive form in a paradigm. The definition of lexical congruence given earlier represents the classical WP view that the leading forms of a declensional system should be morphosyntactically coherent, in the sense that they all realize the same paradigm cell. However, one could just as well select a morphotactically coherent set of leading forms in Russian. That is, all regular noun declensions contain a singular form in -u, but differ in the case that they associate this form. This form realizes dative in the first declension, accusative in the second declension and instrumental in the third. Hence the inflection class of any noun is uniquely identified by a leading entry that identifies the case of the form in -u. 2.4.

Summary

Three points should be stressed in connection with the brief discussion of open issues above. The first is that these issues represent largely free choices within a WP analysis. The second point is that the resolution of these questions ultimately hinges on how speakers actually represent inflection class systems. Traditional WP accounts can be regarded as idealizations of a network-based model of a mental lexicon. Which assumptions of this idealization are psychologically plausible or perhaps even correct is ultimately an empirical question, which cannot be determined entirely a priori. A third, more general, point leads back to the central claim of this section. That is, that the economy of an inflectional system rests on patterns of interpredictability. As the earlier analyses indicate, interpredictability holds between leading entries and deduced entries, rather than between simple forms. The soft stem leading forms in (18) underscore this point. One must know the gender, and, indeed, case, of such a form in order to associate it with the appropriate exemplary paradigm. This suggests a natural treatment of indeclinable nouns in Russian. Some indeclinable nouns have a form that prevents them from being coerced into

Inflection Classes and Economy

79

any declension class. Yet others, such as radio (‘radio’) or kino (‘cinema’), appear to have a suitable form and gender, in this case one that is compatible with the first neuter declension. A simple way of describing these indeclinables is to assign them a single, case-neutral, entry. This entry will not serve as a leading form, as it does not satisfy the morphosyntactic properties specified in the corresponding cell in a schematic exemplary paradigm. Hence any lexeme represented by a degenerate entry will fall outside the inflection class system. 3.

Declensional Economy in Estonian

Previous sections suggest that the economical distribution of affixal exponents in an inflectional system reflect the intrinsic interdependence of wordforms, and that the way that WP models express this interdependence subsumes the effects of affix-based economy principles. The present section reinforces these conclusions by showing how a WP description captures the economical distribution of stems in Estonian declensional paradigms. Rather than “one inflection predicting another”, as in many Indo-European languages, it is stems that tend to predict one another in Estonian. As with affixal dependencies, these interlocking patterns of stem syncretism effectively constrain the number of declension classes and the size of lexical inventories in Estonian. Yet since these patterns do not involve affixal exponence, they do not interact with affixal economy principles. 3.1.

Declension Classes in Estonian

Descriptions of Estonian differ widely in the number of declensional subtypes that they recognize, though there is some basic agreement about the rough number of classes. Expatriate descriptions are the most exuberant, as Saagpakk (2000) recognizes over 400 types, organized into six classes, and Mürk (1997) distributes 260-odd types over eight classes. Estonian sources tend to be somewhat more conservative. Erelt (1999, 18ff.) identifies 38 basic “word types” (tüüpsõnad), Viks (1992, 43ff.) distinguishes 26 nominal “types”, and Erelt et al. (1995, 333) give twelve basic “exemplary declensional paradigms” (käändsõnade näidisparadigmad). Perhaps the most useful classification of all is provided by Erelt et al. (2000, 240f.), who identify seven “declensions”

80

James P. Blevins

(käändkonnad), containing 22 “open-class types” (avatud tüübid) and another 23 “closed-class types” (suletud tüübid). The “declension classes” in these schemes are typically defined with reference to properties of the nominative singular form, notably its syllable (or mora) count, the type of segment it ends in, and whether its grade alternates with that of the genitive singular. Subtypes are then specified in terms of other properties, such as the form of the partitive singular, or the vowel that terminates the genitive singular. The exponent inventory of this system is listed in full in (19). There are at most two allomorphs of the “grammatical” cases in (19)a, while the “semantic” cases in (19)b each have a single form. (19) Case-number exponents in Estonian a. b. Case Exponent SING NOM ( INATIVE ) GEN ( ITIVE ) PART ( ITIVE )

PLU

-Ø -d -Ø -de, -te -Ø, -t -sid, -id

Case

Exponent

ILLA ( TIVE )

-sse -s -st -le -l -lt -ks -ni -na -ta -ga

INES ( SIVE ) ELA ( TIVE ) ALLA ( TIVE ) ADES ( SIVE ) ABLA ( TIVE ) TRANS ( LATIVE ) TERM ( INATIVE ) ESS ( IVE ) ABES ( SIVE ) COM ( ITATIVE )

The original PEP thus sets a bound of two declension classes in Estonian. Interestingly, this is not far off. If one restricts attention initially to the openclass patterns identified in Erelt et al. (2000), it is possible to reduce the nominal system to the three basic declensions in (20). 8

8 It

is worth clarifying that orthographic d and t in genitive plural exponents contrast in length, not voicing. Orthographic d always represents a short voiceless /t/, while a single intervocalic t represents the longer version /t:/.

Inflection Classes and Economy

81

(20) Exemplary noun paradigms in Estonian

NOM GEN PART ILLA INES ELA ALLA ADES ABLA TRANS TERM ESS ABES COM GLOSS

First declension

Second declension

Third declension

SING

SING

SING

PLU

pesa pesad pesa pesade pesa pesasid pesasse pesadesse pesas pesades pesast pesadest pesale pesadele pesal pesadel pesalt pesadelt pesaks pesadeks pesani pesadeni pesana pesadena pesata pesadeta pesaga pesadega ‘nest’

PLU

raamat raamatud raamatu raamatute raamatut raamatuid raamatusse raamatutesse raamatus raamatutes raamatust raamatutest raamatule raamatutele raamatul raamatutel raamatult raamatutelt raamatuks raamatuteks raamatuni raamatuteni raamatuna raamatutena raamatuta raamatuteta raamatuga raamatutega ‘book’

PLU

kõne kõned kõne kõnede kõnet kõnesid kõnesse kõnedesse kõnes kõnedes kõnest kõnedest kõnele kõnedele kõnel kõnedel kõnelt kõnedelt kõneks kõnedeks kõneni kõnedeni kõnena kõnedena kõneta kõnedeta kõnega kõnedega ‘speech’

Nouns of the first declension have distinctive vowel-final partitive singulars, and genitive and partitive plurals in -de and -sid that illustrate the default patterns. Thus the vowel-final partitive singular pesa predicts the genitive plural pesade and the partitive plural pesasid. Nouns of the second declension have distinctive genitive plurals in -te, default partitive singulars in -t and usually also partitive plurals in -id. Thus genitive plural raamatute predicts the consonant-final partitive singular raamatut, as well as the partitive plural raamatuid. Third declension nouns appear to be “mixed” in that they decline like second declension nouns in the singular and like first declension nouns in the plural. However, this “mixture” really reflects the fact that third declension nouns exhibit only default patterns. Thus two forms are required to identify the class of KÕNE: the default partitive singular kõnet, and the default genitive plural kõnede, which predict the partitive plural kõnesid. Hence class can usually be determined from one, and in the worst case from two, leading forms. Moreover, in most cases, the full paradigm of an open-class noun is predictable from the leading forms that identify its class. This remarkable economy reflects two factors: the uniform patterns of affixal exponence in (19), and the highly interdependent patterns of stem selection described below.

82

James P. Blevins

3.2.

General Patterns of Stem Selection

A number of stem dependencies apply to all paradigms, irrespective of class. The genitive plural form, whether listed or implied, determines the “long” plural forms of the semantic cases in (20). Each of these forms adds a case exponent from (19)b to the form of the genitive plural. The singular forms of the semantic cases are similarly “parasitic” (Matthews (1972)) on the genitive singular. One could define this “Priscianic” dependency independently, for each semantic case form. However, such a strategy would miss the obvious generalization that the semantic cases comprise a form class in Estonian. Let this class be designated by the property OBL ( IQUE ). Then the relation between genitive and semantic cases is expressed by the constraint in (21), in which x matches any affixal exponent. (21) Parasitic formation of semantic cases R([ OBL ]) = R([ GEN ]) + x This constraint identifies the genitive forms as the stems of semantic case forms, achieving the effect of the referral rules proposed for Estonian in Hughes & Ackerman (2002). It is not necessary to stipulate that x is nonempty in (21), since each semantic case will match x against a different exponent in (19)b. The genitive plural form is, of course, given by the class of a noun. The genitive singular form of a noun is likewise predictable from the partitive singular, and is usually identical to the stem of the partitive singular. In the first declension, the partitive singular stem is just the partitive singular form. In the second and third declensions, it is the partitive singular form, less -t. With the exception of second declension types like OTSUS (‘decision’) and HOBUNE (‘horse’) in (27) the partitive stem of a noun ends in one of the “stem vowels” a, e, i or u (Tuldava (1994, 42)). The nominative singular of a noun is also predictable from the partitive singular stem. In general, if an open-class noun has a partitive singular stem with three or more moras, it will have a “truncated” nominative singular, corresponding to the stem, minus its stem vowel. Thus RAAMAT (20) has the partitive singular stem raamatu and the nominative singular raamat. However, words are minimally bimoraic in Estonian, and the lengthening processes that historically produced overlong monosyllables (e.g., vee from vesi (‘water’)) are no longer active. So if the partitive singular stem is bisyllablic, then the stem vowel is retained in the nominative singular, as in the forms pesa and kõne.

Inflection Classes and Economy

83

An interesting consequence of defining the nominative and genitive singulars from the partitive singular stem is that this accounts for the lack of any nominative or genitive singular inflections in Estonian. Genitive singulars always preserve stem vowels, which, as their traditional name suggests, are stem elements, not “inflexions proper”. Nominative singulars likewise end either in stem vowels, or whatever consonant remains once the stem vowel is removed. Genitive plurals similarly lack case inflections, as the endings -te and -de effectively define a plural stem for the semantic cases. Indeed the only grammatical case other than partitive that is marked by an affixal exponent is the nominative plural, which consists of the genitive singular stem and the exponent -d. (22) Formation of the nominative plural R([ NOM PL ]) = R([ GEN SG ]) + d To summarize these general patterns, noun class is identified by partitive singular and/or genitive plural forms. The stem of the partitive singular underlies the nominative and genitive singular forms. The genitive singular in turn underlies the nominative plural, and the singular semantic case forms. The genitive plural is realized by a plural stem, which again underlies the plural semantic case forms. 3.3.

First Declension Nouns

The paradigms in (23) illustrate each of the open-class first declension patterns recognized in Erelt et al. (2000) (though they do not, to be fair, group these paradigms into a single declension). (23)

ema ema ema ILLA 2 — NOM emad GEN emade GEN 2 — PART emasid PART 2 — GLOSS ‘mother’ NOM

SING

PLUR

GEN PART

pesa seminar `siil sisa`lik pesa seminari siili sisaliku pesa seminari `siili sisa`likku `pessa seminari `siili sisa`likku pesad seminarid siilid sisalikud pesade seminaride `siilide sisa`likkude — — — sisalike pesasid seminarisid `siilisid sisa`likkusid pesi seminare `siile sisa`likke ‘nest’ ‘seminar’ ‘hedgehog’ ‘lizard’

84

James P. Blevins

The paradigms in (23) exhibit the vowel-final partitive singulars that define the first declension, along with the partitive plural patterns that are characteristic of this declension. The constraint in (24)a matches a vowel-final partitive singular leading form and defines a partitive singular stem X. 9 The constraint in (24)b defines the regular partitive plural in terms of X and the exponent -sid. (24) General first declension constraints  a. R([ PART SG ]) = (X = Y v) Ya → Yi b. R([ PART PL ]) = X + sid d. ξ = Y e ↔ Y i  c. R([ PART 2 PL ]) = ξ (X) Yu →Ye

Most first declension nouns also have a “stem” partitive plural (tüvimitmus), listed as PART 2 in (23). Stem partitives work by a process of “vowel exchange” with the partitive singular. Open-class nouns show the alternations in (24)d, though Erelt et al. (2000, 199) note other patterns that are preserved in closed-class nouns. A partitive singular in -a corresponds to a short plural in -i, and a partitive singular in -u corresponds to a short plural in -e. The vowels i and e exhibit a pattern of “vowel reversal” (Matthews (1991, 199)); if a noun forms its partitive singular in one, it forms the short partitive in the other. The constraint in (24)c thus identifies stem partitive plurals as the exchange variant of the partitive singular. Stem partitives are limited to the first declension, because only first declension nouns have vowel exchange variants. Yet, as the paradigm for EMA shows, whether a noun has a stem partitive is not itself predictable. Nouns with stem partitives are sometimes assigned to different classes from those without, but these classes merely register the presence or absence of stem partitives. Hence this contrast is best expressed by means of variation in lexical inventories. The “short” illative (lühike sisseütlev), marked as ILLA 2 in (23), is also characteristic of the first declension, though as EMA again shows, not all nouns have this form. The description of short illatives requires a brief foray into the phenomenon of gradation in Estonian. In open-class declensions, grade is exclusively “quantitative”, exploiting the three-way length contrast between short (esimene välde (‘first quantity’)), long (teine välde (‘second 9 Adapting the notion introduced for Russian in section 2.3.2, Y v represents a vowel-final form in (24)a.

Inflection Classes and Economy

85

quantity’)) and “overlong” (kolmas välde (‘third quantity’)) syllables. 10 Since length is not represented consistently in the standard orthography, overlong syllables are marked by a preceding left quotation mark. 11 For example, the first syllable of pesa in (23) is short (/e/), and that of siili is long (/i:/), whereas the first syllables of `pessa and `siili are both overlong. One can make sense of the forms of the short illatives in (23) if one assumes that short illatives are obligatorily trimoraic. Nouns with bimoraic partitive singulars satisfy this demand by lengthening the first syllable of the partitive plural. In nouns with trimoraic partitive singulars, the partitive singular is already an eligible illative singular. Thus the bimoraic partitive singulars pesa or elu (‘life’) correspond to the short illatives `pessa and `ellu, with overlong initial syllables. However, the trimoraic partitive singulars seminari, `siili and sisa`likku are identical to the short illative forms. 12 Like short partitives, short illatives do not increase the class inventory in Estonian. There is no point in assigning EMA to a class of “defective” nouns without short illatives. The lack of a short illative is a sufficient indication. Conversely, the class of nouns with short illatives is adequately defined by the presence of a short illative in individual lexical inventories. One cannot know for certain that all first declension nouns will have stem partitives and short illatives, but, given the partitive singular, one can determine what form these elements will take, if they do exist. More generally, the nouns EMA and PESA in (23) illustrate the inflection of bimoraic first declension nouns; SEMINAR, SIIL and SISALIK illustrate the trimoraic pattern. It is not strictly necessary to assign SEMINAR to a separate class, since the form of its truncated nominative seminar and its short illative seminari can both be attributed to its trimoraic partitive singular. It is only the grade-alternating nouns, like SIIL and SISALIK, that require the introduction of new declensional subtypes. 10 Closed-class also exhibit “qualitative” grade

alternations, in which the “weak” form lacks a segment that occurs in the “strong” form, as a consequence of historical processes of consonant loss and mutation, and compensatory lengthening. 11 Following the practice of most Estonian sources, including Viks (1992), Tuldava (1994) and Erelt et al. (1995; 2000). 12 The main exceptions to this generalization involve compounds and other complex forms, which often have short illatives determined by their final bisyllabic foot. Thus RAA MATUKOGU (‘library’) (lit. ‘book collection’) has the short illative form raamatu`kokku, containing `kokku, the short illative of KOGU (‘collection’). The short illative of ARUTELU (‘discussion’) is likewise arut`tellu, following the pattern of ELU (‘life’), even though there is no clear semantic connection in this case.

86

James P. Blevins

Yet even these paradigms are fully predictable from a partitive singular leading form. It might initially seem that nouns of this class must at least specify their genitive singulars, since it is precisely the contrast between their partitive and genitive singulars that identifies them as grade-alternating nouns. However, a weak genitive singular is predictable from a strong partitive singular, because no open-class first declension noun has a non-alternating overlong partitive singular. There are second declension nouns, like ` AASTA in (27), that are overlong throughout their paradigm, and a few third declension nouns, like ` KRAHVINNA (‘countess’), that follow a similar pattern. But in the first declension, a strong partitive singular implies a weak genitive singular. The constraints in (25) encapsulate this deduction in a strong sub-declension, where “`X” marks a strong form with an overlong initial syllable, and “X” its weak counterpart, with a merely long initial syllable. (25) The strong first subdeclension a. R([ PART SG ]) =`X b. R([ GEN SG ]) = X The fact that strong nouns have truncated nominative singulars is also predictable from their partitive singular. The truncation of a strong partitive stem like `siili yields an overlong monosyllable like `siil. Since this form remains bimoraic it satisfies the minimal word constraint in Estonian. The paradigm of SISALIK in (23) is also predictable from the strong partitive singular leading form sisa`likku. Every noun that inflects like SISALIK has a partitive singular with a strong trimoraic foot in -`ikku. It is this final foot that alternates in grade, and implies the weak genitive singular in -iku, in accordance with (25). Hence each noun in the SISALIK class can inflect in the same way as SIIL. However, nouns with strong partitive singulars in -`ikku also imply a “stem” genitive plural. This form is defined in (26) as an exchange variant of the weak genitive singular, which extends the grade contrast between strong partitives and weak genitives into the plural. (26) Formation of the stem genitive plural R([ GEN PL ]) = ξ (R([ GEN SG ])) The form variation within the first declension thus determines at most three subclasses. The nouns EMA, PESA and SEMINAR exhibit the general patterns within this class, while SIIL and SISALIK illustrate the two grade-alternating patterns. These classes show completely uniform patterns of affixal expo-

Inflection Classes and Economy

87

nence, and are distinguished only by alternations involving grade and stem vowels. Hence, from the standpoint of purely affixal economy principles, the first declension represents a single class. 3.4.

Second and Third Declension Nouns

Consider next the open-class second declension nouns in (27), again from Erelt et al. (2000). Each noun has a genitive plural in -te and a partitive singular in -t, and most have a partitive plural in -id. (27) SING

PLUR

`aasta `aasta PART `aastat ILLA 2 — NOM `aastad GEN `aastate PART `aastaid PART 2 — GLOSS ‘year’ NOM GEN

raamat raamatu raamatut — raamatud raamatute raamatuid — ‘book’

i`dee otsus hobune inimene i`dee otsuse hobuse inimese i`deed otsust hobust inimest — — — inimesse i`deed otsused hobused inimesed i`deede otsuste hobuste inimesete i`deid otsuseid hobuseid inimesi i`deesid — — — ‘idea’ ‘decision’ ‘horse’ ‘human’

The patterns that characterize the second declension are given in (28). A genitive plural leading form matches the constraint in (28)a and defines a stem that underlies the remaining forms in (28). (28) General second declension constraints a. R([ GEN PL ]) = X + te b. R([ PART SG ]) = X + t c. R([ GEN SG ]) = X The nouns ` AASTA and RAAMAT illustrate the basic second declension pattern.13 It may not be so evident that IDEE belongs to the second declension, though orthographic -d (/t/) here just reflects regular shortening of -t (/t:/) fol13 The

difference between the nominative singulars `aasta and raamat is again attributable to phonological considerations, if one takes into account the fact that the forms of open-class second declension nouns are minimally bisyllabic, not bimoraic, as in the first declension. This difference in turn reflects the fact that grade remains distinctive for open-class first declension nouns, but all grade alternations in the second declension are confined to closed-class noun types. If words are minimally bisyllabic in the second declension, then truncation of raamatu but not `aasta will be possible.

88

James P. Blevins

lowing an overlong vowel. Nouns of the IDEE type do constitute a separate class, however, since they are the only open-class type in Estonian that has both a second declension partitive plural in -id and a default partitive plural in -sid. It is less obvious that nouns of the OTSUS type form a separate subclass. The vowel -e that occurs in the genitive singular could be regarded as phonologically determined, as it also appears epenthetically in alternations between genitive and nominative singulars like `numbri ∼ `number (‘number’) and `kaarna ∼ `kaaren (‘raven’). One can at least plausibly regard the -e in the genitive singulars in (28) as a default strategy for producing a vowel-final genitive from a consonant-final partitive stem. The remaining variation within this class then involves the nominative singular forms of HOBUNE and INIMENE and the partitive plural of INIMENE. There is no point in defining a class of nouns with nominative singulars in -ne, since this class does nothing more than register the fact that their lexical inventory contains a nominative singular entry in -ne. Establishing a separate class for nouns like INIMENE has a more secure justification, as the stem plural in this class is correlated with the presence of a short illative. Moreover, nouns of the INIMENE type lack the alternate “i-plural” (imitmus), as shown in (29).14 (29) Second declension i-plurals PART ILLA INES ELA ALLA ADES ABLA TRANS

`aastaid `aastaisse `aastais `aastaist `aastaile `aastail `aastailt `aastaisk

raamatuid raamatuisse raamatuis raamatuist raamatuile raamatuil raamatuilt raamatuiks

i`deid i`deisse i`deis i`deist i`deile i`deil i`deilt i`deiks

otsuseid otsuseisse otsuseis otsuseist otsuseile otsuseil otsuseilt otsuseiks

hobuseid hobuseisse hobuseis hobuseist hobuseile hobuseil hobuseilt hobuseiks

*inimesid *inimesisse *inimesis *inimesist *inimesile *inimesil *inimesilt *inimesiks

This formation has a number of interesting properties, including the fact that it is not possible for the last four semantic cases. However, for present purposes, it is best to regard i-plurals simply as comprising a form class, designated by the mnemonic property “I - STEM”. Then the relation between the second declension partitive plural and the i-plurals is expressed in (30). The 14 Some descriptions list alternate plurals based on stem plurals, in both the first and second declensions. However, these forms are, as Erelt et al. (2000, 197f.) note, confined to fixed expressions, compounds and poetry.

Inflection Classes and Economy

89

partitive plural is related in (30)a to the genitive singular, and in (30)b and (30)c to the i-plurals. As this description clarifies, the second declension partitive plural is, in fact, part of the i-plural system. (30) The alternate i-plural a. R([ PART PL ]) = R([ GEN b. R([ PART PL ]) = Y + d c. R([ I - STEM PL ]) = Y + x

SG ]) + id

To round out this description, the nouns in (31) illustrate the uniform structure of the third declension. There are no short illatives, stem partitives or i-plurals in this declension. The partitive singular exponent -t is again shortened to -d following a long vowel in `koid. The forms of KÕNE and LEPATRIINU likewise show that there is no length-conditioned variation in stem or affixal exponence. (31)

NOM SING

GEN PART NOM

PLUR

GEN PART GLOSS

3.5.

`koi ‘koi `koid `koid `koide `koisid ‘moth’

kõne kõne kõnet kõned kõnede kõnesid ‘speech’

lepatriinu lepatriinu lepatriinut lepatriinud lepatriinude lepatriinusid ‘ladybug’

Form-Based Economy

This somewhat extended description of Estonian shows how interdependent patterns of stem selection can constrain inflection classes to the same degree as interdependent patterns of affixal exponence. The modern Estonian system has no fewer than three general declension classes, and something in the order of two subclasses within each of the first two declensions. So perhaps seven productive classes in all. The system is strikingly economical, in that a single leading entry determines the full paradigm of most open-class nouns. Moreover, many of the closed-class types can be assimilated to these general classes by recognizing various common patterns of suppletion, often involving the nominative singular. In a WP approach, the deviations within closed types will incur a gradually increasing entry overhead, until they reach a point where the exemplary paradigm for a class is of no practical use in deducing

90

James P. Blevins

forms. At this point, the entire suppletive pattern must simply be listed. Thus the economy of a WP description matches that of the pattern it is modelling. To what degree do these patterns comply with affixal economy principles? The basic objection to affixal principles raised above was not just that they were arbitrary or capricious, but that their agglutinative bias severs the connection between allomorphic variation and inflection classes, particularly in languages that mark inflection class by non-affixal means. Now the existence of a third declension in (20) does not pose insuperable problems for an affix-based economy principle. Although there are only two allomorphs of the partitive singular and genitive plural in (19)a, -Ø and -te identify inflection class, whereas -t and -d are defaults. So there is no “blurring”, in the sense of the NBP in (7). Moreover, it is not unreasonable to suggest, as Carstairs (1983, 127) does, that one “may be justified as treating this kind of paradigm mixture as a specific exemption” to the PEP. Further, if one regards the stem partitive plural form as the realization of a general “partitive plural” property, the corresponding cell in (19)a could have three allomorphs: second declension -id, default -sid, and now first declension -Ø (i.e., no affix). This would sanction a third declension class, though the affixal resources of Estonian would not appear to justify any additional classes. A proponent of affixal economy principles might then consolidate paradigms to try to bring the number closer to the quota allowed by the PEP, or else concede this discrepancy but maintain that the NBP is observed, as it appears to be, in Estonian. Some of the issues raised by the strategies employed to consolidate macroparadigms or to avoid blurring are discussed in section 2 above. Yet the fact that the NBP is satisfied in Estonian is completely unconnected to the patterns that determine the economy of Estonian declensions. The reason for this is that the NBP effectively collapses all nonaffixal patterns of exponence to the single class “Ø”. Consequently, the NBP would also be observed in a language that differed from Estonian in exhibiting utterly unconstrained stem allomorphy. A language could, for example, select a separate stem for each of the fourteen case forms. Or a system could exhibit an exact parallel to the pathologically independent inflection classes in (2). To understand why this is so, consider again the partial Russian exponent inventory in (1), repeated as (32)a. Each of the five distinct affixal allomorphs in (32)a is then mapped onto a unique stem allomorph in (32)b: -Ø onto S 0, -o onto S 1, -a onto S 2, and so on.

Inflection Classes and Economy

91

(32) Nominative and genitive exponents in Russian and corresponding stem allomorphs a. b. S INGULAR P LURAL S INGULAR P LURAL NOM -Ø, -o, -a -y, -a NOM S 0, S 1, S 2 S 3, S 2 GEN -y, -a -Ø, -ov, -ej GEN S 3, S 2 S 0, S 4, S 5 The affixal allomorphs in (32)a and the stem allomorphs in (32)b define the same space of thirty-six independent inflection classes. Hence, one can substitute the stem allomorphs in (32)b for their affixal counterparts in the independent classes in (2), precisely duplicating the pathology that economy principles are designed to constrain. But affixal principles simply fail to apply in this case. Provided that the stem allomorphs in (32)b are not distinguished by affixal exponents, the entire set of classes defined by (32)b collapses to the single class “Ø”. This class satisfies both the PEP and NBP. This result is directly attributable to the agglutinative bias of the PEP and NBP. Structuralist procedures of segmentation and classification are simply not appropriate tools for capturing the form dependencies that underlie the economy of Estonian declensions. Hence constraining the output of these procedures just supplies a corrective for a self-inflicted problem. One could, of course, invoke zero “process morphs” to trigger stem alternations. However, as Hockett (1954, 394) observes, this move merely trivializes the notion of an affix, and “seems to be equivalent — perhaps rather unexpectedly — to removing the keystone of the whole IA arch; the model begins to collapse”. 15 A WP approach provides an instructive contrast. A collection of thirty-six independent classes cannot be factored into a system of exemplary paradigms and leading forms. It does not matter whether the classes are marked affixally, or by segmental or suprasegmental stem alternations. The organizing principle of a WP model is that some forms should predict others; the properties that serve as a basis for prediction is of subsidiary importance. Collections of independent forms do not support predictions and, hence, one does not expect to find pathological classes of this sort. 15 Grade alternations in Sanskrit declensions present problems for an affixal approach that are in many ways analogous to those raised by Estonian. See Stump (2001), especially chapter 6, for a detailed discussion of the Sanskrit stem system.

92 4.

James P. Blevins

Conclusions

In short, affixal economy reflects a more general phenomenon, namely the independence of forms in an inflectional paradigm. Once one appreciates this general pattern, the derivative status of dedicated economy principles becomes clear. Affixal economy principles are no less redundant than the corresponding “stem economy” principles would be. From a classical WP perspective, this makes perfect sense, because affixes and stems are themselves derivative, and grammatical generalizations about these elements are mediated through statements about the forms from which they are abstracted. It is, ultimately, the post-Bloomfieldian methods of analysis that give rise to the basic problem of paradigm economy, at least in the form that this problem is raised by Carstairs (1983). It is only once one has dissected a morphological system into inventories of “free” and “bound” elements that the problem of constraining their distribution arises. The issues raised by independent stem and exponent entries reflect a more general phenomenon, which one might call the “Humpty Dumpty problem”. Given the forms of a paradigm, it is usually possible to isolate a recurrent stem (or possibly stem set) and a set of inflectional exponents. However, once a morphological system has been disassembled into sets of stems and exponents, it is not in general possible to recover the original forms without introducing features that amount to “reassembly instructions”. In some cases, class indices may serve this purpose. This is the function of inflection class features in analyses of Russian that represent lexemes by non-predictive stem entries. However, in systems involving slot competition, such as Georgian, even inflection class features may not suffice (Gurevich (2003)). Non-predictive entries also underlie the proliferation of classes in the descriptions of Estonian nouns in Mürk (1997) and Saagpakk (2000). If one starts with an inflected noun, one can identify the stem and affix. For example, the second declension genitive plural raamatute consists of the stem raamatu and the exponent -te. But given genitive singular raamatu there is no way of knowing whether the genitive plural is raamatute or raamatude. Likewise, genitive singular raamatu predicts nominative singular raamat. But given nominative singular raamat all one knows is that the genitive singular will end in one of the stem vowels. A description that represents nouns by their nominative singular has chosen the least informative form in the paradigm,

Inflection Classes and Economy

93

and must compensate by introducing classes to catalogue the lexical variation that is not predictable from the nominative singular. From a WP perspective, these problems derive from a shared source, and are amenable to a common solution: recognizing words and paradigms as the basic components of a morphological system. References Anderson, Stephen 1992 A-Morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aronoff, Mark 1994 Morphology by Itself. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Bender, Byron W 2000 Paradigms as Rules. In V. D. Guzman & B. W. Bender (eds.), Grammatical Analysis: Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics: Studies in Honor of Stanley Starosta, 14-29. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (Oceanic Linguistics Special Publication) Carstairs, Andrew 1983 Paradigm Economy. Journal of Linguistics 19, 115-125. 1987 Allomorphy in Inflexion. London: Croom Helm. Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew 1991 Inflection Classes: Two Questions with One Answer. In F. Plank (ed.), Paradigms, 213-253. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1994 Inflection Classes, Gender, and the Principle of Contrast. Language 70, 737787. Chomsky, Noam 1965 Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Clahsen, Harald 1999 Lexical Entries and Rules of Language: A Multidisciplinary Study of German Inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22. Corbett, Greville 1983 Hierarchies, Targets and Controllers: Agreement Patterns in Slavic. London: Croom Helm. 1991 Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Erelt, Mati, Reet Kasik, Helle Metslang, Henno Rajandi, Kristiina Ross et al. 1995 Eesti Keele Grammatika: Volume I: Morfoloogia. Tallinn: Eesti Teaduste Akadeemia Eesti Keele Instituut. Erelt, Mati, Tiiu Erelt & Kristiina Ross 2000 Eesti Keele Käsiraamat. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus. Erelt, Tiiu 1999 Eesti Keele Sõnaraamat. Tallinn: Eesti Keele Sihtasutus. Gurevich, Olga 2003 The Status of the Morpheme in Georgian Verbal Morphology. Proceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 161-172.

94

James P. Blevins

Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz 1993 Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection. In K. Hale & S. J. Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20, 111-176. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Hockett, Charles 1954 Two Models of Grammatical Description. Word 10, 210-231. Reprinted in M. Joos (ed.) (1957), Readings in Linguistics I, 386-399. Hughes, Michael & Farrell Ackerman 2002 Words and Paradigms: Estonian Nominal Declension. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society. Jakobson, Roman 1936 Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre: Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague VI, 240-299. Reprinted in E. Hamp et al. (eds.) (1966), Readings in Linguistics II, 51-89. Kuryłowicz, Jerzy 1949 La nature des procès dits “analogiques”. Acta Linguistica, 121-138. Reprinted in E. Hamp et al. (eds.) (1966), Readings in Linguistics II, 158-174. Lieb, Hans-Heinrich 2003 Notions of Paradigm in Grammar. In D. A. Cruse (ed.), Lexikologie/Lexicology. Berlin: de Gruyter. (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft) Matthews, Peter 1972 Inflectional Morphology: A Theoretical Study Based on Aspects of Latin Verb Conjugation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991 Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mürk, Harri William 1997 A Handbook of Estonian: Nouns, Adjectives and Verbs. Bloomington: Indiana University. (Number 163 in “Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series”) Saagpakk, Paul 2000 Estonian-English Dictionary. Tallinn: Koolibri. Saussure, Ferdinand de 1916 Cours de linguistique générale. Paris: Payot. Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Séchehaye. Stump, Gregory 1993 On Rules of Referral. Language 69, 449-479. 2001 Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tuldava, Juhan 1994 Estonian Textbook. Bloomington: Indiana University. (Number 159 in “Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series”) Unbegaun, Boris Ottokar 1957 Russian Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Viks, Ülle 1992 Morphological Dictionary of Estonian: Introduction and Grammar. Tallinn: Institute of Language and Literature. Wiese, Bernd 2000 Warum Flexionsklassen? Über die deutsche Substantivdeklination. In R.

Inflection Classes and Economy

95

Thieroff, M. Tamrat, N. Fuhrhop & O. Teuber (eds.), Deutsche Grammatik in Theorie und Praxis, 139-153. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich 1990 The Mechanism of Inflection: Lexical Representation, Rules, and Irregularities. In W. U. Dressler (ed.), Contemporary Morphology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Zwicky, Arnold 1985 How to Describe Inflection. In M. Niepokuj, M. V. Clay, V. Nikiforidou & D. Feder (eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 372-386. BLS, Berkeley, University of California.

Left of Number Animacy and Plurality in German Nouns Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz* 1.

Plural and Plurality

As an interface phenomenon, nominal inflection is first of all a matter of case. If morphology describes the inventory of inflection markers and syntax their use in greater units, it is case that determines the most intricate relation between the two levels of grammatical description. Number “is generally not inherent in a noun stem; and unlike case, it is generally not imposed on a noun by rules of syntax” (Lehmann & Moravcsik (2000, 736)). At least for a language like German, number is of secondary interest here. Number becomes more interesting under a different perspective. In Bybee (1985) verbal categories are hierarchically ordered in a way that reflects different aspects of verb grammar concerning the morphological, syntactic, and semantic level of description (see, e.g., Cinque (1999), Nübling (2000) for quite different aspects). In the present paper a similar attempt is made for nominal categories. The paper deals with some systematic aspects of plural formation and the coding of plurality in German nouns. By “plural formation” we refer to the standard inflectional pattern marking a number distinction with a singular form as the unmarked base. By “coding of plurality” we refer, very roughly speaking, to the coding of certain expressions of quantity like diminuation (das Kind (‘child’) – das Kindchen (‘tot’)), the formation of collectives (der Lehrer (‘teacher’) – die Lehrerschaft (‘faculty’)), or plural formation in the narrower sense. The notion of plurality is tentative. It might turn out that a more general * An earlier paper on the order of German derivational suffixes was prepared for the Jahrbuch der ungarischen Germanistik (Eisenberg & Sayatz (2002)). The present article is based on a talk given at the session “Merkmalsverteilung in der Nominalphrase” of the 24th Jahrestagung der DGfS in Mannheim. Thanks for helpful comments go to the audience of the talk and especially to Nanna Fuhrhop, Oliver Teuber, George Smith, and Gisela Zifonun.

Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 97-120 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

98

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

notion of quantity with plurality subordinate to it is more useful, since diminuation has in any case to be included. We do not go further into terminological questions at this point. Our main concern is to combine animacy and plurality to arrive at a better understanding of certain morphosyntactic properties of German nouns. German belongs to the set of languages whose nominals are not “split” with respect to plural. If a split occurs in a language it divides the nominals into two classes at some point on the Animacy Hierarchy. The impact of the hierarchy on plural formation is extensively discussed in Corbett (2000, 55ff.). Corbett presents his version of the Animacy Hierarchy as in (1). (1) speaker

> addressee > 3rd person > kin > human > animate > inanimate person 2nd person pronoun pronoun 1st

If a language has nominal plurals, the singular-plural distinction “must affect a top segment of the Animacy Hierarchy” (Corbett (2000, 56)). Besides this, the nouns and pronouns marking the plural will form a single segment in the chain of categories. So it is predicted that there cannot be languages which have, e.g., plural forms of kin terms but not of the 1 st person and 2nd person pronouns. No plural split for nominals means that all nouns and pronouns have plural forms. Where this is not the case it occurs for reasons which have nothing to do with animacy. For instance, there can be all kinds of singularia tantum like the nouns in das Wild (‘game (animals)’), das Obst (‘fruit’), der Schmuck (‘jewelry’) or the pronouns einer and jeder. And there can be classes of words whose status as nouns is at least debatable like the so-called nominalized infinitives as in das Wandern (‘hiking’), das Wollen (‘wanting’). These normally do not have plural forms, but they can have a zero plural if they are highly lexicalized: Jede Katze hat zwei Leben. (‘Every cat has two lives.’) Die Mensa gibt täglich 5000 Essen aus. (‘The cafeteria serves 5000 meals a day.’) A first effect of the Animacy Hierarchy on plural formation in German can be found in the relation of regular to irregular plural forms. It is predicted that irregular forms will be found in the highest positions of the hierarchy. So we have suppletive plurals for the first person (ich – wir), the second person (du – ihr), and the third person pronoun (er/sie/es – sie). As to the regular plural, there has been intensive research on it during the last decade. The first question to be answered is of course which plural

Left of Number

99

markers have to be regarded as regular and perhaps unmarked. A minority position takes the gender-independent s-plural as the only regular and therefore unmarked form (masc. die Spontis (‘members of alternative movement rejecting traditional procedures’), fem. die Omas (‘grandmas’, ‘old women’), neut. die Autos (‘cars’); see, e.g., R. Wiese (1996), Clahsen (1999), Pinker (1999; 2000) with far-reaching consequences for what should be considered to be regular at all). The more traditional position, to which we will subscribe here, claims that the productive plural types are determined by gender categories. Within the core vocabulary, the s-plural is taken as marked, whereas each gender has exactly one unmarked plural marker (Köpcke (1993); Wegener (1995; 1999); Thieroff (2001); Harnisch (2001)). We adopt this position in principle, taking a special view only on the so-called weak masculines. The weak masculines have been set apart at least since the beginning of New High German, but at that time this morphological pattern began to concentrate on animate nouns. More precisely, weak masculines refer to human beings (Held (‘hero’), Christ (‘Christian’), Bote (‘messenger’), Kunde (‘customer’)) or to animals with relationship to humans of some kind or other (Bär (‘bear’), Affe (‘monkey’, ‘ape’), Löwe (‘lion’), Falke (‘falcon’); Köpcke (2000)). Though isolated in the core vocabulary, they have become productive with loan words, whose vast majority refers to human beings as well (Emigrant (‘emigrant’), Student (‘student’), Diplomat (‘diplomat’), Philologe (‘philologist’)). Their only inflection marker is (e)n, so for the plural we have der Held – die Helden, der Löwe – die Löwen. It can be shown that the weak masculines have developed some formal and semantic properties of a gender of their own – the fourth gender, so to speak (Eisenberg (2000)). If we separate them as generics (gen) from the rest of the masculines, we get (2) as the set of productive plural markers in the core grammar of present-day German. (2)

gen (e)n Held (‘hero’) Bote (‘messenger’)

masc e Hund (‘dog’) Tisch (‘table’)

fem (e)n Burg (‘castle’) Wiese (‘meadow’)

neut e Bein (‘leg’) Brot (‘bread’)

We shall see later that in derivational morphology the order masc > fem > neut corresponds to degrees of animacy. At the moment we would like to state that the presentation in (2) can be read as the sequence of genders applicable to simplex nouns. Whereas kin terms do not seem to play any special role in

100

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

present-day German, the right half of the hierarchy in (1) can be expanded and then projected onto the inventory of simplex nouns, as in (3). (3) gen

masc fem neut human > mammal > bird > fish > reptile > insect > > > mollusk > inanimate

The expanded part of the hierarchy comprises what has been called a perceptual folk classification of animals as part of an anthropocentric continuum (Köpcke & Zubin (1984; 1996); Köpcke (2000)). The percentage of nouns in the respective classes exceeds the average significantly, but of course the other genders are not strictly blocked for the nouns of a certain semantic class. The respective class membership can be understood as part of the prototypical behavior of a noun. Though this is a very rough and general characterization of what has been elaborated on semantic foundations of gender assignment, it nevertheless gives a correct first approximation. It shows that animacy is relevant for this kind of grammatical classification, and so it might be fruitful to look for other formal correlates. To do this, we take the most significant formal property of plural formation as our starting point. All nouns in German have one and only one stem form for each of the number categories. No matter which case endings are used by a certain inflection type, there is exactly one stem form for all word forms in the singular and exactly one for all word forms in the plural. For the overwhelming majority of nouns, the plural stem form is built on the morphologically simple form of the nominative singular by umlaut (Vater (‘father’) – Väter), by suffixation (Hund (‘dog’) – Hunde), or by umlaut plus suffixation (Buch (‘book’) – Bücher). Thus, most nouns follow the pattern of base form inflection (Wurzel (1984); for a different view, see Harnisch (2001)). This is to say that a plural suffix can be regarded as agglutinating. If there is a case suffix as in many forms of the dative, the plural suffix takes the position to its left (Hund+e+n, Büch+er+n). The hierarchy of nominal categorizations gender > number > case reflects not only the relative position of morphological units, but also predicts the relative probability for a category to be realized as agglutinating. So the singular forms of a nominal paradigm on the one side and the plural forms on the other show much more uniformity than, e.g., the forms of the genitive or the forms of the dative. More generally, the higher category determines the lower one in category hierarchies. With respect to German this has been ascertained for nouns as well as for pronouns and verbs (B. Wiese (1994; 1996); Booij (1996); Wunderlich (1997)). The singular paradigm and

Left of Number

101

the plural paradigm have some of the properties which are normally ascribed to autonomous word paradigms, and the stem forms with their meanings have some of the properties of lexical items. Or to put it in another way, compared to case suffixes the plural suffix has fewer properties of a prototypical inflectional suffix, and it has some properties of a derivational suffix. This purely linguistic result corresponds to a multitude of psycholinguistic findings. There is, for instance, strong evidence for the hypothesis that singular stem forms and plural stem forms are at least at some level separately stored and processed. This again has been attested for different inflectional classes (Baayen et al. (1997); Köpcke (1998); Clahsen (1999); Clahsen et al. (2002)). From this point of departure we can now proceed to the suffixes “left of number”. These are without doubt derivational suffixes. In accordance with gender > number > case they are bound to gender categories. The gender category in turn determines the inflection type and by this the choice of the plural marker (Wurzel (1984); Bittner (1999); Thieroff (2001)). Since there is a minority position which holds that the direction of dependency could be the other way round, one has to be quite clear about what is meant by “dependency” or “determination”. With respect to hierarchies of grammatical categories, it means that the higher category constrains the occurrence and form of the lower category. This is the way we use the terms here. A different use goes back to Greenberg (1963), saying that “it is typically gender which is dependent on number” (Corbett (2000, 272)). It is based on Greenberg’s universal “A language never has more gender categories in nonsingular numbers than in the singular”, which is of course true of German, since gender is restricted to the singular in this language. Derivational suffixes appear in a fixed order. As can be expected, the ones immediately to the left of number all have to do with plurality. The question then arises in which way the overall suffix order is constrained semantically. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In section 2 the order of derivational suffixes is described. Section 3 tries to clarify the semantic impact of this order, whereas in section 4 the realization of the mass-count distinction in German is briefly described to then integrate it into the overall system of semantic constraints.

102 2.

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

Suffix Chains

The system of native productive derivational suffixes in German comprises scarcely more than 12 to 15 units. Including suffixes which appear in transparent words but are not truly productive, one ends up with about two dozen. A clear majority of them function as nominalizers, where each suffix is bound to one gender and exactly one inflection type. Second place is held by adjectivizers; at least five of them are productive. There is one suffix with two variants for the derivation of adverbs from nouns (Versuch (‘attempt’, ‘experiment’) – versuchs+weise (‘as an experiment’)) and adjectives (klug (‘intelligent’) – klug+erweise (‘intelligently’)), and there is at best one which delivers verbs. Since it derives verbs from verbs, it does not play a significant role in the system as a whole. We have about three or four dozen pairs like lachen (‘laugh’) – lächeln (‘smile’), husten (‘cough’) – hüsteln (‘clear one’s throat’), drängen (‘push’) – drängeln (‘jostle’). Nouns and adjectives also play an important role as bases for derivation, but here the verb is absolutely dominant. Several of the most productive patterns start with simple verb stems, especially with stems from transitive or other verbs whose subject is prototypically agentive. So the overall derivational system shows a tendency to build from verbs to nouns: Multiple suffixation typically leads to the Endstation Hauptwort (‘noun as final destination’) (for a somewhat more detailed overview, see Eisenberg (2004, 280)). We will now start with discussion of the longest chain of suffixes possible in German, which is at the same time most suggestive with respect to the interaction of animacy and plurality. The leftmost position in the chain is occupied by -er as in the masculines Denk+er (‘thinker’), Schreib+er (‘writer’), Mach+er (‘doer’). Its basic function is the derivation of nomina agentis, which is often described as incorporation of the external argument with the Θ-role agent. So the semantic feature [+agentive] can be assigned to the derived noun. There are other types of -er nouns, especially nomina instrumenti (Schreiber (‘writing implement’), Heber (‘jack’), Öffner (‘opener’)) and nomina acti (Hopser (‘jump’), Lacher (‘laugh’), Heuler (‘howl’)). Their meaning can be systematically related to the meaning of the agent nouns (Meibauer (1995); Szigeti (2002)). A nomen acti can also be read as a nomen instrumenti and a nomen intrumenti as a nomen agentis. This implication indicates that the derivation of agent nouns has to be regarded as the primary function of -er.

Left of Number

103

Like all other derivational suffixes with initial schwa, -er has to be attached immediately to a stem; i.e., no other suffix may intervene. If an intervening suffix is nevertheless forced by a morphological rule, the resulting pattern is not stable. For instance -er has been replaced by -ler after -schaft. We have now Wissen+schaft+ler (‘scientist’), Gewerk+schaft+ler (‘union member’) in place of the older Wissenschafter, Gewerkschafter. (We will come back to this later.) The specific distribution of -er and the other suffixes with initial schwa has to do with their close relation to inflection. For inflectional suffixes schwa is the only possible vowel, and there is an intense interaction between these suffixes and the stem, mainly to fulfill the requirements of pedification. Therefore the phonological substance of a suffix like -er can be considered the result of a grammaticalization process which is typical for the position directly attached to the stem (for details see R. Wiese (1996, 105ff.; 2001); Eisenberg (2004, 270)). The position to the right of -er is taken by the masculine -ling and the feminine -in. Nouns like Schreib+er+ling (‘hack writer’), Denk+er+ling (‘wouldbe thinker’), Dicht+er+ling (‘would-be poet’) refer to persons, but only to males. Furthermore, -ling has a pejorative connotation. A Dichterling is a sort of would-be poet, and the same is true of Schreiberling, Denkerling, Sängerling (‘would-be singer’), and so on. For systematic reasons we do not assign the features [+human] and [+male] to these nouns, but simply [+sex-marked]. By this we get a common feature for -ling and -in, where -ling refers to males and -in to females. There are other bases for -ling. The suffix is at least semiproductive for adjectives, as in Fremdling (‘stranger’), Schönling (‘pretty boy’), Reichling (‘rich person’), Dummling (‘stupid person’). According to the intuition of most speakers, these nouns also refer to males, but there is some uncertainty. One often finds the opinion that they are not definitely specified as to sex, but refer to persons in general. This tendency is even stronger for derivations with verbal bases like Lehrling (‘apprentice’), Prüfling (‘examinee’), Impfling (‘(a) vaccinate’), Säugling (‘baby’). They are complements to the agent nouns in that they incorporate the Θ-role patient or theme from the base. A Prüfer is somebody who examines, whereas a Prüfling is somebody who is examined. In the literature -ling is usually described as deriving nouns not marked for sex. We do not think that this is quite correct, since it neither meets the intuition of most speakers nor can it explain why -ling never combines with -in.

104

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

Even for the verb based derivations we do not get words like *Lehr+ling+in (‘female apprentice’), *Prüf+ling+in (‘female examinee’), but instead we have weiblicher Lehrling (‘female apprentice’), weiblicher Prüfling (‘female examinee’). Our proposal is then the following. If -ling appears after -er, which is unmarked for sex, it is normally understood as sex-marking. In this instance the paradigmatic relatedness to -in is dominant. But if -ling appears directly attached to the stem of a transitive verb, the derived noun is rather read as unspecified for sex. Here the paradigmatic relatedness to -er seems to be dominant. Within the chain of suffixes, -ling must now be taken as marked for sex. The same holds for all occurrences of -in. Its most frequent position is following -er (Lehr+er+in (‘female teacher’), Denk+er+in (‘female thinker’), Schreib+er+in (‘female writer’)), but it also appears after all kinds of nouns not marked for sex and referring to animates with what has been called the perceived natural gender (“das perzipierte natürliche Geschlecht”, Köpcke & Zubin (1984; 1996)). So -in has a wider range for sex-marking than -ling, whereas in the chain of suffixes both take the same position. This leads to (4).   -ling (4) verb stem > {-er} > -in The subsequent position is again occupied by two suffixes, namely, the feminine -schaft and the neuter -tum. Both derive collectives, but in different ways. The bases for -schaft are various kinds of nouns referring to persons as in Bauern+schaft (‘set of farmers’), Beamten+schaft (‘set of civil servants’), Kollegen+schaft (‘set of colleagues’). The suffix unites “mehrere Entitäten derselben Art zu einem Ganzen” (‘several entities of the same type into a whole’; Bittner (2001, 9)) in a productive pattern. The productivity of -tum is much more restricted. This suffix has had quite different functions as can be seen from Bürgertum (‘bourgeoisie’), Pfaffentum (‘popery’) (collectives of persons) and Herzogtum (‘duchy’), Fürstentum (‘principality’) (area reigned over by a certain type of ruler). There are even some masculines left (Reichtum (‘wealth’), Irrtum (‘error’)). If -tum is productive in presentday German, then in the pattern Bürokratentum (‘officialism’), Franzosentum (‘Frenchness’), Chinesentum (‘Chineseness’). These words do not refer to groups of persons but to collectives of a more abstract type, that is, something like “die Gesamtheit von Stereotypen, die mit einem Personenkollektiv verbunden sind” (‘the entire set of stereotypes associated with a collective of

Left of Number

105

persons’; Eisenberg (2004, 272)). We assign the feature [+collective] to both suffixes, though we are aware that they are by no means identical and though we have characterized -tum by the feature [+abstract] in earlier work (Eisenberg & Sayatz (2002)). With respect to animacy, -tum clearly takes a lower position than -schaft. All examples given so far for the productive patterns of -schaft and -tum show linking elements in the preceding morphological unit. Linking elements are also needed when these suffixes take their proper place in the chain of suffixes, i.e., when they follow -ling and -in. So we get Lehrling+s+schaft (‘set of apprentices’) and Lehrling+s+tum (‘typical characteristics of apprentices’) as well as Lehrerinn+en+schaft (‘female faculty’) and Lehrerinn+en+tum (‘female teacherishness’). Linking elements normally appear between the main constituents of compounds; they connect lexical stem forms, not suffixes. For this reason, Aronoff & Fuhrhop (2002, 464) introduce the term “compounding suffix”: “By this term, we mean that these suffixes act like the second member of a compound morphologically: They will be preceded by a linking element if the base has a special compounding stem.” A word (lexical unit) has a special compounding stem form just in case it takes a linking element (and perhaps an umlaut) when it appears as a first member of a compound. There are other compounding suffixes in German, e.g., the adjectivizer -los (wolke+n+los (‘cloudless’), beziehung+s+los (‘unconnected’)) and -haft (junge+n+haft (‘boyish’), jüngling+s+haft (‘youthlike’)). The behavior of such suffixes can be understood as a consequence of partial grammaticalization. Historically they go back to lexical stems. The grammaticalization process has not been completed or has been stopped for some reason or other. The suffixes are phonologically heavy in that they all form a syllable on their own. This syllable consists of a nonempty onset, a full vowel nucleus and a nonempty coda. If the coda is simple (one consonant), the nucleus is a tense vowel (-tum, -los). If the coda is complex, the nucleus is a lax vowel (-schaft, -haft). Morphologically the constituent boundary between -ling/-in on the one hand and -schaft/-tum on the other hand is more heavily marked than the other constituent boundaries we have seen so far. There seems to be some kind of discontinuity or break at this point of the suffix chain. It becomes even more visible when we proceed to the last member of the chain, that is, the pair of diminutives -chen and -lein, feature [+diminutive].

106

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

If a diminutive combines with any other derivational suffix, this other suffix precedes it. That is to say that the diminutives immediately precede the domain of inflection. Besides this, diminuation is highly regular and can in principle be applied to all classes of nouns, so it constitutes a borderline case between derivation and inflection (Dressler (1994)). In general, diminutives combine freely with all nouns derived with one of the suffixes considered so far; doubts exist only with respect to -schaft and -tum. Native speakers are very reluctant when asked to judge the wellformedness of words like Lehrerschaftchen or Lehrerinnentümchen. The words make some, but too little sense to be used in a meaningful way. On the other hand, all speakers agree that if the suffixes in question are put together in one word, they have to appear in this and no other order. Moreover, there might be phonological reasons which prevent this kind of suffix combination. Both -schaft and -tum require a linking element when they appear at the end of the first member of a compound (Bürgerschaft+s+präsident (‘president of the city council’), Deutschtum+s+pflege (‘cultivation of Germanness’)). The schwa suffix -chen might be phonologically too weak to function as a compounding suffix and therefore block the derivation (Eisenberg & Sayatz (2002, 14f.)). But even if this speculation cannot be confirmed, there are enough other reasons to place -chen in the last position of the suffix chain. We then get (5).       -ling -schaft -chen (5) verb stem > {-er} > > > > {plural} -in -tum -lein The morphological interpretation of (5) is twofold. First, the hierarchy gives the relative order of the involved suffixes. Second, it predicts that every suffix can be directly attached to any suffix higher in the hierarchy. For instance, with -chen one can derive all kinds of words such as Dichterchen, Fremdlingchen, Lehrerinchen, Genossenschaftchen, Deutschtümchen. Generally speaking, the lower suffixes have more combinatorial possibilities than the higher ones. The suffix chain in (5) cannot be fed only by verbs, but also by adjectives and nouns. From nouns we get other nouns with the suffixes -ner and -ler. Derivatives such as Rent+ner (‘pensioner’, ‘senior citizen’)), Sport+ler (‘athlete’) refer to persons. As denominals they are of course not to be assigned the feature [+agentive]. Whereas -ner is hardly productive, -ler definitely is. It has developed from -er after verb stems in derivations such as

Left of Number

107

angel+n (‘to angle’) – Angl+er (‘angler’), nörgel+n (‘to gripe’) – Nörgl+er (‘griper’). In present-day German, -er does not apply to noun stems, but -ler does (Eisenberg (1992)). We do not see any restriction for the combination of -ner with the other suffixes in (5), see e.g., Rentner, Rentnerling, Rentnerin, Rentnerschaft, Rentnertum, Rentnerchen. The same holds for -ler, with the exception of -ling. Words such as Sportlerling, Künstlerling sound somewhat odd, probably simply because the reduplication of the initial [l] is to be avoided. Apart from this minor obstacle there are no problems integrating -ner and -ler into (5). As mentioned above, nouns are derived from adjectives by -ling (Schönling, Neuling (‘novice’, ‘newcomer’), Reichling, Fremdling). Following the literature, this is probably the most productive derivation pattern for -ling. It fits well into the suffix chain, since we have, e.g., *Fremdlingin, but Fremdlingsschaft, Fremdlingstum, Fremdlingchen. The second chain of suffixes, starting from verb stems and ending with nominal plural markers, is shorter than the one in (5). Its first position is taken by abstractors, deriving what are called verbal abstracts or nomina actionis, feature [+abstract]. There are two productive feminines, -e and -ung, and the neuter -en, whereas the neuter -nis (Ereignis (‘event’), Erfordernis (‘requirement’), Verhältnis (‘relationship’)) is not productive according to the literature. We will disregard it in what follows. One of the main problems with the remaining -e, -ung, and -en is to grasp their functional differences. All of them are taken as “pure nominalizers” in the literature, and it is stated that they compete with each other. Only weak productivity is attested for -e. Many of the derived nouns have a pejorative connotation combined with iteration: Abhorche (‘listening in’), Anmache (‘pass’, ‘proposition’), Denke (‘thinking style’), Schreibe (‘writing style’), Verdiene (‘earning money’). Some words in this category are lexicalized with a concrete meaning (Leuchte (‘lamp’), Hülle (‘cover’), Stelle (‘position’)), and in many cases it is not clear synchronically whether the verb or the noun should be taken as the base (Pumpe (‘pump’), Schippe (‘shovel’), Karre (‘wheelbarrow’), Weide (‘pasture’)). It nevertheless seems to be clear that for verbal bases the primary function of -e is the derivation of action nouns (e.g. Motsch (1999, 330); R. Wiese (2001)). Several semantic types of -ung-nouns have been studied in some detail (Ehrich & Rapp (2000); Szigeti (2002)). Without doubt the action noun is the primary type of derivation here (Veröffentlich+ung (‘publication’),

108

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

Zerstör+ung (‘destruction’), Befrei+ung (‘release’), Erzieh+ung (‘upbringing’)). Two types of resultatives we consider to be secondary. First, there are state nouns which can be paraphrased by compounds consisting of the participle followed by sein (Zerstörung (‘destruction’) – Zerstörtsein (‘state of being destroyed’), Verblüffung (‘dumbfoundedness’) – Verblüfftsein (‘state of being dumbfounded’)). Second, there are resultatives with a concrete meaning, such as Veröffentlichung (‘book’) or Ausstattung (‘equipment’). We then have person nouns of the agent type (Vertretung (‘stand-in’), Bedienung (‘waitress’)) as well as of the patient type (Abordnung (‘delegation’), Ausstattung (‘outfitting’)). The conceptual shift with these nouns starts from abstracts and moves towards concrete and personal meanings. In some respects it is complementary to the shift of the -er nouns. In earlier stages of German, -ung was applicable fairly unrestrictedly to verb stems, whereas it is now more or less limited to transitive verbs. The place of the more generally applicable nominalizer has been taken over by the neuter -en (Demske (2000); Pavlov (2000)). Nouns like Les+en (‘reading’), Wander+n (‘hiking’), Bemüh+en (‘efforts’) seem to have a less specific time reference when compared to Lesung (‘(a poetry, etc.) reading’), Wanderung (‘hike’), Bemühung (‘effort’), as they refer to processes in open time intervals. The literature applies formulations such as “unbegrenzte Ganze mit unbegrenzten Teilen” for -en (Bittner (2001, 10)). As already mentioned, for -en there are also conceptual shifts to resultatives with reference to states and concrete objects. There is not much to say about the combination of abstractors with diminutives. If they are combined, the diminutive of course takes the last position as in Lesungchen (‘little reading’), Regierungchen (‘little government’), Störungchen (‘little disturbance’). These are unquestionably possible words, whereas the attachment of -chen to the schwa suffixes seems to be ruled out at least for the action reading of -e and -en; cf. die Schreibe – das *Schreibechen, das Laufen (‘running’) – das *Laufenchen. The reasons are not quite clear and probably manifold. Although our description of the abstractors has had to remain very rough and superficial, we hope to have convinced the reader that there is a second chain of suffixes from verbs to nouns. On the morphological level this chain is independent of the one in (5). It skips the masculine, but like the first one, it contains feminines and neuters, and in the same order. As to the meaning of the derived nouns, it includes only abstracts and diminutives (6).

Left of Number

109

   -e  (6) verb stem > -ung > {-chen} > {plural}   -en

The third chain of suffixes resembles the second in that it also contains nothing but abstracts and diminutives. Instead of from verbs it starts from adjectives (7).    -heit  > {-chen} > {plural} (7) adjective stem > -keit   -igkeit

Unlike those in (6), the abstractors in (7) are not independent morphemes but allomorphs, with -heit as the unmarked variant. Their distribution is in part arbitrary, in part determined by prosodic constraints. It is debatable whether -igkeit as in Neu+igkeit (‘(piece of) news’), Leicht+igkeit (‘lightness’, ‘ease’) really constitutes one morphological segment (there are no adjectives *neu+ig, *leicht+ig; see R. Wiese (1996, 100f.), Eisenberg (2004, 422) for further discussion). The nouns with the abstractors in (7) such as Frechheit (‘impudence’), Sicherheit (‘security’), Sauberkeit (‘cleanliness’), Eitelkeit (‘vanity’) uniquely refer to states. There are several types of more concrete meanings which again are clearly secondary in relation to the state nouns. The deadjectival abstracts take diminutives fairly freely, but in most cases they do not retain the state reading. So with Frechheitchen, Eitelkeitchen we get action nouns, by Ewigkeitchen (‘little eternity’), Trockenheitchen (‘little dry spell’) we refer to time spans, and so on. The suffix chain (7) is not restricted to simple adjective stems but is also fed by complex ones. It can be extended to the left by integrating noun stems and verb stems. As denominal adjectivizers we have -los (freudlos (‘joyless’), wolkenlos (‘cloudless’)), -haft (kindhaft (‘childlike’), laienhaft (‘amateurish’)), -ig (freudig (‘joyful’), waldig (‘wooded’)), -isch (kindisch (‘childish’), launisch (‘moody’)) and -lich (kindlich (‘childish, of a child’), freundlich (‘friendly’)), where the latter three are to a considerable extent in complementary distribution. The only deverbal adjectivizer is the highly productive -bar, which leads to concepts of disposition similar to the English -able/-ible, mostly with transitive (trinkbar (‘drinkable’), lesbar (‘readable’)) but in some cases with intransitive bases (brennbar (‘combustible’), streitbar (‘prepared/not indisposed to fight’)).

110

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

We cannot here go into any details of the distribution or function of these suffixes. We have to mention them because they round out an – albeit very rough – general view on the system of native derivational suffixes. By “native” we mean those suffixes which never take the main accent of the word. Not all of them are completely neutral with respect to accent placement, but they are never accented themselves as the nonnative suffixes can be. The basic structure of the system appears to be quite simple. Suffixation starts from plain stems of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. One suffix leads to nouns or adjectives; two or more suffixes lead to nouns. There are very few exceptions to this (e.g., adjectives such as wissen+schaft+lich (‘scientific’), reich+lings+haft (‘like a rich person’)) which can be shown to be marginal in the sense that they do not cast doubt on the basic structure of the system. Every noun derived by productive suffixation can be placed somewhere in the suffix chains (5), (6), or (7). Therefore all such nouns are directly or indirectly related to what we have called plurality. 3.

Gender, Animacy, Plurality

For further discussion of the morphological and semantic impact of the suffix hierarchies established so far, we begin with a more complete representation of (5): masc/fem/neut (8)   verb stem noun stem [±anim]

|

{z } genderinherent

masc/fem masc   fem/neut  neut  no gender -er -ling -schaft -chen plural > > > > > -ler -in -tum -lein marker [+agent] [+sex-mkd] [+collect] [+dimin] [+plural] |

{z genderdetermining

}

|

{z } genderdetermined

All categorizations refer to the nominal units in the hierarchy. The leftmost position can be held by verb stems and noun stems. For the noun stems, gender is an inherent categorization, and the nouns can have any gender (der Sport (‘sport’, ‘athletics’) – der Sportler (‘athlete’), die Kunst (‘art’) – der Künstler (‘artist’), das Dorf (‘village’) – der Dörfler (‘villager’)). Though most of the nouns with -ler have inanimate bases, this can not be taken as an effective selectional restriction since we have words like Polizeiler (‘police union member’), Brechtler (‘Brecht specialist’). The same is true of -ner,

Left of Number

111

with such derivatives as Falkner (‘falconer’). So [±animate] indicates that the first position has nothing to do with the Animacy Hierarchy. Derivational suffixes are clearly ordered with respect to gender, with the masculine and the neuter providing the main contrast, whereas the feminine rests inside the hierarchy and has no domain of its own. It overlaps with the masculine as well as with the neuter. We do not see how the suffixes could be classified to assign the feminine its specific domain in the center of the hierarchy. Things seem to be equally clear with respect to the morphological basics. For the nouns in leftmost position, gender is, as stated above, an inherent categorization, whereas the derivational suffixes determine the gender of derived nouns. We would like to stress the fact that within the domain of productive suffixes there is no doubt which suffix determines which gender. So Aikhenvald’s (2000, 25) statement “In German at least some derivational affixes are each associated with one gender” can be strengthened for the suffixes. Derivational suffixes are to be taken as indicators of gender in much the same way as the article when it was called “the gender word” (Geschlechtswort) in many older grammars. It is by no means the primary function of the article to indicate the gender of the accompanying noun, yet it nevertheless fulfills this task. The same can be said of the derivational suffixes. At the right end of the hierarchy, plural markers are determined by gender. It was mentioned above that in the literature a minority position still holds that each plural marker selects the gender for the respective noun. This position may be defendable as long as one describes gender as inherent to a noun stem. Yet we think it should be given up in the light of derivational suffixes as gender indicators. This fits well with the fact that in present-day German, plural has nothing whatsoever to do with gender. Compare now (8) to (3). The sequence of gender is the same in both hierarchies, though the bases of classification are at first glance completely different. In (3) noun stems are classified with respect to their meaning, whereas in (8) suffixes are classified with respect to their sequential order. Within the morphological theory presupposed in the present paper, derivational affixes are in general assigned no lexical meaning. Instead, each affix is said to have its own morphosemantic function. This function contributes in specific ways to the lexical meaning of the derived word (see Lieb (1983), Eisenberg (2004), and Szigeti (2002) for a similar approach). The point of importance is this: If one classifies suffix-derived nouns with respect to their

112

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

meaning, one ends up with the hierarchy in (8), which is now directly comparable to (3). Suffix order and semantic classification of the derived nouns trivially correspond to each other. To put it the other way round: If the classification of complex noun stems must be the same as the classification of simple stems with respect to gender, then the suffixes have to appear in the respective order. This opens the possiblity of comparing the semantic features in (8) with the semantic noun classes in (3). In (3), as in (8), some kind of Animacy Hierarchy is at work. The leftmost position is in both cases occupied by generics in the sense of nouns referring to animates with a perceived natural gender which is here not marked. The nouns refer to animates unmarked for sex. The deverbal generics in (8) (suffix -er) have in addition the feature [+agentive]. Agentivity is bound to generics. Due to incorporation of the external argument of the base, -er is the only suffix which systematically leads to agentive nouns. Neither -ling nor -in has this property. Since the seminal work of Dowty (1991), agentivity is understood as an equivalent to animacy in the sense that the former is bound to relational terms (arguments), whereas the latter applies to categorial terms (noun classes as such). From this perspective, -ler and -er can be said to hold the highest position with respect to animacy. Both are generic, and -er is also agentive. Together with -ling and -in they constitute the class of nouns which refer to individuals. This is different for -schaft and -tum. Both bear the feature [+collective]. To -schaft a standard notion of collectivity applies, whereby a collective refers to a group of individuals which is coherent by dint of some common property. Within the productive pattern of -schaft the individuals are persons, so the suffix has found its natural place in the Animacy Hierarchy. Things are somewhat more difficult with -tum. The productive pattern also operates on nouns referring to persons, but derived nouns such as Denkertum, Lehrerinnentum (‘female teacherishness’), Franzosentum (‘Frenchness’) do not fit the standard notion of collectivity. These nouns are more abstract and as such “less animate” than the ones with -schaft. In Eisenberg & Sayatz (2002) we therefore assigned the feature [+abstract] to them. We will now apply this feature only to certain deverbals, deadjectivals, and other equivalent nouns. Clearly some kind of multiplicity is involved in the meaning of the nouns with -tum, so it seems to be more adequate to classify the suffix as collective.

Left of Number

113

The diminutives are neutral with regard to animacy. These suffixes do not have any effect on this aspect of meaning. The same holds for plural; as stated above, plural has nothing to do with the Animacy Hierarchy in German. So the suffix chain (8) as a whole clearly follows the Animacy Hierarchy. Similarly to (3), the highest position corresponds to the highest degree of animacy, but differently from (3), the lowest positions in (8) are not reserved for inanimate nouns. Instead, animacy is neutralized. For (8), animacy is but one of the relevant parameters; the other is plurality. The decrease in animacy is complemented by plurality. Even if the desired “increase in plurality” is difficult to explain at the moment, one can at least state that plural itself takes the rightmost position in the hierarchy. It clearly stands in opposition to the -ler/-ner group semantically and topologically. And just as the animacy-oriented suffixes affect a top segment, the pluralityoriented represent a coherent block and affect a segment at the bottom of the hierarchy. Exactly in the middle of the chain, animacy gives way to plurality. As we have seen, this point is also heavily marked in the morphological form. As is predicted by the hierarchy and expected for a language without plural split, plural in German has one and only one function for all nouns. There may be some uniformity problems with the first and second person pronouns, but there is none for the nouns. If a special plural for certain nouns such as the sortal plural for mass nouns begins to develop, there will soon be “back formation” to create the respective singular. We have not only die Öle, viele Stähle meaning ‘(the) kinds of oil’ and ‘(many) kinds of steel’, but also dies Öl, ein Stahl with the possible meaning ‘this (one) kind of oil’ and ‘a/one kind of steel’ (see section 4). A similar statement can be made for all suffixes in the hierarchy. Lehrerschaften (‘faculties’) and Chinesentümer (‘Chinesenesses’) are used to refer to more than one collective exactly in the way Lehrerinnen (‘female teachers’) and Fremdlinge (‘strangers’) are used to refer to more than one person. More generally speaking, (8) predicts that plural is in principle applicable to the other types of plurality. Corbett (2000, 101ff.) extensively discusses the question of whether associatives, distributives, and collectives are to be considered values in number systems such as plural, dual, and paucal. He concludes that they should not, since they all “may occur with number markers.” We take the same position here, extending it to all plurality values realized by derivational suffixes.

114

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

We now come back to the other suffix chains in their modified form, presented in (9-ab). (9)

a. verb stem

b.

>

fem/neut  -e  -ung   -en [+abstr.]

neut >



-chen -lein

no gender 

[+dimin]

> {plural} [+plural]

neut no gender  fem     -heit  -chen -keit > {plural} > adjective stem > -lein   -igkeit [+abstr.] [+dimin] [+plural]

Both hierarchies resemble the right half of (8). There are no masculines, and the feminines overlap with the neuters. No animacy seems to be involved. Since the position of the collectives is occupied by abstracts in (9-ab), the question arises as to whether these hierarchies are structured by plurality alone. So one has to make clear in what way abstractness is related to plurality in general or to collectivity in particular. In recent literature on the basic function of gender in German reference is often made to the position taken by Karl Brugmann (1889; 1891) as opposed to the one held, e.g., by Jacob Grimm. Brugmann claims that the primary function of the feminine in Proto-Indo-European was not reference to objects with the feature [+feminine], but to collectives and abstracts. Brugmann’s position is now widely accepted (see, for instance, Eisenberg (1989), Leiss (1994), Fritz (1998), Vogel (1999)). From a genetic point of view there seems to be no doubt that abstractness goes with collectivity, yet it is anything but trivial to describe this apparently close relation in a plausible way. So in Leiss (1994, 292) the role of collectives in the emergence of the feminine is described and then simply transferred to abstracts: “Eine ähnliche grammatische Bedeutung liegt bei den Abstrakta vor: Auch hier wird eine Vielzahl von Entitäten oder von Vorkommen einer Eigenschaft zu einer Einheit zusammengefaßt...” (‘A similar grammatical meaning is found with the abstract nouns: Here too multiple entities or occurrences of a property are combined into a unit.’) Linguistic dictionaries (e.g., Glück (2000), Bußmann (2002)) use terms such as “generalizing” [verallgemeinernd] to describe abstractness, which also is no more than a hint in the direction we would like to

Left of Number

115

take. Seiler (1986) makes use of “abstraction – collection” as one of the basic, in the sense of universal, parameters of nominal classification. For Lehmann & Moravcsik (2000, 474), “abstract nouns may be a subclass of mass nouns” and are by this exposed to the countability parameter. Aikhenvald repeatedly refers to languages which obligatorily apply numeral classifiers to nouns with the exception of certain abstracts (e.g., Aikhenvald (2000, 334f.)), and similar statements can be found in many places in the literature on classifiers. Though we do not have a convincing explication of abstractness at our disposal, there seem to be good reasons to suppose that the suffix chains in (9) are structured by plurality. 4.

Countability and Plurality

The interdependence of countability and plural is often demonstrated by the plural of count nouns, which behaves syntactically in a similar way to the singular of mass nouns and has a similar interpretation. Corbett (2000, 79) demonstrates this with reference to Jackendoff (1991) by sentences like (10abc). (10) a. There was water all over the floor b. ??There was a book all over the floor c. There were books all over the floor The behavior of the count noun book is based on the semantic features [+bounded], [–internal structure] for the occurrence in (10-b) and [–bounded], [+internal structure] for the occurrence in (10-c). By the feature [±internal structure] one marks the difference between objects which consist of other objects (supposedly similar to each other) and objects which do not, including fluid, solid, or gaseous substances. This is of course in part a matter of perception; i.e., the borderline between mass nouns and count nouns is to a certain extent variable. Grammatical descriptions of the mass/count distinction often make use of notions like recategorization or reclassification to handle occurrences of mass nouns in count environments and vice versa. The basic mechanism can be illustrated by (11) and (12), where we start from the German equivalents of (10).

116

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

(11) a. b. c. (12) a. b. c.

Wasser stand überall auf dem Boden water stood everywhere on the floor Ein Buch stand überall auf dem Boden a book stood everywhere on the floor Bücher standen überall auf dem Boden books stood everywhere on the floor Buch stand überall auf dem Boden book stood everywhere on the floor Ein Wasser stand überall auf dem Boden a water stood everywhere on the floor Wässer standen überall auf dem Boden waters stood everywhere on the floor

As in the English equivalents, Wasser in (11-a) is read as a mass noun, ein Buch in (11-b) is difficult to interpret, and the bare plural Bücher in (11-c) refers to a [–bounded] object. In (12-a) a recategorization effect forces the reading of Buch as a mass noun, whatever that could mean. But in principle it is indeed possible to imagine mass readings of this noun. Of special interest is (12-b), where a mass noun takes the place of a count noun which was difficult to interpret in (11-b). To be interpretable, the mass noun with an indefinite article has to be recategorized in one of the wellknown ways. It is read either as ‘a kind of ...’ or as ‘a certain amount of ...’. With the first reading one comes very close to (11-a), except that there is not just water but a certain kind of water all over the floor. With the second reading one runs into the same problems of interpretation as with the count noun in (11-b). On the other hand, ein Buch in (11-b) can now be read as ‘a kind of ...’ with Buch as a mass noun. Similar effects are to be observed for the bare plural in (12-c). Here it does not seem clear at all which reading should be the preferred one, but again both readings are based on recategorizations of the mass noun. And with some effort one now even gets the same readings for (11-c). Obviously, we have now come full circle in exploring interpretations. Allen (1980, taken from Corbett (2000, 81f.)) tries to establish some kind of “countability continuum”, stating that “some nouns more often occur in countable NP’s, others in uncountable NP’s, and still others seem to occur quite freely in both.” Corbett himself claims that “the countability preferences of nouns are partially constrained by the Animacy Hierarchy”. We do

Left of Number

117

not quite understand what this could mean apart from the evidence that most substances of most states of aggregation are inanimate for human perception. What Allen claims may be true, though probably without structural consequences. For languages such as English and German we take the mass/count distinction as a purely semantic classification of concrete and possibly also abstract nouns. Each of the classes is then bound to certain structures of the NP. As far as the grammatical form of linguistic units is concerned, the true plural is a matter of inflection; diminuation, collectivity, and abstractness are a matter of derivation; and countability seems to be a matter of syntax. They all have to do with plurality, but we are left with the question of how plurality values can be established and ordered in a plausible way, comparable, e.g., to the Animacy Hierarchy. References Aikhenvald, Alexandra 2000 Classifiers. A Typology of Noun Categorization Devices. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aronoff, Mark & Nanna Fuhrhop 2002 Restricting Suffix Combinations in German and English: Closing Suffixes and the Monosuffix Constraint. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20, 451490. Baayen, Harald et al. 1997 The Morphological Complexity of Simplex Nouns. Linguistics 35, 861-877. Bittner, Dagmar 1999 Gender Classification and the Inflectional System of German. In Barbara Unterbeck & Matti Rissanen (eds.), Gender in Grammar and Cognition, 1-23. Berlin: de Gruyter. 2001 Was symbolisieren die bestimmten Artikel im Deutschen? ZAS Papers in Linguistics 21, 1-19. Booij, Geert 1996 Inherent Versus Contextual Inflection and the Split Morphology Hypothesis. Yearbook of Morphology 8, 1-17. Brugmann, Karl 1889 Das Nominalgeschlecht in den indogermanischen Sprachen. Internationale Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft 4, 100-109. 1891 Zur Frage der Entstehung des grammatischen Geschlechts. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 15, 523-531. Bußmann, Hadumod 2002 Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. München: Kröner (3rd edition).

118

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

Bybee, Joan 1985

Morphology. A Study of the Relation between Meaning and Form. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Cinque, Guglielmo 1999 Adverbs and Functional Heads. A Cross-Linguistic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clahsen, Harald 1999 Lexical Entries and Rules of Language: A Multidiciplinary Study of German Inflection. Behavional and Brain Sciences 6, 991-1013. Clahsen, Harald, Peter Prüfert, Sonja Eisenbeiss & Joana Cholin 2002 Strong Stems in the German Mental Lexicon: Evidence from Child Language Acquisition and Adult Processing. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebles (eds.), More than Words. A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 91-112. Berlin: Akademieverlag. Corbett, Greville 2000 Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Demske, Ulrike 2000 Zur Geschichte der ung-Nominalisierung im Deutschen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 122, 365-411. Dowty, David 1991 Thematic Proto-Roles and Argument Selection. Language 67, 547-619. Dressler, Wolfgang Ulrich 1994 Diminutivbildung als nicht-prototypische Wortbildungsregel. In KlausMichael Köpcke (ed.), Funktionale Untersuchungen zur deutschen Nominalund Verbalmorphologie, 131-148. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Ehrich, Veronika & Irene Rapp 2000 Sortale Bedeutung und Argumentstruktur: ung-Nominalisierungen im Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 19, 245-303. Eisenberg, Peter 1989 Grundriß der deutschen Grammatik. Stuttgart: Metzler (1st edition). 1992 Suffixreanalyse und Syllabierung. Zum Verhältnis von phonologischer und morphologischer Segmentierung im Deutschen. Folia Linguistica Historica 13, 93-113. 2000 Das vierte Genus? Über die natürliche Kategorisierung der deutschen Substantive. In Andreas Bittner et al. (eds.), Angemessene Strukturen. Systemorganisation in Phonologie, Morphologie und Syntax, 91-105. Hildesheim: Olms. 2004 Grundriß der deutschen Grammatik. Das Wort. Stuttgart & Weimar: Metzler (2nd edition). Eisenberg, Peter & Ulrike Sayatz 2002 Kategorienhierarchie und Genus. Zur Abfolge der Derivationssuffixe im Deutschen. Jahrbuch der ungarischen Germanistik 2002, 137-156. Fritz, Matthias 1998 Die urindogermanischen s-Stämme und die Genese des dritten Genus. In Wolfgang Meid (ed.), Sprache und Kultur der Indogermanen. Akten der X. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft. Innsbruck, 22.-28. 9. 1996, 255-264. Innsbruck.

Left of Number

119

Glück, Helmut (ed.) 2000 Metzler Lexikon Sprache. Stuttgart & Weimar: Metzler (2nd edition). Greenberg, Joseph 1963 Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaningful Elements. In Joseph Greenberg (ed.), Universals of Language, 73-113. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. Harnisch, Rüdiger 2001 Grundform- und Stamm-Prinzip in der Substantivmorphologie des Deutschen. Synchronische und diachronische Untersuchung eines typologischen Parameters. Heidelberg: Winter. Jackendoff, Ray 1991 Parts and Boundaries. Cognition 41, 9-45. Köpcke, Klaus-Michael 1993 Schemata bei der Pluralbildung im Deutschen. Versuch einer kognitiven Morphologie. Tübingen: Narr. 1998 Prototypisch starke und schwache Verben in der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Germanistische Linguistik 141/142, 45-60. 2000 Starkes, Schwaches und Gemischtes in der Substantivflexion des Deutschen. In Rolf Thieroff et al. (eds.), Deutsche Grammatik in Theorie und Praxis, 155170. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Köpcke, Klaus-Michael & David Zubin 1984 Sechs Prinzipien für die Genuszuweisung im Deutschen. Ein Beitrag zur natürlichen Klassifikation. Linguistische Berichte 93, 26-50. 1996 Prinzipien für die Genuszuweisung im Deutschen. In Ewald Lang & Gisela Zifonun (eds.), Deutsch typologisch, 473-491. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lehmann, Christian & Edith Moravcsik 2000 Nouns. In Geert Booij et al. (eds.), Morphologie/Morphology. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung. An International Handbook on Inflection and Word-Formation, vol. 1, 732-757. Berlin: de Gruyter. Leiss, Elisabeth 1994 Genus und Sexus. Kritische Anmerkungen zur Sexualisierung von Grammatik. Linguistische Berichte 152, 281-300. Meibauer, Jörg 1995 Wortbildung und Kognition. Überlegungen zum deutschen -er-Suffix. Deutsche Sprache 23, 97-123. Motsch, Wolfgang 1999 Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzügen. Berlin: de Gruyter. Nübling, Damaris 2000 Prinzipien der Irregularisierung. Eine kontrastive Analyse von zehn Verben in zehn germanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Pavlov, Vladimir 2002 Deverbale Nominalisierung im Frühneuhochdeutschen im Vergleich mit dem Neuhochdeutschen. In Mechthild Habermann, Peter Müller & Horst Haider Munske (eds.), Historische Wortbildung des Deutschen, 227-244. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

120

Peter Eisenberg & Ulrike Sayatz

Pinker, Steven 1999 Words and Rules. New York: Basic Books. 2000 Wörter und Regeln. Die Natur der Sprache. Heidelberg: Spectrum (German translation of Pinker 1999). Seiler, Hans-Jakob 1986 Apprehension. Language, Object, and Order. Part 3: The Universal Dimension of Apprehension. Tübingen: Narr. Szigeti, Imre 2002 Nominalisierungen und Argumentvererbungen im Deutschen und im Ungarischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Thieroff, Rolf 2001 Morphosyntax nominaler Einheiten im Deutschen. Habilitation thesis, Universität Bonn. Vogel, Petra 1999 Nominal Abstracts and Gender in Modern German: A “Quantitative” Approach Towards the Function of Gender. In Barbara Unterbeck & Matti Rissanen (eds.), Gender in Grammar and Cognition, 461-493. Berlin: de Gruyter. Wegener, Heide 1995 Die Nominalflexion des Deutschen – verstanden als Lerngegenstand. Tübingen: Narr. 1999 Die Pluralbildung im Deutschen – ein Versuch im Rahmen der Optimalitätstheorie. Linguistik Online 4.3. www.linguistik-online.de/3_99/wegener.html. Wiese, Bernd 1994 Die Personal- und Numerusendungen der deutschen Verbformen. In KlausMichael Köpcke (ed.), Funktionale Untersuchungen zur deutschen Nominalund Verbalmorphologie, 161-191. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1996 Iconicity and Syncretism. On Pronominal Inflection in Modern German. In Robin Sackmann (ed.), Theoretical Linguistics and Grammatical Description, 323-344. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Wiese, Richard 1996 The Phonology of German. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001 Regular Morphology vs. Prosodic Morphology? The Case of Truncation in German. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 13, 133-180. Wunderlich, Dieter 1997 A Minimalist Model of Inflectional Morphology. In Chris Wilder et al. (eds.), The Role of Economy Principles in Linguistic Theory, 267-298. Berlin: Akademieverlag. Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich 1984 Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin: Akademieverlag.

Feature Sharing in DPs Peter Gallmann* 1.

Hypotheses

In this paper, I attempt to prove the validity of the following hypotheses: 1. Syncretism in affix paradigms is the result of two independent regularities: On the one hand, certain instances of syncretism can be traced back to constraints that determine which features may be combined in phrase heads. In these cases we are dealing with the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints for morphosyntactic features. Combinatorial variants of these constraints (e.g., M AX -[x & y]) seem to be most typical of languages exhibiting portmanteau morphemes. The interaction of such constraints results in an inventory of feature bundles, which does not exhaust all logical possibilities. On the other hand, the formal expression of the available feature bundles must obey the Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast (Anti-Agreement, Postma (1994)). This principle is based on regularities that determine how affix paradigms are stored in the mental lexicon. 2. The distribution of the strong and weak declension of German adjectives depends on the percolation of case features in the NP, and so does the distribution of noun forms with and without case suffixes. 2.

Preliminaries

2.1.

Remarks on Optimality Theory (OT)

I presuppose the following standard assumptions of Optimality Theory: *I

wish to thank Gereon Müller, Kathrin Würth, Martin Salzmann, and Sergio Neri for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this paper. In addition, Kathrin Würth helped with elaborating the English version of this paper to a substantial extent. All remaining errors are of course mine. Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 121-160 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

122

Peter Gallmann

– The lexicon provides the input. – For a given input G EN provides an infinite set of output candidates. – E VAL determines the optimal output on the basis of a languageparticular constraint ranking. Regarding the lexicon, there are frequent but rather inexplicit references in the literature to the notion of “lexicon optimization”. However, one might want to consider Postma’s (1994) constraint on the storage of paradigms with portmanteau morphemes as an instance thereof (cf. section 3.2). As for E VAL, this component comprises a number of constraint families. The present paper is concerned chiefly with markedness and faithfulness constraints. – Faithfulness constraints of the type D EP-x penalize the insertion of features not present in the input. As they are presumed to occupy high positions on the constraint hierarchy in all contexts, they will receive relatively little mention in what follows. – Faithfulness constraints of the type M AX-x penalize the deletion of an input feature x. There are also conjoined variants of the M AX-constraints, e.g., M AX[x & y], abbreviated as M AX-xy in this paper; compare the method of local conjunction discussed in Legendre, Smolensky, & Wilson (1998). I assume that conjoined M AX-constraints are absolute; i.e., it does not matter whether such a constraint is violated partially (e.g., by the lack of only one feature) or totally (by the lack of all features). Both cases result in a simple violation of the conjoined constraint. – Markedness constraints of the general format *x (= no feature x) prohibit the occurrence of certain features. As with faithfulness constraints, the Evaluator component of the grammar, too, provides conjoined variants of markedness constraints, i.e., cooccurrence constraints of the format *[x & y]. However, I will not postulate specific constraints of this type in this paper. Instead, I will use a generalized, quantificational variant of cooccurrence constraints: Restrictions of the type *2 (*3, *4, etc.) prohibit feature bundles of two (three, four, respectively) features of certain feature classes. This type of constraint is scalar; i.e., a bundle of four features violates the restriction *2 more severely than a bundle of only three features.

Feature Sharing in DPs

123

Quantificational cooccurrence constraints seem to be typical of languages exhibiting portmanteau morphemes. They delimit the number of available feature bundles and thus allow the morphological component in the lexicon (e.g., affix inventories) to be kept small. Let me give an example: If a cooccurrence constraint *2 outranks a faithfulness constraint M AX-y, a feature bundle xy of the input will always appear as simple x in the output, given that M AX-x is ranked higher than M AX-y. However, if the input consists only of the feature y, this feature will be preserved. (1) Ranking: *2, M AX-x  M AX-y  *x, *y (2) OT tableau: possible feature combinations Input: xy xy ☞x y [] Input: x ☞x [] Input: y ☞y [] Input: [ ] []

*2 M AX-x M AX-y *! * *! *! x *2 M AX-x M AX-y

*x *y * * * * *x *y *

*! *2 M AX-x M AX-y *x *y * *! *2 M AX-x M AX-y *x *y

If we list all combinatorial possibilities of x and y in a table, we get the following distribution assuming the above-mentioned ranking: (3) Table: Permissible feature combinations (cross-classification) [] y

[] x [] x y x

124

Peter Gallmann

In the present paper, I will mainly deal with constraints on morphosyntactic features. Phonological markedness constraints will be mentioned only in passing. See section 7.4. 2.2.

On the Structure of Noun Phrases

For the sake of simplicity, I adopt the DP hypothesis of Hellan (1986) and Abney (1987). The analysis presented here can, however, be transferred to the approach of Gallmann (1996a, 1997), where it was assumed that determiners (or rather articles) occupy the Spec position of the DP, the category D itself being a functional category without any lexical realization. Two points are crucial to the following discussion: – Determiners are adjectivally inflected; they underlie the same morphological constraints as adjectives. – Attributive adjective phrases occupy the Spec positions of the NP. (If one adopts the traditional NP analysis, they occupy the Spec positions below the highest Spec position, which is reserved for determiners.) 2.3.

Gender and Number

As far as gender and number are concerned, I assume the two features [±f] and [±n], which can in principle be combined with each other. Crossclassification yields the system displayed in (4). I follow Wunderlich & Fabry (1995) in assuming that minus values in oppositions like [+x] vs. [–x] are redundant – at least in morphology. Consequently, a single x invariably stands for [+x] in what follows, whereas [–x] will not be indicated. (4) Table: Gender/number features (cross-classification)

f

n [] n masculine neuter f fn feminine plural

Feature Sharing in DPs

125

This system is partly simplified due to coocurrence restrictions; see the discussion in the following sections. There are several other well-known comparable systems that can be found in the literature. 2.4.

Case

Following Müller (2002b), I adopt Bierwisch’s (1967) approach to case that is based on a cross-classification of two feature oppositions: (5) Table: Case features (cross-classification)

g = governed

o = oblique [] o nominative genitive g og accusative dative

However, it must be mentioned that not all German data support the claim that the genitive contains fewer features than the dative. Supposing that the nominal inflection is at least partially iconic, the noun Herz (‘heart’) with its case forms (dem) Herz-en (dative) and (des) Herz-en-s (genitive) suggest an opposite feature system with the dative as [+oblique] and the genitive as the bundle [+oblique, +special]. 3.

Affix Inventory I: Determiners and Strong Adjectives

Adjectival determiners and strong attributive adjectives are inflected in the same way. (On the DP-internal distribution of strong and weak inflection of attributive adjectives; see section 7.) They inflect with respect to gender/number as well as case. Following the assumptions made above, we come up with a paradigm consisting of 16 cells and consequently an inventory of 16 affixes. However, for the majority of lexemes only 5 affixes can be found in present-day German. In my view, this remarkable degree of syncretism has two causes: Firstly, the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints must be taken into account. As a consequence, only a reduced set of inflectional forms with certain feature bundles is allowed (section 3.1). It is thus E VAL that holds responsible for this phenomenon. Secondly, we have to

126

Peter Gallmann

consider effects based on regularities that determine how affix paradigms are stored in the mental lexicon (section 3.2). 3.1.

Markedness Constraints and Faithfulness Constraints for Feature Bundles

Adjectivally inflected determiners and attributive adjectives with strong inflection do not exhibit all morphosyntactic features present in the respective DP. The reduced inventory of feature bundles can be accounted for in the OT framework by means of the following constraint interaction: 1. The simple markedness constraints referring to morphosyntactic features (general format: *x) are ranked lower than any individual M AX-constraint (general format: M AX-x). Therefore, I will not discuss them in this section (but see section 7). Furthermore, I will not consider the various constraints of the D EP family, as they are ranked higher than any other constraint discussed in this paper. (6) (D EP-x)  M AX-o  M AX-f  M AX-n  M AX-g (  *x) 2. There are two quantificational cooccurrence constraints, i.e., markedness constraints that restrict feature bundles: (7) *2 = N O F EATURE D OUBLETS: Syntactic words must not bear more than one feature of the class {n, f, o g} = {[+neuter], [+feminine], [+oblique], [+governed]}. (8) *3 = N O F EATURE T RIPLES: Syntactic words must not bear more than two features of the class {n, f, o, g} = {[+neuter], [+feminine], [+oblique], [+governed]}. 3. Finally, I assume two conjoined faithfulness constraints: (9) M AX-og: The feature bundle containing the two features o and g = [+oblique, +governed] has to be preserved. (10) M AX-fnog: The feature bundle containing the four features f, n, o, g = [+feminine, +neuter, +oblique, +governed] has to be preserved. Note that the quantificational cooccurrence constraints are scalar, whereas

Feature Sharing in DPs

127

the conjoined M AX constraints are absolute (see section 2.1). The constraints presented so far are ranked as in (11): 1 (11) M AX-fnog  *3, M AX-o  M AX-f  M AX-og  *2, M AX-n  M AX-g The effect can be gleaned from the table below, which reads as follows: The first row of the cells shows the feature combinations we would expect without cooccurrence constraints. The second row shows the feature combinations actually present. On the neglect of plural (i.e., the feature bundle fn), see also Wiese (1999). The effect of the cooccurrence constraints is demonstrated in the tableaux (15) to (30). (12) Table: Inventory of permissible feature bundles for determiners and strong adjectives Masculine Neuter Feminine Plural Nominative [] (n) (f) (fn) [] n f f Accusative (g) (ng) (fg) (fng) g n f f Genitive (o) (no) (fo) (fno) o o fo fo Dative (og) (nog) (fog) (fnog) og og fo fnog Table (12) shows one of the two sources of syncretism. Here, E VAL is the responsible component. The following table clarifies the result of (12). In structuralist terms this is called underspecification with respect to certain oppositions. The analysis advocated here takes underspecification to be an epiphenomenon resulting from the interaction of cooccurrence constraints.

1 If the genitive is conceived as the feature bundle [+oblique, +special] (see section 2.4), M AX-fnog has to be replaced by a sequence of three constraints: *4  M AX-fos  M AXfno. This constraint system effects an additional feature bundle, namely, fos = [+feminine, +oblique, +special]. The inventory of licensed feature bundles then comprises nine items. For the sake of simplicity, I will not discuss this approach any further.

128

Peter Gallmann

(13) Table: Syncretism due to cooccurrence constraints Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

Masculine Neuter Feminine Plural [] n f g o fo og fnog

The eight feature bundles ideally correspond to eight inflectional affixes. If a paradigm contains more than eight affixes, we are dealing with synonyms. If, on the other hand, a paradigm contains fewer affixes, there must be homonyms. In the latter case we must assume a second source of syncretism, as has been proposed by Wiese (1999) (in a different way). In such instances, we are thus not dealing with underspecification caused by cooccurrence constraints. There is evidence that true homonymy is licensed independently: The principle in effect is the Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast. This principle, however, can hardly belong to the E VAL component of the grammar, but rather to the mental lexicon (see section 3.2). (14) Table: Affix inventory (including homonyms) Feature bundles 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

[] fo g fnog o n og f

Affixes Affixes (determiners) (adjectives) r r r r n n n n s n s s m m e e

The following tableaux dispense with the D EP-x constraints as well as with the markedness constraints of the format *x. There are no candidates at issue that would be affected by violations of these constraints.

129

Feature Sharing in DPs

OT-Tableaux (15) to (30): Permissible feature combinations for determiners and strong adjectives (15)

[]

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g

☞ []

(16)

g

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g

☞ g

[] (17)

o

*! M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g

☞ o

[] (18)

og ☞ og

o g [] (19)

n

*! M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g * *! * *! * *! * * M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g

☞ n

[] (20)

ng

(21)

no

*!

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g ng *! g *! ☞ n * [] *! * M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g no *! ☞ o * n *! [] *! *

130

Peter Gallmann

(22) nog

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og nog *! no *! ng *! * ☞ og n *! * o *! g *! * [] *! *

(23) f ☞

(24) fg

☞

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g f []

(26) fog ☞

*!

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g fg *! g *! f * [] *! *

(25) fo ☞

*2 M AX-n M AX-g ** * * * * * * * * * * *

fo o f []

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g * *! *! *! *

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og fog *! fo * fg *! * og *! f *! * o *! * g *! * * [] *! * *

*2 M AX-n M AX-g ** * * * * * * *

Feature Sharing in DPs

(27) fn ☞

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g fn *! f * n *! [] *! *

(28) fng

☞

fng fn fg ng f n g []

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g *! ** *! * *! * *! * * * *! * *! * *! * *

fno fn fo no f n o []

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n M AX-g *! ** *! * * * *! * *! * *! * *! * *! * *

(29) fno

☞

131

132

Peter Gallmann

(30) fnog ☞

M AX-fnog *3 M AX-o M AX-f M AX-og *2 M AX-n Max-g fnog ** *** fno *! * * ** * fng *! * * * ** fog *! * ** * nog *! * * ** fn *! * * * * fo *! * * * * fg *! * * * * no *! * * * * ng *! * * * * og *! * * * f *! * * * * n *! * * * * o *! * * * * g *! * * * * [] *! * * * * *

Feature Sharing in DPs

3.2. 3.2.1.

133

Memory-Based Homonymy Theoretical Background

To my knowledge, there are only a few studies attempting to shed light on the question of how affix paradigms are stored in the mental lexicon, one of which is by Postma (1994). Postma studied the person/number inflection of the verb in various languages. He observed phenomena of partial or complete homonymy in the affix inventory and in the stem allomorphy in many languages. A considerable proportion of these phenomena cannot be explained by the traditional means of underspecification, since two affixes can be fully or nearly identical even if they share no common feature, as in (31): (31) German verb inflection, person/number affixes of indicative present tense: a. -t = 3rd person singular (er mach-t = ‘he makes’) b. -t = 2nd person plural (ihr mach-t = ‘you make’) Postma (1994) made a remarkable proposal to explain such phenomena. It applies only to languages with portmanteau morphemes, e.g., to the inflecting languages of the Indo-European type. Postma proposed that person/number paradigms of such languages have to be arranged in a circle. The forms in the opposite paradigm cells must in each case contrast maximally with respect to their morphosyntactic features (in an “anti-agreement” relation, to use Postma’s term): (32) The Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast (my formulation): Maximally distant paradigm cells have maximally different morphosyntactic features. Adjacent paradigm cells may agree in phonological and/or in morphosyntactic features. Non-adjacent paradigm cells, however, must not share phonological features if there are intervening cells with different phonological features. (Note that this regularity does not apply to morphosyntactic features; i.e., two non-adjacent paradigm cells that share certain morphosyntactic features can be separated by cells with incompatible features.) The circular arrangement seems to be derivable from conditions controlling the mechanisms how inflectional items are stored in the mental lexicon. These conditions are different from those occurring in agglutinative lan-

134

Peter Gallmann

guages. Postma therefore hopes to have found a diagnostic to distinguish inflection and agglutination. As for the person/number inflection of the verb, six feature combinations are of importance; the respective paradigms are thus composed of six cells. There are eight arrangements that obey Postma’s Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast. See the diagrams in (33): (33) Diagrams: All circular paradigms obey Postma’s Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast. Abbreviations: 1, 2, 3 = 1 st , 2nd , 3rd person (the last being redundant), p = plural. '$ '$ '$ '$ @ 1p 2 @ 1 3p @ 3 3p @ 1 1p 1@ 2p 3@ 1p 1@ 2p 2@ 3p @ @ @ @ 3p 3 2 2p 2 1p 3 2p @ @ @ @ &% &% &% &%

'$ '$ '$ '$ @ 2p 2 @ 2p 2 @ 1 2p @ 2 3p 1@ 3p 3p@ 1 2@ 1p 3@ 2p @ @ @ @ 1p 3 1p 3 3 3p 1 1p @ @ @ @ &% &% &% &%

Postma demonstrated his proposal on several languages. The inflectional systems he investigated most exhaustively were those of Italian and Dutch. For Italian, he demonstrated that the paradigm of indicative present tense follows the scheme (34): (34) Circular Paradigm of Italian (person and number inflection of indicative present tense): '$ @ 1 3p 3@ 1p @ 2 2p @ &%

I want to illustrate the efficiency of the diagram by a simple example, the verb tenere (= ‘to hold’). Table (35) presents the inflectional forms of this verb in the traditional arrangement.

Feature Sharing in DPs

(35)

1st person singular 2nd person 3rd person 1st person plural 2nd person 3rd person

135

tengo tieni tiene teniamo tenete tengono

Many inflectional forms share phonological properties with other forms. Some of them can be derived by means of underspecification. The circular paradigm (34), however, enables Postma to explain all phonological similarities between the word forms. The forms tengo and tengono are most instructive, as they share no morphosyntactic features. They are, however, adjacent in Postma’s circular paradigm (34): (36) a. b. c. d. e. 3.2.2.

Diphthongization in the stem: tieni, tiene Unstressed monophthong in the stem: teniamo, tenete Allomorph teng-: tengo, tengono Simple vocalic affixes: teng-o, tien-i, tien-e Affixes with a sonorant: teniamo, tengono Application of Postma’s Model to the Strong Inflection of Determiners and Adjectives

A remark in advance: For technical reasons, the circle-shaped paradigms are “squeezed” into tables in the following discussion. They can, however, be read in the same way as Postma’s circle diagrams: We must only keep in mind that maximal distance has to be interpreted in a radially symmetric way. Consequently, adjacency does not hold for two horizontally contiguous medial cells (hence the double lines). For instance: (37) The representation of paradigms: '$ @ @ @ @ &%

For the inflection of determiners and strong adjectives in German, it is possible to find a constellation where Postma’s Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic

136

Peter Gallmann

Contrast is respected. Interestingly, the affixes which are formally identical are all side by side, even if they have no or only some morphosyntactic features in common. (38) Table: Affix paradigm (basic pattern) -s -r -r -e

[n] [] [fo] [f]

-s -n -n -m

[o] [g] [fnog] [og]

Important paradigms of German: (39) Table: der, die, das (= ‘the’) followed by a noun das der der die

[n] [] [fo] [f]

des den den dem

[o] [g] [fnog] [og]

(40) Table: kein (= ‘no’; similarly ein = ‘a’, ‘one’, as well as possessive pronouns) if followed by a noun kein kein keiner keine

[n] [] [fo] [f]

keines keinen keinen keinem

[o] [g] [fnog] [og]

For a more detailed analysis of kein, see section 7.3. (41) Table: Indefinite pronoun jeder (= ‘every’, ‘each’) jedes

[n]

jeder jeder jede

[] [fo] [f]

jedes jeden jeden – jedem

[o] [g] [fnog] [og]

Feature Sharing in DPs

137

(42) Table: Ordinary strong adjective (gut = ‘good’) gutes guter guter gute

[n] [] [fo] [f]

guten guten guten gutem

[o] [g] [fnog] [og]

In sum, the German affix inventory can be satisfactorily explained by the interaction of cooccurrence restrictions on the one hand and by Postma’s Principle of Maximal Contrast on the other. 4.

Affix Inventory II: Weak Adjective

Similarly to what has been said about strong adjectives and determiners, two sources of syncretism can be found in the case of weak adjectives. The sources are again a) underspecification as the result of cooccurrence constraints and b) Postma’s Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast. E VAL is responsible for the former kind of syncretism, whereas the mental lexicon is responsible for the latter. The crucial difference between the strong and the weak adjectives is that in the latter case no feature bundles are allowed except for plural = [fn]. This is achieved by a high-ranked specific version of the cooccurrence constraint *2, which I will call *2(weak). The preservation of the feature bundle for plural is effected by a higher ranked specific faithfulness constraint. This constraint applies not only to weak adjectives, but also to nouns (see section 5.1): (43) M AX-fn(w/n): The feature bundle [+feminine, +neuter] (= plural) of weak adjectives or nouns must be preserved. We then obtain the following hierarchy (the newly introduced constraints are in boldtype): (44) M AX-fn(w/n)  *2(weak)  M AX-fnog  *3, M AX-o  M AX-f  M AX-og  *2, M AX-n  M AX-g For reasons of space, I dispense with a detailed demonstration of (44). As a global result, it leads us to the inventory described in (45):

138

Peter Gallmann

(45) Table: Inventory of permissible feature bundles for weak adjectives Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

Masculine [] [] (g) g (o) o (or) o

Neuter (n) n (nr) n (no) o (nor) o

Feminine (f) f (fr) f (fo) o (for) o

Plural (fn) fn (fnr) fn (fno) fn (fnor) fn

This produces an inventory consisting of six potential affixes. (46) Table: Syncretism due to cooccurrence constraints Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

Masculine [] g

Neuter

Feminine

n

f

Plural fn

o

The actual inventory of German, however, consists of only two sets of truly homonymous affixes. The reason for this homonymy can be found in Postma’s Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast: (47) Table: Paradigm of weak adjective inflection gut-e gut-e gut-e

[] [n] [f]

gut-en gut-en gut-en

[o] [g] [fn]

However, the picture devoloped so far is somewhat misleading. If we compare the affix inventories of strongly and weakly inflected adjectives, we detect that there are almost no pairs of feature bundles that differ only in the inflection class, i.e., with respect to the opposition strong vs. weak. This observation suggests that the traditionally assumed strong and weak paradigms do not result from two independent affix inventories, but from the constraint system that allows only specific feature bundles in a given context. Therefore, the following general affix inventory for determiners and attributive adjectives can be drawn up:

Feature Sharing in DPs

139

(48) Table: Unified affix inventory of adjectives and adjectivally inflected determiners (with homonyms) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

feature bundles [] [fo] [g] [fn] [fnog] [o] [n] [og] [f] [ ]w [n]w

affixes r r n n n n/s s m e e e

There are two oppositions left that involve inflection class: row 1 vs. row 10 and row 7 vs. row 11 in table (48). However, this kind of opposition disappears completely if we follow the proposal of Ortmann (2002, 49-96). Ortmann assumes that modifying adjectives (and other modifying attributes) are introduced by a specific functional category – let us call it W. This category has morphological reflexes in several languages. German seems to belong to this group of languages. Here, we can assume a morphosyntactic feature [w] (= weak) referring to the functional category W. The occurrence of the [w] feature is controlled by the constraint hierarchy (49), which differs from (44) only in that M AX-w is added: (49) M AX-fn(w/n)  *2(weak)  M AX-fnog  *3, M AX-o  M AX-f  M AX-og  *2  M AX-w  M AX-n  M AX-g Assuming the constraint system in (49), we can dispense with [ ] w and [n]w . Instead, the feature [w] appears in the respective contexts. There is only one problematic issue: The constraint ranking (49) disallows the feature [g] of the masculine accusative (in traditional terms). However, this feature is obtained by the constraint S PREAD-g automatically without any modification; see (110) in section 7.3. The resulting unified affix inventory can be explained by Postma’s Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast very well:

140

Peter Gallmann

(50) Table: Unified affix paradigm of attributive adjectives and adjectivally inflected determiners r r e e m

[] [fo] [w] [f] [og]

s n/s n n n

[n] [o] [fn] [g] [fnog]

Conclusion: The traditional assumption of two separate adjectival inflectional paradigms is unnecessary. They can be explained as an epiphenomenon resulting from the German constraint system that disallows certain feature cooccurrences in specific contexts. In the sections below, I omit the feature [w] and the constraint Max-w for the sake of simplicity. 5.

Affix Inventory III: Nouns

As has been shown with determiners and adjectives, noun inflection, too, requires a distinction between syncretism caused by Eval (underspecification) and syncretism caused by the way affixes are stored in the mental lexicon. 5.1.

Eval-Based Inventory of Feature Bundles

The following feature bundles are allowed for nouns: (51) Table: Inventory of permissible feature bundles for nouns Nominative Accusative Genitive Dative

Masculine [] g o og

Neuter n n o og

Feminine f f f f

Plural fn fn fn fnog

This leads us to an inventory of eight feature bundles. It can be obtained by the constraint system developed so far. We need, however, one additional assumption concerning the faithfulness constraint M AX-o. The hierarchical position of this constraint given in (11) and (44) applies only to determiners and

Feature Sharing in DPs

141

adjectives. Therefore, M AX-o must be replaced by a specific variant M AXo(A), whereas the unspecific constraint M AX-o which is also applicable to nouns is ranked below the cooccurrence constraint *2: (52) M AX-fn(w/n)  *2(weak)  M AX-fnog  *3  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-og  *2, M AX-o  M AX-n  M AX-g As in the case of the weak adjectives, I forgo a detailed demonstration of the above constraints for reasons of space. 5.2.

Memory-Based Homonymy

The inventory of eight feature bundles results in a virtual paradigm of eight cells. A single lexeme, however, cannot occupy all of them, since German nouns have a fixed gender. Consequently, some cells remain empty. Adhering to Postma’s Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast, the following general pattern can be assumed: (53) General pattern of German noun inflection f [] g n

og fn fnog o

The examples below illustrate all morphologically interesting paradigms of the German noun inflection. (54) Masculine (strong) I (Turm = ‘tower’) Turm Turm

f [] g n

Turm-e Türm-e Türm-e-n Turm-s

og fn fnog o

(55) Masculine (strong) II (Spiegel = ‘mirror’) Spiegel Spiegel

f [] g n

Spiegel Spiegel Spiegel-n Spiegel-s

og fn fnog o

142

Peter Gallmann

(56) Masculine (strong) III (Balken = ‘beam, girder’) Balken Balken

f [] g n

Balken Balken Balken Balken-s

og fn fnog o

(57) Masculine (weak) (Bote = ‘messenger’) f [] g n

Bot-e Bot-en

Bot-en Bot-en Bot-en Bot-en

og fn fnog o

(58) Neuter (strong) (Auto = ‘car’)

Auto

f [] g n

Auto Auto-s Auto-s Auto-s

og fn fnog o

Herz-en Herz-en Herz-en Herz-en-s

og fn fnog o

(59) Neuter (weak) (Herz = ‘heart’)

Herz

f [] g n

(60) Feminine (strong) (Nuss = ‘nut’) Nuss

f Nüss-e Nüss-e-n

fn fnog

(61) Feminine (weak) (Tasche = ‘bag’) Tasche

f Tasch-en Tasch-en

fn fnog

Feature Sharing in DPs

6.

143

Provisional Results

In the preceding sections, the following constraint ranking could be established: (62) M AX-fn(w/n)  *2(weak)  M AX-fnog  *3  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-og  *2, M AX-o  M AX-n  M AX-g Some particularities may be worth mentioning: – The basic ranking of faithfulness constraints can be described as M AXf  M AX-o  M AX-n  M AX-g. – Deviations from this system concern the plural and the oblique case feature: Nouns and weak adjectives preserve the feature bundle fn = Plural especially, whereas adjectives (weak and strong ones) do not tolerate violations of M AX-o. – The dative case is preserved particularly well by conjoined faithfulness constraints (M AX-og, M AX-fnog). 7. 7.1.

Percolation in the NP Basic Rules

Earlier works of mine (Gallmann (1990; 1996a; 1997; 1998)) have connected the distribution of strong and weak adjective forms relatively directly to the functional category D. In Gallmann (1996a; 1997; 1998), I explained it primarily by means of spec-head agreement. In the present paper, I will, in a modified way, return to the analysis advocated in Gallmann (1990). In accordance with recent work (e.g., Schürcks & Wunderlich (2001)), I assume that morphosyntactic features may percolate from a maximal projection to the specifier position or to complement phrases. Further, I follow Müller (2002a) and Gallmann (1996a) in assuming that attributive adjectives occupy specifier positions. I state the following hypothesis: (63) Case percolation in the DP: a. DP – D0 b. or DP – NP – AP – A0 c. or DP – NP – N0

144

Peter Gallmann

One of these three options is selected as the main percolation line.

2

(64) Diagrams: three options for determining the main percolation line for case DP DP DP D0

D0

D

NP AP

D NP

A0 AP

D0 NP

AP N0

D NP

A0 AP

A00

NP AP

N0

NP

A0 AP

A00

N0

A00

The DP is assigned case from outside, and it percolates from the maximal projection to the appropriate heads. Gender and (usually) number, however, are inherent features of the word form in N 0 . Gender/number features thus project from N0 onto the maximal projections NP and DP and from there percolate to the D and A heads. Consequently, we can do without spec-head agreement as far as case and gender/number features are concerned. In ad2 In

the framework of Minimalist Morphology (Wunderlich & Fabri (1995), Ortmann (2002)), the concept of the main percolation line can be dispensed with on the following assumptions: 1. Functional categories can co-project with lexical ones. 2. Determiners and strongly inflected adjectives are combinations of the categories A and D. 3. Under certain circumstances, nouns, too, can co-project with D. In this case, they are categorially complex items of the type D+N. On these assumptions, the following constellations can be derived: DP

DP

(i) D+AP

AP

NP

D+A AP

A

NP

A AP A

N

DP D+NP

D+AP

AP D+NP

D+A D+AP D+A

D+NP

A AP N

A

D+NP AP

D+N

A

Compare the analysis of Ortmann (2002, 27-45) investigating languages of southeastern Europe and the independently developed analysis of Gallmann (1990) on German. In the framework of Minimalist Morphology, all constraints related to the main percolation line can be replaced by constraints that control the co-projection of the functional category D. For the sake of compatibility with other theoretical frameworks, the following discussion is based on the concept of main percolation line.

Feature Sharing in DPs

145

dition, this explains why determiners, adjectives, and nouns do not always show the same feature bundles (due to different cooccurrence constraints; cf. sections 3 to 6). Consider the examples below: (65 a) shows a DP in the dative singular (assumed feature combination of the whole DP: fog). The DP in (65 b) is in the accusative plural (feature combination: fng). The individual heads bear only some of the features of the DP. (65) a. b.

Ich stand in [DP[fog] einer[fo] alten[o] Burg[f] ] (‘I was standing in an old castle’) Ich besuchte [DP[fng] diese[f] alten[fn] Burgen[fn] ] (‘I visited these old castles’)

We can observe the following correlations between the selection of the main percolation line for case and the inflection of determiners, attributive adjectives, and nouns: (66) Adjectivally inflected determiners: a. A determiner at the end of a main percolation line inflects strongly. b. Otherwise, it does not inflect at all. (67) Attributive adjectives: a. An attributive adjective at the end of a main percolation line inflects strongly. b. Otherwise, it inflects weakly. (68) Noun: a. A noun at the end of a main percolation line does not inflect for case. b. Otherwise, it inflects for case. The hypothesis in (63) and the observations in (65) to (68) can be incorporated into the model developed so far. For the formulation of the constraints, I will use the “pseudofeature” M (= main percolation line for case). Clearly, M is not a morphosyntactic feature but describes a structural property. The basic condition can be put as follows: (69) M (C ASE) (Main Percolation Line for Case): Designate at least one head of the categories D, A, or N as the end of the main percolation line. Constraint (70) is a more specific variant of (69):

146

Peter Gallmann

(70) L EFTMOST M: The leftmost head is at the end of the case main percolation line. These constraints have a scalar markedness constraint as a counterpart. It aims at minimizing the number of percolation lines within the DP: (71) *M: No Main Percolation Line (Case) Words with adjectival inflection within the NP are furthermore subject to a correspondence constraint. On the status of this constraint, see Müller (2002b), where an equivalent constraint A DJ C OR (Adjective Correspondence) is discussed. (72) PARALLEL (NP, A-I NFL): Adjectivally inflected words within the NP agree on the feature M. The following constraint refers to observation (68a): (73) *o/g(NM ): A nominally inflected word at the end of a main percolation line (= marked M) must not have any case features. This restriction is a conjoined markedness constraint or cooccurrence constraint involving a class of morphosyntactic features and a structural property. It can be divided into two more elementary constraints; however, these play no autonomous role in the following discussion: (74) *o(NM ): A nominally inflected word at the end of a main percolation line (= marked M) must not have the feature [+oblique]. (75) *g(NM ): A nominally inflected word at the end of a main percolation line (= marked M) must not have the feature [+governed]. The constraints postulated so far in this section are ranked as in (76): (76) M (C ASE)  *o/g (NM )  PARALLEL  L EFTMOST M  *M The tableaux below show how the constraints postulated interact. The structures of the NPs are prototypical.

147

Feature Sharing in DPs

(77) Tableau: Assignment of the morphosyntactic main percolation line: dieser dicke gute Roman (‘this thick good novel’) NP = [ ] M *o/g PAR - L EFTdies. . . dick. . . gut. . . Roman (C ASE) (NM ) ALLEL MOST M ☞ dieserM dicke gute Roman dieserM dickerM gute Roman *! dieserM dickerM guterM Roman dieserM dickerM guterM RomanM dies dickerM guterM Roman *! dies dickerM gute Roman *! * dies dicke gute Roman *! *

*M * ** **!* **!** ** *

(78) Tableau: Assignment of the morphosyntactic main percolation line: dicke gute Romane (‘thick good novels’) NP = [fn] M *o/g PAR dick. . . gut. . . Romane (C ASE) (NM ) ALLEL dickeM guteM RomaneM ☞ dickeM guteM Romane dickeM guten Romane *! dicken guteM Romane *! dicken guten Romanen *!

L EFT- *M M ***! ** * * * *

MOST

(79) Tableau: Assignment of the morphosyntactic main percolation line: Annas dicker guter Roman (‘Anna’s thick good novel’) NP = [ ] M *o/g PAR - L EFT(Annas) dick. . . gut. . . Roman (C ASE) (NM ) ALLEL MOST M (Annas) dickerM guterM RomanM ☞ (Annas) dickerM guterM Roman (Annas) dickerM gute Roman *! (Annas) dicke guterM Roman *! * (Annas) dicke gute RomanM *! (Annas) dicke gute Roman *! *

*M ***! ** * *

In (79), Annas (= ‘Anna’s’) is treated as an independent, autonomous DP. Alternatively, it is often assumed that prenominal forms like this one are conversions into determiners (Lindauer (1995), Demske (2000)). In this case, the analysis proposed for determiners such as manch (‘many’) must be taken into account; see (108).

148

Peter Gallmann

In the following sections, I will discuss some phenomena which can be derived from interactions with the constraints postulated in sections 3 to 6: – Loss of case (for nouns) – Dative plural – Genitive singular – NPs with determiners of the type ein, kein, mein – -em/-en variation in the dative singular

7.2.

Nouns With and Without Case Markers

It is due to constraint (73), *o/g (N M ), that nominal heads at the end of a morphosyntactic main percolation line do not have any case affixes. This is possible only on the condition that *o/g (N M ) dominates the M AX-constraints for case discussed in sections 3 to 6 (except M AX-fnog; see below). See the ranking of M AX-g in the following examples. (80) Tableau: Nouns and morphosyntactic main percolation line: ohne Dirigent (‘without [a] conductor’) DP = [g] M *o/g M AX- PAR - L EFT- *M (ohne) Dirigent. . . (C ASE) (NM ) g ALLEL MOST M (ohne) Dirigent *! * * ☞ (ohne) DirigentM * * (ohne) Dirigenten *! * (ohne) DirigentenM *! *

(81) Tableau: Nouns and morphosyntactic main percolation line: ohne eigenen Dirigenten (‘without [its] own conductor’): DP = [g] M *o/g M AX- PAR - L EFT(ohne) eigen. . . Dirigent. . . (C ASE) (NM ) g ALLEL MOST M (ohne) eigenenM DirigentM *! (ohne) eigenen DirigentM *! * ☞ (ohne) eigenenM Dirigenten (ohne) eigenenM DirigentenM *! (ohne) eigenen Dirigenten *! *

*M ** * * **

Feature Sharing in DPs

149

In case of the dative suffix -e, we find a similar effect (this is of course true only for speakers that still use this ending): (82) a. b.

aus hartemM Holze (‘(made) of hard wood’) aus *HolzeM (‘(made) of wood’)

Not only is the fact that German has a constraint of the type *o/g (N M ) at all rather unexpected, but it is probably also typologically rare. DPs of the type shown in (80) are yet by no means caseless. This can be demonstrated if we take DP-DP agreement into consideration: (83) a.

b.

Als [Dative gutem Zuhörer]i fiel Prof. Meiers [Dative Assistent]i der Misston auf (‘As good listener, Prof. Meyer’s assistant noticed the dissonance’) Er hat mit [Dative Holz] gearbeitet, [Dative diesem universellen Werkstoff] (‘He worked with wood, this all-purpose material’)

Nominalized adjectives and adjectivally inflected lexemes pattern with adjectives and are thus regarded as adjectives (Stechow & Sternefeld (1988)). Consequently, *o/g (NM ) does not apply. (84) a. b.

DemH Neuen von Anna gehört angeblich ein Schloss Annas NeuemH gehört angeblich ein Schloss (Both: ‘Anna’s new partner allegedly owns a castle’)

(85) a.

die Einstellung dieserM Beamten (‘the hiring of these officials’) die Einstellung allerlei Beamter M (‘the hiring of all kinds of officials’)

b.

In the standard variety of German, M AX-fnog (Dative plural) is ranked higher than *o/g (NM ). See the following tableaux. (86) Tableau on the dative plural: mit Früchten (‘with fruits’): DP = [fnog] M M AXmit Früchte. . . (C ASE) fnog mit Früchte *! * mit FrüchteM *! mit Früchten *! ☞ mit FrüchtenM

*o/g PAR - L EFT- *M (NM ) ALLEL MOST M * ** * * ** *

150

Peter Gallmann

(87) Tableau on the dative plural (mit tropischen Früchten = ‘with tropical fruits’): DP = [fnog] M M AXmit tropisch. . . Früchte. . . (C ASE) fnog mit tropischenM FrüchteM *! mit tropischenM Früchte *! mit tropischen FrüchteM *! mit tropischen Früchte *! * mit tropischenM FrüchtenM ☞ mit tropischenM Früchten mit tropischen FrüchtenM mit tropischen Früchten *!

*o/g PAR - L EFT- *M (NM ) ALLEL MOST M ** * * * * *!* ** * *!* * * *

In German, there is a tendency to order M AX-fnog along with the other M AX constraints for case, i.e., lower than *o/g (N M ). We would then expect forms without the dative plural suffix -n. Indeed, such affixless forms do occur. In a quick search by means of the internet service Google, I found that about 20% of the occurrences of the phrase mit Kindern (‘with children’) lacked the case suffix (i.e., mit Kinder) (January 2003). Such forms are, however, not approved in prescriptive grammars. But even Duden 1 (2000), doubtless the best-known custodian of the norm, notes under the entry Land (‘country’): (88) aus aller Herren Länder (beside: aus aller Herren Ländern) (‘from all rulers’ countries’) The genitive suffix -s is not entirely comparable to the dative suffix -n. As a rule, it occurs only where there is no violaton of *o/g (N M ). Consequently, -s forms are impossible if the noun of the NP is at the end of the case main percolation line. In other words, NPs without an article or an attributive adjective do not exhibit the suffix. (89) a. *der Genuss WassersM (‘the consumption of water’) b. *Er enthielt sich WiderstandsM (‘He abstained from resistance’) Considering the ungrammaticality of the instances in (89), one may now expect suffixless forms. In genitive phrases, however, syntactic visibility constraints play a crucial role. It is because of these constraints that affixless forms, too, are ungrammatical – otherwise, the second candidate in (90) would win.

Feature Sharing in DPs

151

In the tableaux below only M AX-o – relevant for the genitive – is included. (90) Tableau: der Genuss Wassers (‘the consumption of water’): DP = [o] M *o/g Max- PAR - L EFT- *M (der Genuss) Wasser. . . (C ASE) (NM ) o ALLEL MOST M (der Genuss) Wasser *! * * (☞) (der Genuss) WasserM * * (der Genuss) Wassers *! * (der Genuss) WassersM *! *

(91) Tableau: der Genuss kalten Wassers = ‘the consumption of cold water’): DP = [o] M *o/g Max- PAR - L EFT- *M (der Genuss) kalt. . . Wasser. . . (C ASE) (NM ) o ALLEL MOST M (der Genuss) kaltenM WasserM *! ** (der Genuss) kaltenM Wasser *! * (der Genuss) kalten WasserM *! * * (der Genuss) kalten Wasser *! * * (der Genuss) kaltenM WassersM *! ** ☞ (der Genuss) kaltenM Wassers * (der Genuss) kalten WassersM *! * * (der Genuss) kalten Wassers *! *

At least one specific variant of M AX-o has remained from an earlier stage of the German language – M AX-o (P RESTIGE). This constraint is ranked as M AX-fnog. (92) M AX-o (P RESTIGE): PPs containing a prestigious preposition (i.e., a preposition that is encountered in literary texts) must preserve the feature o = [+oblique]. In the following examples, the percentage symbol % indicates stylistic markedness: (93) a. %wegen Todesfalls geschlossen (‘closed due to death’) b. %mittels Drahtes (Duden 9, 2001) (‘by means of wire’) However, inflected noun forms are hardly ever found when they are accompanied by prepositions typical of non-literary texts:

152

Peter Gallmann

(94) a. ???abzüglich Rabatts (‘minus discount’) b. ???einschließlich Verpackungsmaterials (‘including packing material’) A similar, yet stylistically less marked constraint of the M AX-o family can be assumed for articleless proper names. 7.3.

Special Case I: Determiners of the Type ein, kein, mein

There is a subclass of determiners in German that partially do not inflect: (95) a. b. c.

ein, irgendein (‘a/one’, ‘some’) kein (‘no’) Possessive determiners: mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer (‘my’, ‘your’, ‘his’, etc.)

The special behaviour of these determiners can be explained by a lexemespecific constraint: (96) *M (D, ein): Determiners of the lexical class ein (kein, mein . . . ) must not be at the end of a main percolation line. In (97), the determiner ein (‘a’) cannot bear the inflectional affix -er. This contrasts with the determiner dies-er (‘this’) in (98): 3 (97) a. [Ein dick-er gut-er Roman] liegt auf dem Tisch. b. *[Ein-er dick-e gut-e Roman] liegt auf dem Tisch. (both: ‘A thick good novel is lying on the table.’) (98) a. *[Dies dick-er gut-er Roman] liegt auf dem Tisch. b. [Dies-er dick-e gut-e Roman] liegt auf dem Tisch. (both: ‘This thick good novel is lying on the table.’) 3 The

short variant dies (‘this’, nominative/accusative singular neuter) for dieses must be interpreted as dies-s. It does not count as an affixless form. See the following examples: (i)

a. diesM dicke Buch b. *dies dickesM Buch (both: ‘this thick book’)

Feature Sharing in DPs

153

The constraint *M (D, ein) is violated in certain contexts (e = empty head N0 ): (99) a. b.

Dieses Zitat stammt aus *[ein dickem gutem Roman] Dieses Zitat stammt aus [ein-em dick-en gut-en Roman] (both: ‘This quotation is from a thick good novel.’)

(100) a. b.

Das ist nicht [dein Roman], sondern *[mein e] Das ist nicht [dein Roman], sondern [mein-er e] (both: ‘This is not your novel, but mine.’)

(101) a. b.

Das hat *[kein e] gesehen Das hat [kein-er e] gesehen4 (both: ‘Nobody has seen that.’)

These data can be accounted for by the position of *M (D, ein): It is ranked below the cooccurrence constraint *2: (102) M(Case)  M AX-fn(w/n)  *2(weak)  M AX-fnog  *o/g(N M )  *3,  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-og  *2  *M (D, ein)  M AX-o  M AX-n  M AX-g  PARALLEL  L EFTMOST M  *M In the following tableaux, only those constraints are listed that are crucial for the phenomena discussed here.

4 In

German, there is a class of nominally inflected pronouns (Heidolph et al. (1981); Gallmann (1990; 1996b)). These pronouns can be at the end of a main percolation line and bear no inflectional affixes in the nominative, accusative, and dative: (i)

Ich habe allerlei erlebt. (‘I have experienced all sorts of things.’)

Note that certain lexemes have both nominally and adjectivally inflected forms (Gallmann (1996b)): (ii) a. b.

Anna hat schon viel erlebt. Anna hat schon vieles erlebt. (both: ‘Ann has experienced a lot.’)

154

Peter Gallmann

(103) Tableau: ein dicker guter Roman (‘a thick good novel’): DP = [ ] M M AX- M AX- *M M AX- M AX- PAR- L EFT- *M ein.. dick.. gut.. Roman (Case) o (A) og (ein) o g ALLEL MOST M einerM dicke gute *! * Roman einerM dickerM gute *! ** Roman einerM dickerM guterM *! *** Roman ☞ ein dickerM guterM * ** Roman ein dickerM gute *! * * Roman ein dicke gute Roman *! *

(104) Tableau: einem dicken guten Roman (‘a thick good novel’): DP = [og] M M AX- M AX- *M M AX- M AX- PAR- L EFT- *M ein.. dick.. gut.. Roman (Case) o (A) og (ein) o g ALLEL MOST M ☞ einemM dicken guten * * Roman einemM dickemM guten * *! ** Roman einemM dickemM gutemM * **!* Roman ein dickemM gutemM *! * * * * ** Roman ein dickemM guten *! * * * * * * Roman ein dicken guten *! * * * * * Roman

(105) Tableau: mein (‘my’, ‘mine’): DP = [ ] M M AX- M AX- *M M AX- M AX- PAR- L EFT- *M (sondern) [NP mein. . . ] (Case) o (A) og (ein) o g ALLEL MOST M mein *! * ☞ meinerM * * *

Notes: 1. If the lexeme ein (‘one’) is not used as a determiner, constraint (96) does not apply. See the following examples, where ein (with the meaning of a cardinal number) occupies a position below the DP shell:

Feature Sharing in DPs

(106) a. b.

155

[ DP Des Piraten [ NP eines Auge] ] blinzelte. (‘The pirate’s one eye twinkled.’) [ DP Sein [ NP eines Auge] ] blinzelte. (‘His one eye twinkled.’)

Consider also the weak inflection of ein in (107). This behavior can be derived from (66) and (67), if ein occupies a Spec position within the NP. It is then used like an attributive adjective: (107) a. b.

das eine Auge des Piraten (‘the one eye of the pirate’) mit seinem einen Auge (‘with his one eye’)

2. I suppose that rare alternations like the ones in (108) are due to lexeme splitting: (108) a. b.

manch-erM gute Roman manch gut-erM Roman (both: ‘many a good novel’)

In (108 a) we see a normal adjectivally inflected determiner (= manch 1 ), whereas (108 b) shows a homonymous determiner (= manch 2 ) that is unable to occupy a position at the end of a main percolation line (and is therefore not inflected). 3. The analysis presented so far has one shortcoming: Not only do the constraints (correctly) prevent the prenominal forms – *einer [ ], *eins [n] und *eins [ng] – they also incorrectly prevent the masculine accusative keinen [g]: (109) a. b.

Er liest *[DP ein [ NP guten Roman] ]. Er liest [ DP ein-en [ NP guten Roman] ]. (both: ‘He is reading a good novel.’)

Technically, the problem can be solved by introducing a special rule of the kind proposed by Müller (2002b). The following constraint is equivalent to Müller’s G M C OR (Governed Masculine Correspondence): (110) S PREAD-g: If a DP contains a head with the feature g = [+governed], all heads of the categories D, A, and N bear the feature g.

156

Peter Gallmann

S PREAD-g is ranked between *2 and M (D, ein) and triggers wide-range percolation of [g] in the DP. Its effect, however, is limited by its position in the constraint hierarchy. As a result, S PREAD-g is crucial only for masculine singular (in the case of attributive adjectives and several determiners it applies redundantly). Note that S PREAD-g is not applicable to DPs with feminine, neuter or plural nouns, since the constraint hierarchy prevents any head with the feature bundles [fg], [ng], and [fng]; see sections 3 to 6. 7.4.

Special Case II: Absence of Parallel Inflection in the Dative Singular

So far, I have not once mentioned interactions between phonology and morphosyntax. The example below shows that at least some of the interactions can be explained without cooccurrence constraints referring to phonological as well as morphosyntactical categories. In some contexts where we would expect the strong inflectional suffix -em, we often encounter -en. I assume the following phonological markedness constraint: (111) *S CHWA-m: German word forms do not end in schwa + /m/ Prescriptive grammars label the replacement of -em by -en as dated. On the assumption that they are right, we can make out two variants of E VAL in German: a traditional E VAL Trad and a progressive E VAL Pro . In E VALTrad , M AX-og is ranked higher than *S CHWA-m, whereas in E VAL Pro we find the inverse ranking. Here are the respective tableaux: (112) Tableau: E VAL Trad , aus hartem roten Gestein (‘of hard red rock’): DP = [og] M M AX- S CHWA- M AX- PAR - L EFT- *M (aus) hart. . . rot. . . (Gestein) (C ASE) o (A) m og ALLEL MOST M (aus) hartemM rotemM (Gestein) **! ** ☞ (aus) hartemM roten (Gestein) * * * * (aus) harten rotemM (Gestein) * * * *! * (aus) harten roten (Gestein) *! ** *

Feature Sharing in DPs

157

(113) Tableau: E VAL Pro , aus hartem rotem Gestein (‘of hard red rock’): DP = [og] M M AX- M AX- S CHWA- PAR- L EFT- *M (aus) hart. . . rot. . . (Gestein) (C ASE) o (A) og m ALLEL MOST M ☞ (aus) hartemM rotemM (Gestein) ** ** (aus) hartemM roten (Gestein) *! * * * (aus) harten rotemM (Gestein) *! * * * * (aus) harten roten (Gestein) *! ** *

8.

Summary and Outlook

In the previous sections I have demonstrated the interaction of cooccurrence constraints and percolation constraints. In sum, the following general picture crystallizes: (114) Feature Sharing in DPs: M(C ASE )  M AX-fn(w/n)  *2(weak)  M AX-fnog  *o/g(N M )  *3,  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-og  S CHWA-m  *2  S PREAD-g  *M (D, ein)  M AX-o  M AX-n  M AX-g  PARALLEL  Leftmost M  *M In this overall ranking, the following partial rankings are included: (115) Main percolation line for Case: M(C ASE )  PARALLEL  L EFTMOST M  *M (116) General ranking of faithfulness constraints for gender/number and case: M AX-fnog  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-og  M AX-n  M AX-g (117) Morphosyntactic features of Determiners: M AX-fnog  *3  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-og  *2  S PREAD-g  *M (D, ein)  M AX-n  M AX-g (118) Morphosyntactic features of strongly inflected adjectives: M AX-fnog  *3  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-og  S CHWA-m  *2  M AX-n  M AX-g (119) Morphosyntactic features of weakly inflected adjectives: M AX-fn(w/n)  *2(weak)  M AX-o(A)  M AX-f  M AX-n  M AX-g

158

Peter Gallmann

(120) Morphosyntactic features of nouns: M AX-fn(w/n)  M AX-fnog  *o/g(NM )  *3  M AX-f  M AXog  *2  M AX-o  M AX-n  M AX-g In my opinion, the percolation constraints and the quantificational markedness constraints (quantificational cooccurrence constraints) are the most interesting results. It seems to be worthwhile to search for similar phenomena in other parts of the grammar. The system developed so far is not yet complete. There is at least one additional type of constraints determining the morphosyntax of DPs, namely, visibility constraints. They concern phrases as a whole (maximal projections) and are responsible for phenomena such as the genitive rule, as proposed in Gallmann (1990, 1996a). A pecularity of some of these constraints seems to be that they are blind to the lexical and morphological properties of the input. In certain cases, this may lead to absolute ungrammaticality (ineffability); see (89) and (90) above. For reasons of space, the visibility constraints cannot be discussed in the present paper. But see the manuscripts “Genitivregel” and “Dativobjekte”, written in German, which can be downloaded from the homepage of the author. References Abney, Steven 1987 The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Bierwisch, Manfred 1967 Syntactic Features in Morphology: General Problems of So-Called Pronominal Inflection in German. In: To Honor Roman Jakobson. Essays on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. 11 October 1966.Vol. I, 239-270. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Demske, Ulrike 2000 Merkmale und Relationen. Diachrone Studien zur Nominalphrase im Deutschen. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter. [Duden 1] Dudenredaktion 2000 Duden. Rechtschreibung der deutschen Sprache. Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien & Zürich: Dudenverlag. [Duden 9 (2001)] Klosa, Annette (Redaktion) 2001 Duden. Richtiges und gutes Deutsch. 5th ed., Mannheim, Leipzig, Wien, Zürich: Dudenverlag (= Duden, Band 9). Gallmann, Peter 1990 Kategoriell komplexe Wortformen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Feature Sharing in DPs 1996a 1996b

159

Die Steuerung der Flexion in der DP. Linguistische Berichte 164, 283-314. Partitive Genitive und adverbiale Akkusative. Syntax und Morphologie von Indefinita des Typs “etwas”. In Thilo Tappe & Elisabeth Löbel (eds.), Die Struktur der Nominalphrase, 42-57. Universität Wuppertal: Wuppertaler Arbeitspapiere zur Sprachwissenschaft, vol. 12. 1997 Zur Morphosyntax der Eigennamen im Deutschen. In Elisabeth Löbel & Gisa Rauh (eds.), Lexikalische Kategorien und Merkmale, 72-84. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1998 Case Underspecification in Morphology, Syntax and the Lexicon. In Artemis Alexiadou & Chris Wilder (eds.), Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, 141-176. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Heidolph, Karl-Erich et al. 1981 Grundzüge einer deutschen Grammatik. Berlin: Akademieverlag. Hellan, Lars 1986 The Headedness of NPs in Norwegian. In Pieter Muysken & Henk van Riemsdijk (eds.), Features and Projections. Dordrecht: Foris. Legendre, Géraldine, Paul Smolensky & Colin Wilson 1998 When is Less More? Faithfulness and Minimal Links in Wh-Chains. In Pilar Barbosa, Danny Fox, Paul Hagstrom, Martha McGinnis, & David Pesetsky (eds.), Is the Best Good Enough?, 249-289. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press & MITWPL. Lindauer, Thomas 1995 Genitivattribute. Eine morphosyntaktische Untersuchung zum deutschen DP/NP-System. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Müller, Gereon 2002a Syntaktisch determinierter Kasuswegfall in der deutschen NP. Linguistische Berichte 189, 89-114. 2002b Remarks on Nominal Inflection in German. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebels (eds.), More than Words: A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 113145. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Ortmann, Albert 2002 Kategorien des Nomens. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Postma, Gertjan 1994 Agreement, Anti-Agreement, and the Structure of the Verbal Paradigm. In Zwart, Jan-Wouter (ed.), Minimalism and Kayne’s Asymmetry Hypothesis, 169-194. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen: Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik (GAGL), vol. 37. Schürcks, Lilia & Dieter Wunderlich 2001 Determiner-Possessor Relation in the Bulgarian DP. Ms., Universität Düsseldorf. Stechow, Arnim, & Wolfgang Sternefeld 1988 Bausteine syntaktischen Wissens. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Wiese, Bernd 1999 Unterspezifizierte Paradigmen. Form und Funktion in der pronominalen Deklination. Linguistik Online 4.3. http://viadrina.euv-frankfurt-o.de/∼wjournal/3_99/wiese.html

160

Peter Gallmann

Wunderlich, Dieter 1997 Der unterspezifizierte Artikel. In Christa Dürscheid, Karl Heinz Ramers, & Monika Schwarz (eds.), Sprache im Fokus. Festschrift für Heinz Vater zum 65. Geburtstag, 47-58. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 2001 Optimal Case Patterns: German and Icelandic Compared. In Ellen Brandner & Heike Zinsmeister (eds.), New Perspectives on Case Theory. Stanford University: CSLI Publications. Wunderlich, Dieter & Ray Fabri 1995 Minimalist Morphology. An Approach to Inflection. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 14, 236-294.

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel* 1.

Introduction

In syntax, topology is a descriptive account of word order phenomena. Phrases are described as instances of schemata, with a schema being a continuous succession of a certain number of slots, i.e., fields or positions. A slot is defined by the restrictions the expressions filling the slot have to comply with. On the basis of topological schemata, a topological theory makes predictions concerning the word order of phrases. Topology forces one to tackle very elementary questions. With respect to the syntax of noun phrases, these include: What is a determiner? What kinds of determiners can be distinguished? What is a pronoun? What kinds of pronouns can be distinguished? Are there expressions of the syntactic category Q(uantifier) and/or Num(ber)? How many different syntactic uses do expressions like ein (‘a’, ‘one’), viel (‘much’) or alle (‘all’) have? What does the system of articles look like? Which syntactic features have to be assumed in the noun phrase? Etc., etc. We do not conceive of topology as a rival to constituent structure, but as a chance to discuss elementary questions without committing ourselves (too much) to a certain syntactic framework. It seems to us that the unsettledness of these very elementary questions is one reason for the lack of unanimity among researchers concerning theconstitutent structure of noun phrases in German. The following paper is structured as follows. After introducing the * Forerunners

to this paper were presented to the colloquium in honour of Marga Reis (Tübingen, June 23, 2001), to the colloquium of the graduate program “Sprachliche Repräsentationen und ihre Interpretation” (Stuttgart, January 10, 2002), and to the workshop on feature distribution in noun phrases at the DGfS meeting in Mannheim (February 28, 2002). We are grateful to the audiences for the lively and useful discussions. Special thanks to the editors of this volume, especially to Gisela Zifonun for her critical comments on the manuscript, as well as to Mike Berwald for help with English. Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 161-188 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

162

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

topological schema and the three outstanding generalizations it is based on, we discuss three slots of the schema in some detail: the initial field, the position of the elements marking the noun phrase as definite or indefinite, and the position of the central noun in the noun phrase. 2.

The Topological Schema and its Restrictions

In topological schema (1), we distinguish two kinds of slots: fields and positions. A position is filled by one and only one simple or complex syntactic word (X0 -element), whereas a field can filled by one or more syntactic phrases (XP-elements). (1) Topological schema of German noun phrases Z

Def

X

Nom

Y

Z = Z-field: n-many XPs (n≥0) out of the set: {focus particle, negation particle, adverb, (a certain use of) all-, PP, deren, ...} Def = Definiteness position: one X0 -element out of the set: {article, demonstrative, possessive, interrogative, quantity expression, prenominal genitive, combinations of article and adjective or of two determiners, demonstrative pronoun der, possessive pronoun meiner, deiner, etc., indefinite pronoun einer, ...} X = X-field: n-many APs (n≥0) Nom = Nominal position: one noun and optionally left or right narrow appositions Y = Y-field: n-many XPs (n≥0) out of the set: {genitive phrase, PP, AdvP, diverse types of embedded clauses, ...} As mentioned before, the nature of the slots in a topological schema is determined by the restrictions the elements filling the slots have to comply with. These restrictions determine the number and nature of the schema’s slots. We will discuss in detail the restrictions concerning Z, Def, and Nom, which are formulated as three generalizations (see page 164).

selbst/sogar even

Z nur only nicht einmal not even nicht not

welch ein what a der the (des) of the die the die the

dessen whose welcher which

Def der the der the jede every die the viel much die selben the same die meisten the most Bachs Bach’s wessen whose

(2) Applications of (1)

uns allen bekannte us all known ‘who is known to us all’ berühmter famous berühmte famous

schönen zwei beautiful two

vielen many

X große great berühmte famous

Komponist composer Thomaskantor Johann Sebastian Bach Thomas-cantor Johann Sebastian Bach Herrn Prof. Dr. Johann Sebastian Bach Mr. Prof. Dr Johann Sebastian Bach Feststellung statement Frage question

Kantaten cantatas Komponist composer

Nom Bach Bach Komponist composer Fuge fugue Kantaten cantatas Kirchenmusik religious music Sonaten sonatas Präludien preludes Kantaten cantatas Kantaten cantatas

dass Bach noch lebt that Bach still lives ob Bach noch lebt whether Bach still lives

aus der Leipziger Zeit from the Leipzig time ‘from his time in Leipzig’ gestern yesterday dessen Werke wir so schätzen whose work we so much admire

von Johann Sebastian Bach of Johann Sebastian Bach Johann Sebastian Bachs Johann Sebastian Bach’s

von Johann Sebastian Bach of Johann Sebastian Bach

des wohltemperierten Klaviers the well-tempered clavier

Y

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

163

164

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

Generalization I: The Z-field is filled by syntactic phrases which can be dislocated from the rest of the noun phrase. Generalization II: The definiteness position (Def) is filled by one simple or complex determiner which marks the noun phrase with ±DEFINITE. Generalization III: The nominal position (Nom) is filled by one simple or complex nominal X0 -constituent with linear precedence inside this constituent being as follows:1 nomen varians* > nomen invarians* > N > nomen (/adjectivum) invarians*

Our topological theory of German noun phrases is inspired by the most successful topological theory of German sentences, the Herling-ErdmannHöhle system (Höhle (1986)), which has its roots in the work of Herling and Erdmann in the nineteenth century – see Höhle (1986) for references. The topological schema we use bears some resemblance to the schema proposed in Duden-Grammatik (3 1973) – “Artikelwort-Mittelfeld-Kern-Nachfeld” – which has never been worked out in greater detail, as far as we know. Our topological schema differs crucially from the schema proposed by Engel (1977; 1988), which Zifonun et al. (1997, 2069) is based on: (3)

Vorfeld Kern nomen inv. gen. phrase nomen var. Sub prenom. gen. AP nomen inv. Det nomen var.

Nachfeld PPK PPS Adv NS APP alsphrase

None of these three slots – Vorfeld, Kern, Nachfeld – is identical to any slot in our schema. The elements filling the Vorfeld slot (nomen (in)varians, determiner, prenominal genitive, AP) belong to three different slots in our account. The Kern slot can be filled by one noun only; narrow appositions, i.e., nomen and adjectivum (in)varians, belong to Vorfeld or Nachfeld. The reason for not relying on schema (3) is that we believe that only a theory based on a topological schema like (1) is able to supply insightful general restrictions for filling the slots, makes accurate predictions, and allows the establishment of analogies to the structure of sentences. 1 “>” means precedence, “*” means n-many (n≥0), and “(in)varians” means that the noun or adjective is (not) inflected.

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

3.

165

Z-Field

As indicated, focus and negation particles can be located in Z. They can be simple like nur (‘only’), sogar (‘even’), or nicht (‘not’) (see (4-a)) or complex like nicht einmal (‘not even’), nicht nur (‘not only’), or selbst nicht (‘not even’) (see (4-b)).2 (4) a. b.

nur (/sogar, nicht, ...) der Autor ‘only (/even, not, ...) the author’ nicht einmal (/nicht nur, selbst nicht, ...) ein Gerhard Schröder ‘not even (/not only, not even, ...) a Gerhard Schröder’

The quantity expression alle (‘all’) is located in Z if it is used as in (4-cd), where a demonstrative or a possessive follows the quantity expression. Compare this to Reis & Vater (1980), where alle is located in the “pre-Det position”. (For further uses of alle, see below.) (4) c. d.

alle diese Politiker alle unsere Freunde

‘all these politicians’ ‘all our friends’

The aforementioned particles and the quantity expression alle are the stylistically unmarked Z-elements. As a stylistically marked option, attributive PPs and adverbs can be located in Z: (4) e. f. g.

vom Fritz der Bruder aus Porzellan eine Vase dort der Herr

‘Fritz’s brother’ ‘a vase (made) of china’ ‘the gentleman over there’

A further interesting case is (4-h), deren viele, as it occurs in a sentence like Es gibt deren viele (‘There are many of this kind’). Here deren viele means something like “many of such and such a kind”. (4) h.

deren viele

‘many of this kind’

Deren is not a prenominal genitive as in Deren Geduld möchte ich haben (‘I would like to have their patience’). Firstly, deren viele is an indefinite noun phrase, while deren Geduld is a definite one. Secondly, the prenominal genitive cannot be separated from the noun, as seen in (5) and (6). 2 Z-elements

can be iterated: selbst nicht einmal Kanzler Schröder (‘Not even Chancellor Schröder’), selbst alle diese Politiker (‘even all these politicans’), nur dort das Haus (‘only the house there’).

166

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

(5) a. Deren Geduld möchte ich haben. b. *Deren möchte ich Geduld haben. (6) a. b.

Deren viele gibt es nicht. Deren gibt es nicht viele.

For the elements in Z, we propose the following generalization: (7) Generalization I: The Z-field is filled by syntactic phrases which can be dislocated from the rest of the noun phrase. See (8) to (10), where the two sentences can have the same (focus) reading: (8) a. b.

Nur der AUtor kann das wissen. Der AUtor kann das nur wissen. ‘Only the author can know that.’

(9) a. b.

Alle diese Politiker sind unfähig. Diese Politiker sind alle unfähig. ‘These politicians are all incompetent.’

(10) a. b.

Vom Fritz der Bruder ist da. Vom Fritz ist der Bruder da. ‘Fritz’s brother is here.’

The dislocation of the unmarked Z-elements seems to be quite unrestricted. Quantifier floating as in (9-b), for instance, is known to be much less restricted than NP and was für split (cf. Pafel (1995)). The dislocation of the marked Z-elements, however, is severely restricted. There is a challenge to this view on Z-elements, however. Jacobs (1983) argues that the strings at the beginning of the sentences in (11) are not complex noun phrases introduced by a focus particle, because basically these strings cannot occur as the complement of a preposition, as can be observed in (12). (11) a. b. c.

Nur Gerda erscheint in Peters Träumen. ‘Only Gerda appears in Peter’s dreams.’ Nur schöne Frauen erscheinen in Peters Träumen. ‘Only beautiful women appear in Peter’s dreams.’ Nur Macht und Reichtum erscheinen dem Peter erstrebenswert. ‘Only power and wealth appear worth striving for to Peter.’

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

167

(12) *Peter träumt von nur Gerda (/schönen Frauen, Macht und Reichtum) ‘Peter dreams only of Gerda (/beautiful women, power and wealth).’ But Jacobs admits that there are noun phrases introduced by focus particles, as in (13-ab). It seems that this primarily occurs when a cardinal is narrowly focussed. He assumes that in this instance the focus particle is adjoined to the cardinal (but not adjoined to the noun phrase as such – see the topological description in (14)). (13) a. von nur einem Täter b. von nur zwei (/wenigen) Tätern c. ?von nur einigen Tätern d. *von nur dem Täter e. *von nur beiden Tätern (Jacobs (1983, 69f.)) ‘of only one (/two, few, some, the, both) culprit(s)’ (14) von nur zwei Tätern Def Nom If Jacobs is right, it is surprising that in these cases the focus particle can be dislocated from the noun phrase as in (15-b) (cf. (8)) or in nur von EInem Täter, since it seems unlikely that a subpart of a complex determiner can be extracted (cf. section 4.2, where we will see true complex determiners, whose components cannot be separated from one another). (15) a. b.

Nur ZWEI Täter hat er geschnappt. ZWEI Täter hat er nur geschnappt. ‘He has caught only two culprits.’

Thus, scepticism seems warranted. What is most puzzling about Jacobs’s view is that according to him, one would have to analyze the sentences in (11) as V3-sentences, not as V2-sentences. Instead of modifying the topological theory of sentences by admitting V3-sentences, one could try to explain the ungrammaticality of (12) by relying on the conditions internal to PPs. Further evidence against Jacobs’s view comes from the fact that nur-phrases behave like (negative) quantifiers – they are sensitive to negation, as quantifiers typically are, and show regular relative and absolute scope behavior (there is a long tradition starting with Geach [1962] 3 (1980) which takes onlyphrases to be (negative) quantifiers). The sentences in (16) are not logically

168

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

equivalent with respect to the statement made, which clearly indicates that the nur-phrase is a quantifier. (16) a.

b.

Von uns war nur MOritz nicht da. ‘Of us, only Moritz was not here.’ Statement: Except for Moritz, everyone of us was here. Presupposition: Moritz was not here. Es ist nicht der Fall, dass von uns nur MOritz da war. ‘It is not the case that of us only Moritz was here.’ Statement: Besides Moritz, someone else of us was here. Presupposition: Moritz was here.

For an illustration of the relative scope behavior of nur-phrases, see the sentences in (17). Whereas (17-a) is unambiguous with wide scope of the nurphrase, sentence (17-b) is ambiguous: Besides the wide-scope reading of the universal quantifier (‘Every problem is such that only Mary could solve it’), which one gets only with some effort, it exhibits the reading with wide scope of the nur-phrase (‘Only Mary is such that she could solve every problem’). (17) a. b.

Nur die Marie hat jede Aufgabe lösen können. ‘Only Mary could solve every problem.’ Jede Aufgabe hat nur die Marie lösen können. ‘Every problem, only Mary could solve.’

Looking at nur-phrases in more detail, it becomes obvious that their scope behavior can be predicted quite accurately if one regards them as negative existential quantifiers (see Pafel forthcoming: section 2.6.2). 4.

Definiteness Position

As for the definiteness position, we propose the following generalization: (18) Generalization II: The definiteness position (Def) is filled by one simple or complex determiner which marks the noun phrase with ±DEFINITE. In order to work with Generalization II, we have to know, above all, what determiners are. There seems to be no agreed upon answer to this question; assumptions concerning the extension of the class of determiners vary considerably. We attempt to single out determiners with the help of two criteria:

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

169

a topological and a morphological one. On the one hand, determiners follow the elements in Z and precede the elements in X (the topological criterion); on the other hand, determiners exhibit a certain inflection pattern – modulo irregularities (the morphological criterion). 4.1.

Determiner Inflection

The paradigm of determiner inflection is as follows: 3 (19) Determiner inflection singular masc neut fem nom -er -es -e acc -en -es -e dat -em -em -er gen -es -es -er

plural masc/neut/fem -e -e -en -er

This is the paradigm of inflectional suffixes of dieser (‘this’), jener (‘that’), jeder (‘every’), alle (‘all’), mancher (‘many a’, ‘some’), welcher (‘which’), as well as the indefinite pronoun einer (‘someone’) and the possessive pronoun meiner (‘mine’), deiner (‘yours’), etc. 4 With the exception of the GEN.SING.MASC and GEN.SING.NEUT suffix -es, this paradigm is identical to the strong inflection of adjectives (we will come back to these similarities in section 4.2). As in the paradigm of determiner inflection (19) corresponds to schwa, it is a small step to assume that all occurrences of schwa followed by a consonant in (19) are due to schwa epenthesis. In these cases, it is the consonant alone which is the proper inflectional suffix (cf. Bierwisch 1967, 3 Compare

Bierwisch’s (1967) and Eisenberg’s (1998) “pronominal inflection” and Müller’s (2002) “determiner inflection”. 4 In some cases ( GEN . SING . MASC / NEUT of dieser, jener, and jeder) the genitive suffix -es can be replaced by -en: (i)

ein Haus diesen Typs / im Sommer diesen Jahres

(ii) im Dezember jenen Jahres

(only NEUT)

(iii) der Inhalt jeden Behälters / das Recht jeden Volkes

170

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

250f.). Thus, we get the following paradigm of determinative inflectional morphemes: (20) Determinative inflectional morphemes singular masc neut fem nom -r -s -e acc -n -s -e dat -m -m -r gen -s -s -r

plural masc/neut/fem -e -e -n -r

The definite and indefinite article, as well as the possessive, follow the pattern in (19) and (20) only up to a point. The obvious deviations are to be found in the nominative and accusative forms. We will interpret these deviations as irregularities supported by the fact that these words are expressions with a high token-frequency, which typically exhibit idiosyncrasies; frequently used expressions are stored as complete inflected word forms in the lexicon, and are thus not composed with the help of general inflectional rules (see Werner (1987a;b), Nübling (2000)). Let us take a look at the definite article first. It exhibits the regular inflectional morphemes – except for NOM / ACC . SING . FEM and NOM / ACC . PLU (phonologically, die (/di:/) does not end in a schwa). (21) Definite article singular masc neut fem nom der das die acc den das die dat dem dem der gen des des der

plural masc/neut/fem die die den der

The indefinite article ein (‘a’) (and kein (‘no’)) and the possessive mein (‘my’), dein (‘your’), etc., follow the pattern of determiner inflection – apart from three forms. These irregular forms (NOM . SING . MASC / NEUT and ACC . SING . NEUT) carry no inflectional ending.

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

(22) Indefinite article and possessive singular masc neut fem nom ein ein ein-e acc ein-en ein ein-e dat ein-em ein-em ein-er gen ein-es ein-es ein-er

masc sein sein-en sein-em sein-es

singular neut sein sein sein-em sein-es

171

fem sein-e sein-e sein-er sein-er

The existence of these forms can most likely be partially diachronically explained. In Old High German ein and the so-called possessive pronouns mîn, dîn, sîn, etc., possessed two variants of these forms – an inflected one and an uninflected one. The paradigm of the inflectional endings for the strong adjectival declension, the indefinite pronoun ein and the possessive pronouns in OHG is: (23) masc nom -ø, -er acc -an dat -emu, -emo gen -es

singular neut -ø, -az -ø, -az -emu, -emo -es

fem -ø, -iu -a -eru, -ero -era

As already mentioned, the pronominal counterparts of the indefinite article and the possessives in Modern German – i.e., the indefinite pronoun einer and the possessive pronouns meiner, deiner, etc. – follow the pattern in (19) exactly. Incidentally, we make a terminological distinction between the possessive, which cannot constitute a noun phrase on its own, and the possessive pronoun, which can (cf. (24)). We take them to be two distinct determiners, which differ not only in inflection, but also syntactically. The possessive must be accompanied by an adjective and/or noun (in X/Nom), whereas the possessive pronoun does not allow such (overt) elements. (24) Possessive vs. possessive pronoun a. Mein Exemplar ist verschlissen. b. *Mein ist verschlissen. c. Meines ist verschlissen. d. *Meines Exemplar ist verschlissen. ‘My copy is worn.’

(possessive) (possessive) (possessive pronoun) (possessive pronoun)

172

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

Our approach, then, does not distinguish articles and pronouns as two kinds of syntactic categories, but distinguishes them as two kinds of determiners (see section 4.4 below for further discussion on pronouns). Consequently, there is no need for a distinction between pronominal inflection and article (or determiner) inflection as, e.g., in Eisenberg (1998). 4.2.

Simple and Complex Determiners

Besides the simple determiners we have discussed above, there are also complex ones of which two types can be distinguished. The first type consists of a determiner and an adjective, e.g., das selbe (‘the same’), das gleiche (‘the same’), die meisten (‘most’), ein jeder (‘every’). The first part is nothing more than the definite or indefinite article, the second part is an adjective inflecting in a fully regular manner. This is true even for jeder (‘every’) in combination with ein (‘a’): jeder does not conform to the determiner pattern here – other than the simple determiner jeder (see (25)): 5 (25) a. b.

der Wunsch eines jeden (/*jedes) Genossen der Wunsch jedes (/*jeden) Genossen ‘the wish of every comrade’

These complex determiners have the following structure (Pafel (1994)): (26)

D D

A

das die eine

selbe meisten jede

5 Relying

on the observation that the determiner jed- can bear the -en-suffix in the genitive if the noun is marked as genitive (e.g. der Wunsch jeden Mannes), one might think that the ungrammaticality of *der Wunsch eines jedes Genossen is due to the fact that the noun phrase is marked as genitive by the indefinite article eines. But there is no constraint which prohibits more than one genitive marking in the noun phrase: der Wunsch eines Mannes, der Wunsch jedes Mannes. Thus, the reason for the ungrammaticality of *der Wunsch eines jedes Genossen is nothing but the adjectival character of jed- in this usage.

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

173

The second type of complex determiner consists of two determiners, e.g., welch ein (‘what a’), solch ein (‘such a’), all das (‘all that’), alle beide (‘both’), diese meine (‘these my’). 6 (27)

D D

D

welch all alle diese

ein das beide meine

Thus we get the following picture: (28) simple D: der, dieser, sein, jeder, welcher, dieser, seiner, einer, ... complex D of type D+A: das selbe, das gleiche, die meisten, ein jeder, ... complex D of type D+D: welch ein, solch ein, all das, alle beide, diese meine, ... Let us take a step back for a moment. We have mentioned that the pattern of determiner inflection is quite similar to the declension of strong adjectives apart from the ending in the GEN . SING . MASC and GEN . SING . NEUT. So why not take “determiners” to be adjectives following the strong declension pattern (cf. Gallmann (1990; 1996))? Now, if we take them to be adjectives, we must regard their ending in the GEN . SING . MASC / NEUT as irregular. Their topological behavior becomes irregular too, in comparison with the behavior of true adjectives. In addition, we must take the behavior of jeder in (25) as idiosyncratic. All these irregularities and idiosyncrasies can be dropped completely if we take “determiners” to really be determiners that follow the inflectional pattern in (19) and (20). This is ample reason to adopt the syntactic category D. A clear distinction between determiners and adjectives contributes to a better account for some puzzling cases. Viele (‘many’, ‘much’) has two uses: 6 The highly idiomatic expression unser aller as in unser aller Leben (‘the life of us all’/‘all of our lives’) might be a complex determiner too. It seems that neither part of this expression can be inflected.

174

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

It can be a quantificational determiner or an adjective. As a quantificational determiner, it carries no inflectional endings in the singular: (29) a. b.

Es ist viel von dem eingetreten, was sie vorhergesagt haben. ‘Much of what they predicted eventually happened.’ Sie haben viel von dem erreicht, was sie sich vorgenommen haben. ‘They have accomplished much of what they set out to do.’

That we have a quantificational use of viel- here is shown by the fact that the viel-phrase is sensitive to negation, coordination and quantifier interaction (see Pafel (1994)). Here, we will demonstrate only its sensitivity to negation. Sentence (30-a), on the one hand, and sentences (30-b) and (30-c), on the other, are not logically equivalent. (30) a.

b.

c.

Doch ist viel von dem, was sie vorhergesagt haben, nicht eingetreten. ‘Yet much of what they predicted did not actually happen.’ Es ist nicht der Fall, dass viel von dem eingetreten ist, was sie vorhergesagt haben. ‘It is not the case that much of what they predicted actually happened.’ Es ist nicht viel von dem eingetreten, was sie vorhergesagt haben. ‘Not much of what they predicted actually happened.’

This becomes obvious if one takes a situation in which some of the things predicted eventually happened, but also in which some of them did not happen. In such a situation, (a) is true, but (b) and (c) are false. As an adjective, viele is located in the canonical adjectival position in the X-field, exhibits regular adjectival inflection (in plural and singular) and is not part of a quantificational phrase in phrases like dieses viele Geld. Even more interesting is the case of ein. It seems that we have to distinguish three different uses: (31) a. b.

c.

the indefinite article ein, which can be cliticized (’ne Frau ‘a woman’), but not stressed;7 the quantificational determiner ein, which cannot be cliticized (*’ne von euch ‘one of you’), but can be stressed (EIne von euch, EIne Frau); the adjective ein, which cannot be cliticized (*die ’ne Frau ‘the one woman’), but can be stressed (die EIne Frau), inflects like an

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

175

adjective, and is located in the canonical adjectival position in the X-field. A noun phrase introduced by the indefinite article does not behave like an ordinary quantifier, in contrast to a noun phrase introduced by the quantificational determiner ein. See, for instance, their differing sensitivity to negation; the sentences in (32) are logically equivalent, in striking contrast to the sentences in (33): (32) a. b. (33) a. b.

’ne Frage hat sie nicht gestellt. (¬∃) ‘A question, she didn’t pose.’ Es ist nicht der Fall, dass sie ’ne Frage gestellt hat. (¬∃) ‘It is not the case that she posed a question.’ Eine von den Fragen hat sie nicht gestellt. (∃¬) ‘One of the questions, she didn’t pose.’ Es ist nicht der Fall, dass sie eine von den Fragen gestellt hat. ‘It is not the case that she posed one of the questions.’ (¬∃)

The matter is more complicated than we can argue here (see Pafel (1998, sections 2.5, 6.2; forthcoming: section 4)). It goes without saying that the semantic type of a noun phrase containing the adjective ein does not depend directly on this adjective (cf. the case of the adjective viele). 8 A further interesting case is the different uses of alle. We have already discussed the alle in the Z-field, i.e., all- preceding a demonstrative, possessive, etc. It seems that the same kind of alle can also be located in the Y-field if it is combined with certain pronouns: 9 (34) Z/Y-alle a. alle diese Bücher ‘all these books’ b. alles das (/das alles) ‘all that’ c. ihr alle ‘you all’ 7 Apart

from an emphatic use of ein. several German dialects, the indefinite article is phonologically distinguished from the quantity expression one – in Swabian, e.g., the indefinite article is a, whereas the translation ˜ (East-Swabian) or oã (West-Swabian). of one is oin 9 The use of alles in wh-clauses as in (i) shows similarities to the Z/Y-alle; it is located in Y and can easily be dislocated from the wh-phrase (cf. Pafel (1991, section 5.4), Reis (1992)). 8 In

(i) Wen alles hast du dort besucht? (ii) Wen hast du dort alles besucht?

‘Who all did you visit there?’

176

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

The second use of alle is as an inflected quantificational determiner in Def: (35) Def-alle a. alle Bücher ‘all books’ b. alle ‘all’ Thirdly, there is the uninflected quantificational all that is part of a complex determiner as in: (36) Def-all a. all diese Bücher ‘all these books’ b. all das Geld ‘all that money’ c. all das ‘all that’ We note in passing that only Z/Y-alle allows quantifier floating: (37) a. Diese Bücher habe ich alle gelesen. b. *Bücher habe ich alle gelesen. c. *Diese Bücher habe ich all gelesen.

[Z/Y-alle] [Def-alle] [Def-all]

It has been argued that quantificational elements are of a peculiar syntactic category, Q(uantifier) – see, for German, Vater (1986) and Giusti (1991) among others. Our discussion of simple and complex determiners and of the quantificational and non-quantificational uses of ein and viele make it clear that it is unnecessary to introduce into syntax the syntactic category Q – D and A are sufficient. It seems especially needless to assume with Vater (1986) that quantificational elements form a syntactic category of their own, i.e., Q(uantifier), despite the fact that they differ in their position in the noun phrase and in their inflectional and semantic properties. 4.3.

Definiteness

We characterized all the elements in the Def-position as elements which mark the noun phrase as ±DEFINITE. We take the noun phrases in (38) to be +DEFINITE and the ones in (39) to be −DEFINITE: (the element in Def is in italics and it is underlined if the head-element is covert) (38) Definite noun phrases a. der bunte Schmetterling b. dieser komische Kauz

‘the colorful butterfly’ ‘this strange guy’

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n.

Augustus der weise Augustus Prosperos wertvolle Bücher seine wertvollen Bücher mancher bunte Vogel jeder bunte Vogel beide römischen Feldherren alle römischen Feldherren welches wertvolle Buch der selbe bunte Schmetterling die meisten bunten Luftballons diese meine ersten beiden Bücher

177

‘Augustus’ ‘(the) wise Augustus’ ‘Prospero’s valuable books’ ‘his valuable books’ ‘many a colorful bird’ ‘every colorful bird’ ‘both Roman commanders’ ‘all Roman commanders’ ‘which valuable book’ ‘the same colorful butterfly’ ‘most colorful balloons’ ‘my first two books here’

(39) Indefinite noun phrases a. ein bunter Luftballon ‘a colorful balloon’ b. kein bunter Luftballon ‘no colorful balloon’ c. süßer Honig ‘sweet honey’ d. bunter Vögel [gen.] ‘of colorful birds’ e. vieler römischer, skrupelloser Feldherren [gen.] ‘of many unscrupulous Roman commanders’ f. einiger römischer, skrupelloser Feldherren [gen.] ‘of some unscrupulous Roman commanders’ g. wie vieler wertvoller Bücher [gen.] ‘of how many valuable books’ h. was für wertvoller Bücher [gen.] 10 ‘of what kind of valuable books’ We take definiteness to be a syntactic feature which has no immediate semantic or pragmatic interpretation. Looking at the two groups, we see that the definite as well as the indefinite group contain referential as well as quantificational phrases, and discourse-bound as well as non-discourse-bound phrases. Thus, it is questionable whether the two groups can be distinguished on a purely semantic or pragmatic basis (cf. Pafel (1994), Lyons (1999)). The strongest evidence for assuming syntactic definiteness in (38) and (39) is the fact that the determination of the strong/weak alternation of adjectives can be explained, to a certain degree, by the fact that the elements in Def are definite or indefinite. See the generalization in (40) proposed in Pafel (1994): 10 See

Pafel (1996) for arguments that there is an empty D-head in was für phrases.

178

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

(40) a.

b.

If Def is [+DEFINITE], then A is weak. der, dieser, jener, jeder, alle, beide, mancher [SING], welcher, die meisten, ... If Def is [−DEFINITE], then A is strong. viele, wenige, einige, mehrere, etliche, manche [PLU], ...

Compare (38-ab), with the weak masculine nominative singular suffix -e, to (39-ab), with the strong one -er. Here the relation between definiteness and strong/weak seems obvious. In other cases in (38) and (39), this relation is more interesting and significant. But the reality is not as neat as the two generalizations suggest; the behavior of the adjectives following ein, kein, and the possessives is more complicated and contradicts the generalizations in (40). Here one speaks of mixed adjectival inflection. Looking at strong/weak from the perspective of ein, kein, and the possessives, the adjectives’s declension seems to be determined “morphologically”: If the determiner has a strong suffix, the adjective is weak, if the determiner has a weak suffix, the adjective is strong (cf. Demske (2001, section 2.1.2)). If these generalizations are adopted, the behavior of adjectives following indefinite determiners (40-b) becomes idiosyncratic. As it seems impossible to have both sets of generalizations, it appears to be more appropriate to locate the idiosyncrasies with ein, kein and the possessives: Expressions which have a high token-frequency are sensitive to idiosyncrasies (see above; cf. Pafel 1994). 4.4.

Pronouns

We will divide the pronouns into three classes – D-pronouns, N-pronouns, and D/N-pronouns. Inflection and distribution are the two criteria which this classification is based on. The prototypical D-pronoun exhibits determiner inflection and allows no overt D-, A-, or N-element. The prototypical Npronoun is uninflected and allows no overt D-, A-, or N-element. The prototypical D/N-pronoun can, but must not exhibit determiner inflection, and can allow overt adjectives, but neither an overt D- nor an N-element. Let us look at these classes one by one. We have taken the indefinite pronoun einer and the possessive pronouns meiner etc. to be determiners, as they satisfy the morphological criterion of a determiner, i.e., the pattern of determiner inflection. These pronouns cannot be combined with D-, A- and N-elements, but with elements in Z and

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

179

Y (nur einer, einer von uns). Thus, the topological criterion of a determiner is not applicable. But minimizing the difference between indefinite and possessive pronouns, on the one hand, and their non-pronominal counterparts, on the other, suggests that the former are D-elements occupying Def. If the topological schema is suitable for both non-pronominal and pronominal noun phrases, filling X and Nom with overt material must be prohibited. One way to do this is to assume that there is a covert noun located in Nom, which prohibits the insertion of an overt noun. Independent evidence for a covert noun are expressions of the type pronoun+genitive (e.g., einer unserer Freunde (‘one of our friends’)), as it is common to assume that the genitive is assigned by an adjacent N.11 The demonstrative pronoun der/das/die, which differs from the article der/das/die with respect to the dative plural form and the genitive forms, is a D-pronoun too. The forms of the interrogative and indefinite pronoun wer (wen, wem, wessen) are similar to the demonstrative pronoun der; therefore wer will be classified as a D-pronoun. A more controversial topic is that of the personal pronouns. Regarding the personal deictics – ich, du, wir, ihr, Sie – it has been argued convincingly (e.g., by Lawrenz (1993, section 6)) that they can have overt X- and Nom-elements (wir begeisterten Bachfans (‘we enthusiastic Bach fans’), ich dummer Idiot (‘I stupid idiot’)). It seems that ich and du and their plurals can have a covert noun or an “emotionally marked” noun in Nom, whereas wir and ihr additionally allow neutral nouns. (41) a. b. c.

wir wir dummen Idioten wir begeisterten Bachfans

(42) a. ich b. ich dummer Idiot c. *ich begeisterter Bachfan These pronouns’ syntactic behavior and their form, which at least partially conforms to the determiner inflection, leads us to the conclusion that the per11 There are clear differences between partitive genitive noun phrases (unserer Freunde) and partitive von-PPs (von unseren Freunden). The von-PP can be quite freely extracted and extraposed, whereas the genitive noun phrase cannot be extracted and can hardly be extraposed (cf. Pafel (1995), where it is argued that this difference can be explained by assuming that the genitive noun phrase is the complement of N and the von-PP is adjoined to DP).

180

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

sonal deictics are D-pronouns. Finally, the anaphoric pronouns (er/es/sie sing , sie plu ) bear some relation to the determiner inflection too, but do not allow any overt Nom-element. N-pronouns show no variation in form and allow no overt D-, A-, or Nelement. This class contains the interrogative pronoun was, the reflexive pronoun sich and the reciprocal pronoun einander. Therefore, we hesitate to locate them in Def. Before we proceed, we must add that the case of was is controversial. Often it is assumed that the paradigm of was is was (nom), was (acc), wem (dat), wessen (gen) (cf. Eisenberg (1980, 65; 1986, 333)). But it is obvious that there is also a dative was (at least in colloquial speech): (43) Vor wasdative fürchtest du dich? ‘What are you afraid of?’ The case of the genitive was is more difficult. But sentences like (44) seem to show that was can be a genitive form too: (44) a. b.

[ genitive Was für eines Verbrechens] wird er beschuldigt? ‘What kind of crime is he being charged with?’ [ genitive Aufgrund was für eines Vorfalls] ist er verhindert? ‘Because of what kind of incident is he absent?’

In Pafel (1996, section 4.3), there is an elaborate argument to the effect that the properties of was für-phrases can be best accounted for if was is viewed as an N-element (the extraction behavior of was being the decisive piece of evidence). Thus, we propose that the interrogative pronoun was, the reflexive pronoun sich, and the reciprocal pronoun einander be analyzed as pronouns located in Nom. The third class of pronouns is the D/N-pronouns. Their characteristic feature is their ability to be combined with a so-called substantivized adjective. This class contains jemand, niemand, etwas, nichts, alles, and the indefinite was. (45) a. b. c.

Jemand Neues (ist gekommen). ‘Someone new (came).’ Nichts Aufregendes (ist passiert). ‘Nothing exciting (happened).’ Was Neues (gibt es nicht zu berichten). ‘Something new (cannot be reported).’

The adjectives that these pronouns can be combined with are true adjectives (the orthographic convention of capitalizing them is deceptive), since they

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

181

can be iterated and modified like adjectives and are inflected like adjectives. However, the adjective cannot be combined with a noun (*Jemand Neues Person ist gekommen). These properties can be accounted for if one assumes that we are dealing here with an instance of an N-to-D-movement of the pronoun, as has been argued by Haider (1992, 319) and Pafel (1995, 174, note 23) (cf. Kishimoto (2000) for English). 4.5.

Prenominal Genitive and Prenominal Dative

There are several kinds of possessive constructions in German: (46) a. b. c. d. e.

Seine Kantaten sind weltberühmt. [bare possessive] Die Kantaten von Bach sind weltberühmt. [von-PP] Die Kantaten Bachs sind weltberühmt. [postnominal genitive] Bachs Kantaten sind weltberühmt. [prenominal genitive] Dem Bach seine Kantaten sind weltberühmt. [prenominal dative plus possessive] ‘Bach’s (/his) cantatas are world-famous.’

The topological analysis of the first three is straightforward. The constructions in (46-de), however, are more interesting. The prenominal dative construction is wide-spread in German dialects and colloquial German. 12 One might suppose that the dative is located in the Z-field. But this cannot be right if one takes Generalization I into account: The dative cannot be dislocated from the rest of the noun phrase. (47) a. *Seine Kantaten sind dem Bach weltberühmt. b. *Dem Bach sind seine Kantaten weltberühmt. These sentences are unacceptable taking the dative as a possessor, i.e., in the reading of (46-e). If the dative is not a Z-element, it must be part of Def – together with the possessive seine. This follows the logic of the proposed topo12 During the federal elections in Germany in 2002, a slogan which attained some popularity

was based on a double prenominal DP plus possessive construction: (i)

Ich wähl Doris ihrem Mann seine Partei. ‘I’m voting for Doris’s husband’s party.’

(ii) {D [DP (D [DP Doris] ihrem) Mann] seine} Partei

182

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

logical account if the possessive is an element of Def. Furthermore, according to Generalization II, the dative and possessive should form a determiner together. The possessive would be the head of the complex determiner with the dative adjoined to it.13 (48)

D DP

D

dem Bach

seine

This is not a standard structure as usually words adjoin to words (X 0 to Y0 ) and phrases adjoin to phrases (XP to YP). It is obvious that the dative in this kind of construction cannot be assigned in a canonical way like the postnominal genitive. It is idiosyncratic to this construction. In this construction, there is a transparent distribution between the possessor, i.e., the dative DP, which is a referential expression and can be assigned a thematic role, and the possessive description operator, i.e., the possessive, which makes the headed DP into a definite description. The “agreement” between the dative and the possessive in number, gender and person should not be implemented by agreement between the features of the dative and the possessive, as this would result in feature clashes (seine in (46-e) would be PLURAL as well as SINGULAR). It seems more reasonable to treat the “agreement” as a selection requirement on number, gender, and person which is imposed on the dative by the possessive. A similiar account may be given of the prenominal genitive. It cannot occupy the Z-field, as it cannot be dislocated. Since it is not adjectival in character,14 it cannot be located in the X-field either. Therefore, it must be 13 Because uninflected all is part of a complex determiner (see above), the following quite acceptable noun phrase indicates that dative plus possessive does indeed have determiner status:

(i)

all dem Bach seine Kantaten (cf. all seine Kantaten, *all Bachs Kantaten)

The reason for the ungrammaticality of all Bachs Kantaten might be that all as an uninflected element can only be combined with determiners exhibiting determiner inflection. 14 For the following reasons: (i) APs cannot precede the genitive; (ii) the genitive cannot be modified like an adjective; (iii) there are genitive phrases which definitely are not adjectives (e.g., des Kaisers (neue Kleider) (‘the emperor’s new clothes’)); (iv) the genitive does not exhibit strong/weak alternation; and (v) there is no evidence for -s being an adjectivizing suffix (pace Gallmann (1997)).

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

183

located in Def. One might take a prenominal genitive like Bachs to be a determiner (cf. Lattewitz (1994)), but, firstly, it does not show any indication of determiner inflection, and, secondly, the “determiner” Bachs would have to be plural in Bachs Kantaten in order to agree with the noun. It seems more sensible to stipulate an empty determiner that the genitive is adjoined to. (49)

D DP

D

Bachs

ø

The genitive is the possessor and the empty definite D is the possessive description operator, which carries the noun phrase-internal agreement features. The genitive can be regarded as idiosyncratic to this construction or as a requirement of the empty D on the possessor. The restriction to proper names in the genitive is another peculiarity of this construction. Incidentally, with the help of the superlative construction, it can be shown that the prenominal genitive has the status of a determiner. See the following pattern of acceptable and unacceptable phrases: (50) a. der beste Freund der Marie b. ihr bester Freund c. Maries bester Freund d. *bester Freund (von Marie) e. *von Marie bester Freund

‘Mary’s best friend’ ‘her best friend’ ‘Mary’s best friend‘ ‘Mary’s best friend’ ‘Mary’s best friend’

This pattern suggests that an overt definite determiner must accompany the superlative. But if that is the case, the prenominal genitive must have the status of a definite determiner. Alternatively, one might divide the genitive into the noun stem as constituting the DP and the genitive -s as the determiner (cf. Olsen 1991). However, such a violation of the integrity of words in syntax seems unnecessary. Looking from this perspective at the bare possessive construction, an analysis in accordance with the prenominal dative and prenominal genitive construction presents itself.

184

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

(51)

D DP

D

ø

seine

Here we also have a complex determiner, consisting of an empty pronominal as the possessor, and the overt possessive as the possessive description operator. The empty pronominal behaves just like an overt pronominal: It can be either a referential term (co-referential with its antecedent) or a variable. 5.

Nominal Position

Not only a simple N0 -constituent can be located in the nominal position (Nom), but a complex N0 -constitutent can as well. An example of a complex N0 is Herrn Prof. Dr. Johann Sebastian Bach, as in (52). (52) Wir alle kennen [den berühmten Def X Herrn Prof. Dr. Johann Sebastian Bach] Nom ‘We all know the famous Mr. Prof. Dr Johann Sebastian Bach.’ The nouns Herr, Professor, Doktor, as well as the first names Johann and Sebastian, can be analyzed as enlargement nouns, as narrow appositions. The succession of these expressions is determined by a relatively strict rule expressed in Generalization III: (53) Generalization III: The nominal position (Nom) is filled by one simple or complex nominal X0 -constituent with linear precedence inside this constituent being as follows: nomen varians* > nomen invarians* > N > nomen (/adjectivum) invarians*

The structure of Nom in (52) is as follows: (54) Herrn Prof. Dr. Johann Sebastian Bach Nvarians Ninvarians Ninvarians Ninvarians Ninvarians N

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

185

Usually narrow appositions remain uninflected (“invarians”), but there are some exceptions, i.e., “nomina varians”, like Herr (‘Mr.’), Genosse (‘comrade’), Kollege (‘colleague’, ‘coworker’). It seems obvious that these nouns are not situated in the X-field, since they are not adjectival in character and cannot be located in front of an attributive adjective: (55) *Wir alle kennen den Herrn Prof. Dr. Johann Sebastian berühmten Bach Additionally, elements in the X-field are inflected if possible, but as we have just mentioned, enlargement nouns are often uninflected. Narrow appositions can also be postposed. Here only the uninflected form is possible. Cf. (56): (56) Wir alle kennen den Kirchenmusiker Johann Sebastian Bach ‘We all know the clerical musician Johann Sebastian Bach.’ (57) Kirchenmusiker Johann Sebastian Bach N Ninvarians Ninvarians Ninvarians That in (56) Johann Sebastian Bach is the apposition and not Kirchenmusiker is obvious in Standard German, as the article is not only possible, but obligatory. (58) Wir alle kennen *(den) Kirchenmusiker Johann Sebastian Bach. This is expected if the singular count noun Kirchenmusiker is the head noun, because an overt determiner must introduce singular count nouns in argument positions, but not proper names. (59) a. *Wir alle kennen Kirchenmusiker singular b. Wir alle kennen Johann Sebastian Bach. If, in addition, the nominal element is genitive, the head noun, but not the narrow apposition is inflected: (60) a. die Beförderung [des Kirchenmusikers J.S. Bach] b. *die Beförderung [des Kirchenmusiker J.S. Bachs] ‘the promotion of the clerical musician J.S. Bach’ A further type of narrow apposition occurs with uninflected adjectives as in (61) a. b.

Forelle blau Wahlkampf pur

186

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

c.

Schnitzel paniert

We consider narrow appositions to represent X 0 -elements which adjoin to an N0 -constituent (cf. Gallmann (1999), Dürscheid (2002)). 15 6.

Final Remarks

The topological theory for noun phrases in German can be formulated as follows: A noun phrase in German is well formed with respect to word order iff it is constructed in accordance with schema (1) and its restrictions. In this paper, we have discussed the restrictions for the Z-field, Defposition, and Nom-position in some detail, without going into the word order restrictions for the X- and Y-field. But of course, in order to make the theory descriptively more adequate, the topological schema must be supplemented with the suitable restrictions for X and Y. References Bierwisch, Manfred 1967 Syntactic Features in Morphology: General Problems of So-Called Pronominal Inflection in German. In To Honor Roman Jakobson. Vol. 1, 239-270. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Demske, Ulrike 2001 Merkmale und Relationen. Diachrone Studien zur Nominalphrase im Deutschen. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Duden-Grammatik 3 1973 Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Bearbeitet von Paul Grebe. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut. Dürscheid, Christa 2002 “Polemik satt und Wahlkampf pur” – das postnominale Adjektiv im Deutschen. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 21, 57-81. Eisenberg, Peter 1980 Das Deutsche und die Universalien: Wenn der Kasus zurückschlägt. Bemerkungen zu J.R. Ross “Wem der Kasus schlägt” (LB 63). Linguistische Berichte 67, 63-67. 1986 Grundriß der deutschen Grammatik. Stuttgart: Metzler. 1998 Grundriß der deutschen Grammatik. Das Wort. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler. 15 Dürscheid’s

(2002) arguments for a distinction between N0 -adjuncts and N0 -adjuncts are unconvincing to us.

A Topological Schema for Noun Phrases in German

187

Engel, Ulrich 1977 Syntax der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. Berlin: Schmidt. 1988 Deutsche Grammatik. Heidelberg: Groos. Gallmann, Peter 1990 Kategoriell komplexe Wortformen: das Zusammenwirken von Morphologie und Syntax bei der Flexion von Nomen und Adjektiv. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1996 Die Steuerung der Flexion in der DP. Linguistische Berichte 164, 283-314. 1997 Zu Morphosyntax und Lexik der w-Wörter. Arbeitspapiere des SFB 340, Bericht Nr. 107. Stuttgart/Tübingen. 1999 Wortbegriff und Nomen-Verb-Verbindungen. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 18, 269-304. Geach, Peter Thomas [1962]3 1980 Reference and Generality. An Examination of some Medieval and Modern Theories. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Giusti, Giuliana 1991 The Categorial Status of Quantified Nominals. Linguistische Berichte 136, 438-454. Haider, Hubert 1992 Die Struktur der Nominalphrase – Lexikalische und funktionale Strukturen. In Ludger Hoffmann (ed.), Deutsche Syntax: Ansichten und Aussichten, 304-333. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Höhle, Tilman N. 1986 Der Begriff “Mittelfeld”. Anmerkungen über die Theorie der topologischen Felder. In Walter Weiß, Herbert Ernst Wiegand & Marga Reis (eds.), Akten des VII. Linguistischen Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für germanistische Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft. Göttingen 1985, 329-340. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Jacobs, Joachim 1983 Fokus und Skalen: zur Syntax und Semantik der Gradpartikeln im Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Kishimoto, Hideki 2000 Indefinite Pronouns and Overt N-Raising. Linguistic Inquiry 31, 557-566. Lattewitz, Karen 1994 Eine Analyse des deutschen Genitivs. Linguistische Berichte 150, 118-146. Lawrenz, Birgit 1993 Apposition. Begriffsbestimmung und syntaktischer Status. Tübingen: Narr. Lyons, Christopher 1999 Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Müller, Gereon 2002 Remarks on Nominal Inflection in German. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebels (eds.), More than Words: A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 113145. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Nübling, Damaris 2000 Prinzipien der Irregularisierung: eine kontrastive Analyse von zehn Verben in zehn germanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

188

Paweł Karnowski & Jürgen Pafel

Olsen, Susan 1991 Pafel, Jürgen 1991

Die deutsche Nominalphrase als “Determinansphrase”. In Susan Olsen & Gisbert Fanselow (eds.), DET, COMP und INFL: Zur Syntax funktionaler Kategorien und grammatischer Funktionen, 35-56. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Zum relativen Skopus von w- und Q-Phrasen (w/Q-Interaktion). In Marga Reis & Inger Rosengren (eds.), Fragesätze und Fragen, 145-173. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1994 Zur syntaktischen Struktur nominaler Quantoren. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 13, 236-275. 1995 Kinds of Extraction from Noun Phrases. In Uli Lutz & Jürgen Pafel (eds.), On Extraction and Extraposition in German, 145-177. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 1996 Die syntaktische und semantische Struktur von was für-Phrasen. Linguistische Berichte 161, 37-67. 1998 Skopus und logische Struktur. Studien zum Quantorenskopus im Deutschen. Arbeitspapiere des SFB 340, Bericht Nr. 129. Stuttgart/Tübingen. forthcoming Quantifier Scope in German. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Reis, Marga 1992 The Category of invariant “alles” in wh-Clauses. In Rosemary Tracy (ed.), Who Climbs the Grammar Tree?, 465-492. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Reis, Marga & Heinz Vater 1980 “Beide”. In Gunter Brettschneider & Christian Lehmann (eds.), Wege zur Universalienforschung. Sprachwissenschaftliche Beiträge zum 60. Geburtstag von Hansjakob Seiler, 360-386. Tübingen: Narr. Vater, Heinz 1986 Zur Abgrenzung der Determinantien und Quantoren. In Heinz Vater (ed.), Zur Syntax der Determinantien, 13-31. Tübingen: Narr. Werner, Otmar 1987a The Aim of Morphological Change is a Good Mixture – Not a Uniform Language Type. In Anna Giacalone Ramat et al. (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 591-606. Amsterdam. 1987b Natürlichkeit und Nutzen morphologischer Irregularität. In Norbert Boretzky et al. (eds.), Beiträge zum 3. Essener Kolloquium über “Sprachwandel und seine bestimmenden Faktoren”, 289-316. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Zifonun, Gisela et al. 1997 Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features: Syncretism in Russian Noun Inflection Gereon Müller* 1.

Introduction

Inflection class features that assign noun stems to declensional classes are peculiar objects. On the one hand, nominal inflection class features seem to be indispensable in analyses of noun inflection systems in various IndoEuropean languages (like Spanish, Greek, and Russian). On the other hand, nominal inflection class features differ from other, well-established morphological features (like case, gender, and number features) in two important respects that (at least at first sight) shed doubt on their existence. First, inflection class features are much more abstract than, say, case, gender, or number features; they are not grounded in any way, and they are not independently motivated. Second, inflection class features do not seem to play any role in the syntax, again in contrast to features like case, gender, and number, which syntactic operations may refer to. In view of this state of affairs, one may try to avoid inflection class features in analyses of noun inflection altogether; but given the insurmountable difficulties that arise in such an enterprise, I take it that any such attempt is doomed to fail. Another option (the one that is standardly adopted) is to simply accept, as an imperfection in grammar design, the existence of inflection class features as irreducible objects. Based on empirical evidence from noun inflection in Russian, I will pursue a third strategy in this article, which is to strengthen the role of inflection * For

helpful comments and discussion, I would like to thank Artemis Alexiadou, John Bailyn, Loren Billings, Johnathan Bobaljik, Wayles Browne, Steven Franks, Lutz Gunkel, Jadranka Gvozdanovi´c, Fabian Heck, Milan Rezac, Anita Steube, Arnim von Stechow, Anna Volodina, Gisela Zifonun, Ilse Zimmermann, the participants of Dieter Wunderlich’s farewell colloquium (Universität Düsseldorf, June 28, 2002), the audiences of FASL 12 (University of Ottawa, May 9, 2003) and FDSL 5 (Universität Leipzig, November 26, 2003), and especially Bernd Wiese and Dieter Wunderlich. Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 189-227 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

190

Gereon Müller

class features: If one cannot get rid of inflection class features, one may as well promote them to a more prominent position, and let them do more work in morphology than has previously been assumed. I will argue that inflection class features can be decomposed into more primitive features (as has been suggested for case features (see Jakobson (1962a), Bierwisch (1967)) and that doing so offers a straightforward explanation of instances of transparadigmatic syncretism, i.e., syncretism that holds across inflection classes. Trans-paradigmatic syncretism in Russian noun inflection has, to the best of my knowledge, not yet been derived in a principled way (in contrast to intraparadigmatic syncretism, i.e., syncretism that holds within an inflection class, which has been accounted for by decomposing case features). Furthermore, I will argue that decomposed inflection class features play a role in morphology that is analogous to the role played by uninterpretable features in syntax in the system of Chomsky (1995; 2000; 2001): Being uninterpretable in the syntactic component, inflection class features drive morphological operations that delete them before syntax is reached. Thus, these features turn out not to be an imperfection after all. This reasoning will provide an argument against late insertion in a minimalist grammar. I will proceed as follows. In section 2, I present the main paradigms of noun inflection in Russian and show that inflection class features are necessary to account for them. In section 3, I turn to the issue of syncretism in Russian noun inflection. I show that by decomposing both case and inflection class features into more primitive features, most instances of intraparadigmatic and trans-paradigmatic syncretism (i.e., syncretism within and across inflection classes) can systematically be accounted for, in interaction with the Specificity Condition. In section 4, I address the general role of inflection class features in grammar, and argue that they can be conceived of as the sole triggers of inflection with portmanteau markers. 2.

Noun Inflection in Russian

2.1.

Data

Let me begin with the paradigms of Russian noun inflection, focussing on the singular for the time being.1 I will assume that there are four noun in1 Throughout

this article, I adopt the view that paradigms do not exist as genuine objects that morphological operations can refer to, or that meta-constraints can be imposed on. Rather,

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

191

flection classes in Russian (I-IV), which give rise to four paradigms which will be referred to as P1 –P4 .2 The markers of inflection class I for the six cases of Russian (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, and locative) are shown in paradigm P1 . All nouns that take markers from this class are masculine. There is some principled variation: Inanimate nouns have identical markers for nominative and accusative case (viz., a marker that is phonologically null, rendered here as Ø); animate nouns exhibit a syncretism of markers for accusative and genitive case (compare zavod- (‘factory’) and student- (‘student’)). Furthermore, in the instrumental there is a difference between nouns whose stems ends in a “hard” (i.e., [+back]) consonant and nouns whose stem ends in a “soft” (i.e., [–back]) consonant: The former have om as the instrumenal case marker, the latter em (compare student-om with žitel-em (‘inhabitant’)). P1 : Inflection class I, Sg.: masc zavodm (‘factory’) nom/sg zavod-Ø acc/sg zavod-Ø dat/sg zavod-u gen/sg zavod-a inst/sg zavod-om loc/sg zavod-e

I studentm (‘student’) student-Ø student-a student-u student-a student-om student-e

žitelm (‘inhabitant’) žitel’-Ø žitel-ja žitel-ju žitel-ja žitel-em žitel-e

paradigms will be considered to be pure epiphenomena, i.e., generalizations that can be derived from more basic assumptions. I take it that this view is directly supported by the system of Russian noun inflection, which has been argued to pose problems for meta-constraints that presuppose the existence of paradigms. For instance, Bobaljik (2002) shows that Russian noun inflection contradicts the Instantiated Basic Paradigm restriction suggested in Williams (1994), and Stump (2001, 224ff.) argues that Russian noun inflection raises problems for the Paradigm Economy Principle proposed in Carstairs (1987) (also see Carstairs-McCarthy (1998)). – That said, most of what follows would be compatible with theories of inflectional morphology that rely on paradigms. 2 Four inflection classes are also postulated by Corbett & Fraser (1993). In contrast, only three inflection classes are adopted by Halle (1994), Aronoff (1994), and others, who conflate inflection classes I and IV (paradigms P1 and P4 in the present approach) into a single inflection class that contains both masculine and neuter nouns. Such a move then requires additional stipulations for nominative singular and accusative singular contexts. Moreover, we will later see that there are syncretisms in the plural that are shared only by inflection class II and inflection class IV; an explanation for this kind of syncretism will crucially presuppose that inflection classes I and IV are separate.

192

Gereon Müller

The markers of inflection class II are listed in paradigm P 2 . Most of the nouns belonging to this inflection class are feminine. In addition to the feminine stems, some masculine stems also belong to this class (like mužˇcin(‘man’)); these stems trigger masculine agreement but inflect according to the pattern in P2 . There is no animacy effect (in the accusative or elsewhere) in this paradigm (compare komnat- (‘room’), uˇcitel’nic- (‘female teacher’)). However, there is syncretism: The markers for dative and locative case are identical: e. Again, the noun stem may end in a hard ([+back]) or soft ([–back]) consonant (compare komnat- with nedel’- (‘week’)), which leads to “palatalized” versions of what is clearly the same basic marker in the second case (note that y differs from i only in that the former is [+back], the latter [–back]). P2 : Inflection class II, Sg.: fem, masc komnat f (‘room’) nom/sg komnat-a acc/sg komnat-u dat/sg komnat-e gen/sg komnat-y inst/sg komnat-oj(u) loc/sg komnat-e

II uˇcitel’nic f (‘teacher’) uˇcitel’nic-a uˇcitel’nic-u uˇcitel’nic-e uˇcitel’nic-y uˇcitel’nic-ej(u) uˇcitel’nic-e

nedel’ f (‘week’) nedel-ja nedel-ju nedel-e nedel-i nedel-ej(u) nedel-e

mužˇcinm (‘man’) mužˇcin-a mužˇcin-u mužˇcin-e mužˇcin-y mužˇcin-oj(u) mužˇcin-e

Consider next the markers of inflection class III in paradigm P 3 . With only one exception (put’ (‘way’), which is masculine), all the nouns that inflect according to this class are feminine. Furthermore, all stems end in a soft ([–back]) consonant. As with class II members, there is no animacy effect (compare tetrad’- (‘notebook’) with myš’- (‘mouse’)); but there is massive syncretism: Nominative and accusative forms share a null marker Ø, and dative, genitive, and locative forms have a uniform i as a marker. A few (albeit highly frequent) nouns (doˇc’- (‘daughter’), mat’- (‘mother’)) exhibit stem alternation; this must be lexically marked, and I will ignore it in what follows. The markers of inflection class IV are shown in paradigm P 4 . All nouns that follow this paradigm are neuter. As already noted, this paradigm is similar to paradigm P1 , which contains only masculine nouns. The main difference in the singular is that the marker for nominative and accusative case is o throughout in inflection class IV (as before, there is [±back]-governed

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

193

P3 : Inflection class III, Sg.: fem tetrad’ f (‘notebook’) nom/sg tetrad’-Ø acc/sg tetrad’-Ø dat/sg tetrad-i gen/sg tetrad-i inst/sg tetrad’-ju loc/sg tetrad-i

III myš’ f (‘mouse’) myš’-Ø myš’-Ø myš-i myš-i myš’-ju myš-i

doˇc’ f (‘daughter’) doˇc’-Ø doˇc’-Ø doˇc-er-i doˇc-er-i doˇc-er’-ju doˇc-er-i

morpho-phonological variation in this domain; compare pol’ (‘field’)). Further support for the distinction between class I and class IV (see footnote 2) comes from the observation that there is no animacy effect in paradigm P 4 (see Corbett & Fraser (1993)): A neuter noun in this class exhibits nominative/accusative syncretism rather than accusative/genitive syncretism even if it is animate; compare sušˇcestv- (‘creature’). P4 : Inflection class IV, Sg.: neut mestn (‘place’) nom/sg mest-o acc/sg mest-o dat/sg mest-u gen/sg mest-a inst/sg mest-om loc/sg mest-e

jablokn (‘apple’) jablok-o jablok-o jablok-u jablok-a jablok-om jablok-e

IV sušˇcestvn (‘creature’) sušˇcestv-o sušˇcestv-o sušˇcestv-u sušˇcestv-a sušˇcestv-om sušˇcestv-e

pol’n (‘field’) pol-e pol-e pol-ju pol-ja pol-em pol-e

Most Russian nouns are in one of these four inflection classes. Many of those nouns that do not follow one of the patterns in P 1 –P4 are not part of the native vocabulary and do not take any case marker whatsoever; these indeclinables (like kofe (‘coffee’)) are sometimes viewed as belonging to a separate inflection class. Finally, there are exceptional nouns which are not covered by the system sketched so far because they take unexpected markers, or because they exhibit stem alternation. 3 Also, a comprehensive account of Russian noun inflection would also have to integrate the issue of variable 3 To

name just one case where an unexpected marker occurs: Certain masculine nouns that follow the basic pattern of inflection class I can also have u instead of a as the genitive singular marker in certain syntactic environments, as in cˇ a-ju vs. cˇ a-ja (‘tea’).

194

Gereon Müller

vs. invariant stress in inflectional paradigms. Still, I take it that the core system of Russian noun inflection is adequately described by the four inflection classes documented in P1 –P4 , and I will now turn to the issue of how the generalizions embodied in P1 –P4 can be derived. 2.2.

Inflection Class Features

The task at hand is to predict the correct inflection marker for any Russian noun stem and any case specification in the singular; for instance, it must be ensured that the noun stem zavod- takes the marker u in dative singular contexts, and not, say, e or i, whereas the noun stem komnat- takes the marker e in dative singular contexts, and not u or i. Ideally, one might expect that independently motivated features of the stem suffice for this purpose, and that inflection class features can be dispensed with. Relevant inherent features of stems include gender features and phonological features; and it has indeed been proposed that inflectional markers can always be determined by taking into account only features of this type (see, e.g., Steins (1998) for such an approach to Old English noun inflection, and Wunderlich (1996; this volume) for the outlines of such an approach to Russian noun inflection). However, closer inspection reveals that resorting to inherent (gender or phonologigcal) features of noun stems is unlikely to yield an adequate system (see Wurzel (1984), Corbett & Fraser (1993), Fraser & Corbett (1994), Aronoff (1994), and Halle (1994), among others). Consider first gender features. There is almost a one-to-one correspondence between the gender feature neuter and paradigm P4 , i.e., all neuter stems inflect according to this paradigm, and all stems that inflect according to this paradigm are neuter. 4 However, the correlation breaks down with the features masculine and feminine. Whereas most masculine noun stems follow paradigm P 1 , there are also some masculine noun stems that follow paradigm P 2 (e.g., mušˇcin- (‘man’)). What is worse, feminine noun stems may either inflect according to paradigm P2 , or according to paradigm P3 , and they predominate in both classes (the 4 Pejorative diminutives like domišk- (‘cottage’) and gorodišk- (‘little town’) might qualify as exceptions because they are masculine but inflect according to inflection class IV in the singular. However, their behaviour in the plural is non-homogeneous (mixing classes I and IV), so that additional lexical specifications are unavoidable anyway with these noun stems, and they might be taken to belong to inflection class I after all (with a lexical specification as taking o in the nominative singulrar).

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

195

vast majority of noun stems inflecting according to P 2 are feminine, and, with the exception of the isolated noun stem put’, all noun stems that follow the pattern in P3 are feminine). Thus, gender features alone do not reliably encode inflection class in Russian. Neither do phonological features of a stem, for obvious reasons. Not even a combination of gender and phonological features will suffice: Masculine noun stems inflecting according to P 1 do not differ systematically in any obvious way from masculine noun stems inflecting according to P2 with respect to their phonological properties; and, even though feminine noun stems that obey P 3 are all marked [–back] on the last consonant, this combined information is not enough to conclude that a feminine, [–back] noun stem like tetrad’- must follow P 3 (and, e.g., take i rather than e in the dative singular) because feminine, [–back] noun stems may also follow P2 ; compare nedel’-. Other independently motivated features of noun stems (e.g., semantic features) also fail to correctly predict inflection class membership – and if it looks as though they succeed in this, this is invariably due to the fact that the features in question are not independently motivated after all since they do not designate anything except for inflection class. As a case in point, consider the status of “theme” vowels (and theme consonants). From a diachronic perspective, there is a relation between the phonological nature of the ending of a noun stem and the inflection class that it belongs to, and remnants of this system can still be found in Old Bulgarian, where a partition of inflection classes according to theme vowels and theme consonants is still synchronically motivated to some extent (see Leskien (1955), among others) – e.g., there is a theme consonant n that shows up with most forms in the paradigm of the n-stem inflection class, and that is distinct from the respective inflection marker. Thus, in Old Bulgarian, inflection class membership can at least partially be determined by phonological properties of the stem. However, this is certainly not the case anymore in modern Russian. Of course, we can in principle distinguish between, say, Ø-stems, a-stems, i-stems, and o-stems, corresponding to the four inflectional patterns in P 1 –P4 . But the only thing that has been accomplished by this is that we now have names for inflection class features: The phonological properties of, e.g., an a-stem (viz., exhibiting an /a/ segment) are not manifest on the stem – they exclusively show up on an inflection marker of the paradigm (this point is emphasized in Wurzel (1984, 124)). The only way out under the assumption that a theme vowel like a exists as

196

Gereon Müller

part of a stem would be to stipulate that there is a null ending in nominative singular contexts, where the theme vowel shows up – thus, the nominative singular marker of a noun in inflection class II would be Ø rather than a (e.g., komnata-Ø instead of komnat-a); and that there is an obligatory deletion rule in non-nominative singular contexts, where the theme vowel does not show up (e.g., komnata-u → komnat-u in accusative singular environments). However, such an analysis lacks independent justification, and arguably comes close to undermining the notion of theme vowel. 5 All in all, it seems that an approach to Russian noun inflection that relies on theme vowels (and/or theme consonants) cannot make predictions that go beyond those of an approach that relies on arbitrary inflection class features (see Fraser & Corbett (1994)). 6 As a general result, I would like to conclude that a recourse to inflection class features is unavoidable in an account of noun inflection in Russian. The question then is what these features look like, and whether they play a role in an analysis of syncretism. 3.

Inflection Class Features as a Source of Syncretism

3.1.

Syncretism

Thus far, the focus has been on syncretism within a given paradigm: Depending on the animacy status, the inflection markers for either nominative and accusative (Ø), or for genitive and accusative (a), are identical in the singular paradigm P1 of inflection class I; the inflection markers for dative and locative (e) have the same form in the singular paradigm P 2 of inflection class II; 5 Incidentally, an analysis along these lines might be implied in Wunderlich (1996)’s sketch

of the noun inflection system of Russian, which invokes a “(floating) theme vowel” a to distinguish the two (predominantly) feminine inflection classes without recourse to inflection class features. Also see Wunderlich (this volume). 6 Note in passing that this does not necessarily imply that there can be no theme vowels in Russian nouns; the claim is merely that inflection class assignment does not proceed via theme vowels. Thus, Halle (1994, 50) suggests that there is always an underlying theme vowel between stem and inflection marker in Russian nouns, and that this theme vowel is uniformly an o. This theme vowel is assumed to emerge as such in some cases (with the instrumental inflection markers m, yielding o-m, and j, yielding o-j), to be changed to e or a in others (yielding composite endings like e-j or a-m), and to be deleted in the majority of cases. Crucially, the theme vowel that Halle (1994) postulates is independent of inflection class assignment. I will not adopt this assumption in what follows, but it is worth noting that it could in principle be reconciled with the overall approach that I will suggest in the following section.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

197

the inflection markers for nominative and accusative (Ø), and those for dative, genitive, and locative (i), are indistinguishable in the singular paradigm P 3 of inflection class III; and the inflection markers for nominative and accusative (o) are identical in the singular paradigm P 4 of inflection class IV. However, this does not exhaust the instances of syncretism in Russian noun inflection. In addition to intra-paradigmatic syncretism, there is trans-paradigmatic syncretism in abundance, and it is by no means confined to common markers shared by inflection classes I and IV (which does not come as a surprise, given that these classes are often viewed as one). Thus, for instance, Ø shows up in nominative and accusative contexts of inflection class I and inflection class III; i is a marker shared by inflection class II (in the genitive) and inflection class III (in the dative, genitive, and locative); and the inflection marker a occurs in inflection class I (in the genitive, and in the accusative with animates), in inflection class II (in the nominative), and in inflection class IV (in the genitive). The occurrences of both intra- and trans-paradigmatic syncretism are shown in the simplified meta-paradigm in P 5 that presents the gist of the paradigms in P1 –P4 . P5 : Syncretism within and across inflection classes nom acc dat gen inst loc

I

II

III

IV

Ø Ø/a u a om e

a u e i oj e

Ø Ø i i ju i

o o u a om e

A common assumption is that at least some instances of syncretism in inflectional paradigms are not accidental, but systematic in the sense that they should follow from the morphological analysis. I will adhere to this view in what follows; in fact, I will adopt an even stronger assumption, viz., that all instances of syncretism should be considered to be systematic whenever possible. This follows from the much more general strategy in (1), which I assume here as a meta-grammatical principle. (1) Syncretism Principle: Identity of form implies identity of function (in a domain Σ, and unless there is evidence to the contrary).

198

Gereon Müller

The Syncretism Principle may look quite radical, but I take it to be the null hypothesis, both for a child acquiring a language, and for a linguist investigating it. According to (1), all instances of syncretism should initially be considered systematic within a certain grammatical domain, and can be considered accidental only in the face of strong counter-evidence. 7 Of course, the question is what the domain Σ in (1) should be for our present concerns. I assume that Σ includes different cases and inflection classes, but not different numbers; i.e., I will not try to account for instances of syncretism that hold between singular and plural.8 This difference between number on the one hand and case and class on the other may ultimately be traced back to whether or not a feature carries semantic information – number features do, whereas class features and case features (at least those of the languages under consideration in this paper, which do not exhibit “semantic cases”) do not. 9 Thus, in line with (1), in what follows my goal will be to develop an analysis that accounts for both intra-paradigmatic and trans-paradigmatic syncretism in Russian noun inflection as much as possible. In doing so, I will rely on three basic assumptions: (i) Cases are decomposed into primitive features. (ii) Inflection class features are also decomposed into primitive features. (iii) The notion of competition plays a role in inflectional morphology, in the form of the Specificity Condition. Whereas assumptions (i) and (iii) are 7 This

implies a shift of perspective from standard assumptions, and a change of burden of proof: It must be shown that a given instance of syncretism is non-systematic, not that it is systematic. In line with this, I would like to contend that there is indeed less evidence against the systematicity of syncretism than is sometimes made out (see, e.g., Carstairs (1987), Zwicky (1991), Williams (1994)). For instance, there is a commonplace view according to which only few of the syncretisms in German pronominal inflection are systematic because the morphological syncretisms can often be resolved when larger syntactic units (e.g., the NP) are taken into account; see Wunderlich (1997), Wiese (1996), Eisenberg (2000), and Zifonun (2001), among others. This kind of reasoning is argued to be untenable in Müller (2002; 2003). More generally, it seems that a hasty classification of some syncretism as non-systematic may often indicate little more than the fact that a given morphological analysis cannot account for it in a systematic way. 8 Also see Baerman, Brown & Corbett (2002). 9 The denial of systematicity of “trans-number” syncretism implies that the well-known effect of alternation between nominative singular and genitive plural (see below on the latter) with respect to the occurrence of Ø (an inflection class has Ø in the genitive plural iff it does not have Ø in the nominative singular) must be considered accidental from a synchronic perspective. Incidentally, all systematic accounts of this phenomenon that I am aware of require a significantly more complex approach, e.g., by permitting reference to existing output forms in the determination of markers; see Bailyn & Nevins (2003) for a recent analysis; also see Wiese (this volume, 353).

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

199

adopted in analyses of noun inflection in Russian (and other inflecting languages), assumption (ii) is not. It is assumption (ii) that will turn out to make it possible to account for trans-paradigmatic syncretism in the same way that intra-paradigmatic syncretism is accounted for via assumption (i), and it is the absence of assumption (ii) in previous analyses that has so far made it impossible to account for trans-paradigmatic syncretism in a non-stipulative way (see section 3.5 below). 3.2. 3.2.1.

Analysis Background Assumptions

I will make the following assumptions about the nature of inflectional morphology and its place in grammar. The lexicon is a mere list of exceptions without rules or constraints. The morphological component follows the lexicon but precedes the syntactic component – the inputs of morphology are members of the list of lexical items of a given language, and the outputs of morphology are fully inflected word forms that then enter syntactic derivations (or lexical arrays, in the system of Chomsky (2000; 2001)). Noun stems and inflection markers are listed in the lexicon; thus, inflection markers have morpheme status. I assume that the features that noun stems bear in the lexicon include (inherent) categorial and gender features, but not (variable) case or number features; these latter features are added when the noun stem enters the morphological component. In contrast, inflection markers bear case (and other morpho-syntactic) features in the lexicon. A noun stem and an inflection marker can be combined in the morphological component if the two items do not have contradictory features or features values (only the latter case will be relevant in what follows).10 10 Stump

(2001) introduces two general dichotomies for inflectional theories: An inflectional theory may be lexical (inflection markers are – possibly abstract – lexical items) or inferential (inflection markers are not lexical items); and it may be incremental (inflection markers add information) or realizational (inflection markers do not add information). According to this classification, the approach to be developed below qualifies as lexical (since inflection markers have morpheme status) and realizational (since inflection markers do not contribute any information that is not present on the noun stem already), just like distributed morphology (see Halle & Marantz (1993), Halle (1994), and Harley & Noyer (1999) for an overview); however, it crucially differs from distributed morphology in not postulating empty Q-morphemes (or f-morphemes) that are then realized by spell-out rules which produce in-

200

Gereon Müller

Let me now address in turn the status of case features, inflection class features, and the Specificity Condition. 3.2.2.

Decomposition of Case Features

The idea to decompose the cases of Russian into combinations of more primitive features goes back to Jakobson (1962a) (which first appeared in 1936) and Jakobson (1962b). Jakobson’s original system relies on three semantically-based features and has been subject to various extensions and modifications throughout the last decades (see Neidle (1988), Franks (1995), and Gvozdanovi´c (1991), among others). In his account of pronominal inflection in German, Bierwisch (1967) assumes a syntactic rather than semantic basis for the primitive features that characterize the four German cases. Bierwisch’s system is adopted in Wiese (1999), and extended so as to cover the six cases of Latin in Wiese (2001). Following Bierwisch and Wiese, I will assume as basic the three binary features [±subj(ect)], [±gov(erned)], [±obl(ique)]. The six Russian cases can then be decomposed as in (2). 11

flection markers of the type in P5 . That said, I would like to emphasize that the gist of the approach to syncretism in Russian noun inflection to be developed below could be transferred without much ado into many existing inflectional theories, be they lexical-realizational (like distributed morphology), lexical-incremental (like the lexical theories of Lieber (1992), Wunderlich (1996; 1997), among others), or inferential-realizational (like, in particular, the wordand-paradigm approaches developed by Anderson (1992), Corbett & Fraser (1993), Aronoff (1994), and Stump (2001), and others cited in these works). The only relevant properties that an inflectional theory must have are (i) that it permits feature decomposition, and (ii) that it acknowledges a notion of competition – as a matter of fact, a version of the present proposal is developed within a distributed morphology approach in Müller (2004b). The specific version of a lexical-incremental approach adopted here will become relevant only in section 4. 11 As it stands, the combinations [+subj,+gov,–obl], [–subj,–gov,–obl] do not correspond to any case in Russian, an inevitable consequence of cross-classifying three binary features. Following the reasoning in Jakobson und much subsequent literature, one might try to close the gap by postulating alternative feature combinations for two of the cases (usually, genitive and locative are then treated this way), or by assuming abstract cases that are not morphologically manifest (e.g., an abstract vocative comes to mind for the feature specification [–subj,–gov,–obl]); see Wiese (2001) on Latin. However, I will refrain from pursuing these options here.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

201

(2) Decomposition of cases in Russian: nominative: accusative: dative: genitive: instrumental: locative:

[+subj,–gov,–obl] [–subj,+gov,–obl] [–subj,+gov,+obl] [+subj,+gov,+obl] [+subj,–gov,+obl] [–subj,–gov,+obl]

A few remarks are in order here concerning the syntactic nature of the three features and their role in determining the cases of Russian. First, the [+subj] cases nominative, genitive, and instrumental all typically show up on arguments that are merged last with a predicate (NP-internally with the genitive, in passive constructions with the instrumental); i.e., [+subj] basically encodes a notion of subject as it is employed in a categorial grammar tradition (see, e.g., Zifonun et al. (1997)). Second, the [+gov] cases accusative, dative, and genitive are the protoypical cases for objects governed by V. Finally, the [+obl] cases dative, genitive, instrumental, and locative differ from the non-oblique cases nominative and accusative in that the latter (but not the former) typically encode the core arguments of V, and in that only the latter qualify as structural in the sense of Chomsky (1981). 12 The fundamental insight behind case decomposition is that natural classes of cases can thus be formed, and such a natural class of cases can then be what an inflection marker is characterized by. In other words, an inflection marker does not necessarily have a full [±subj,±obj,±obl] specification; it may be underspecified with respect to (decomposed) case features, in which case it designates a natural class of cases rather than a single case. For instance, as we will see in a moment, the inflection marker i is characterized not by a full set of case features in the present approach, but by an underspecified set of case features [+obl], which makes it compatible with the natural class of oblique cases (dative, genitive, instrumental, and locative) and, thereby, contributes to an explanation of (intra-paradigmatic as well as transparadigmatic) i syncretism in the oblique domain. Similarly, the inflection marker u is assumed to be underspecified as [–subj,+gov], which plays an 12 Needless to say, the morphological

case specifications based on these features only reflect primary syntactic functions, and may be at variance with other syntactic functions. Underlying this is the assumption that it is unlikely that a simple, homogeneous specification (be it syntactic or semantic) can be found for all cases, in all their occurrences (see Isaˇcenko (1975, 81)); but see, e.g., Bailyn (2003) for a recent attempt concerning the Russian genitive.

202

Gereon Müller

important role in deriving the instances of (trans-paradigmatic) u syncretism in the natural class of cases so defined (viz., accuative and dative). 3.2.3.

Decomposition of Inflection Class Features

In the same way that intra-paradigmatic syncretism has been shown to be accountable for by decomposing case features, I would like to suggest that trans-paradigmatic syncretism can fruitfully be addressed by decomposing inflection class features; i.e., I take it that the existence of trans-paradigmatic syncretism suggests that inflection classes can form natural classes, just like cases do. For concreteness, suppose that inflection classes are decomposed into more primitives features as in (3). 13 13 There are predecessors of this idea. First, Corbett & Fraser (1993) suggest a common additional inflection class feature 0 that is present with inflection class features I and IV. This “meta-inflection class feature” contributes to an account of trans-paradigmatic syncretisms affecting inflection classes I and IV. However, this approach does not extend to other instances of trans-paradigmatic syncretism; moreover, the existence of a natural class comprising inflection classes I and IV is simply stipulated this way (by introducing an additional feature 0), and not derived (by feature decomposition). Second, there is an approach to trans-paradigmatic syncretism along gender/number categorizations with pronominal inflection in German developed in Wiese (1996; 1999) (and adopted in one way or another in Eisenberg (2000), Zifonun (2001), and Müller (2002)) that relies on a decomposition of the (combined) categories gender and plural; this proposal and the present one converge if one is willing to make the (admittedly somewhat unusual) assumption that different gender/number categorizations in German are in fact different inflection classes. On this view, inflection class features, while without inherent meaning as such, may in some languages be interpreted along the gender/number distinction. Furthermore, there are three approaches that I only got to know after the first draft of this paper was completed, and that are quite similar in spirit to the present proposal: The first of these is Oltra Massuet’s (1999) analysis of verbal inflection in Catalan, which relies on a decomposition of inflection class features that looks very much like the one adopted here. Next, Halle (1992, 38) employs the primitive, decomposed features [±marginal], [±marked] (in addition to the “standard” class features A, B) in his analysis of Latvian noun inflection, essentially so as to account for instances of trans-paradigmatic syncretism. Finally, Nesset (1994, 229ff.) develops an analysis of Russian noun inflection that uses [±nom-end] and [a/igen-end] as primitive class features, again in order to account for instances of trans-paradigmatic syncretism. The analysis has a limited scope (involving only a few of the attested cases of transparadigmatic syncretism, and no cases of intra-paradigmatic syncretism), and stays somewhat informal (e.g., theoretical issues arising with underspecification and competition of inflection markers are not explored – more generally, no attempt is made to account for the whole system of noun inflection in a systematic way); nevertheless, it is clearly guided by the same underlying idea. Note also that class feature decomposition is suggested in Alexiadou & Müller (2004) for noun inflection in Greek and German, and in Müller (2004a) for noun inflection

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

203

(3) Decomposition of inflection classes in Russian: I: II: III: IV:

[+α ,–β ] [–α ,+β ] [–α ,–β ] [+α ,+β ]

zavodm (‘factory’) komnat f (‘room’), mužˇcinm (‘man’) tetrad’ f (‘notebook’) mestn (‘place’)

Here, α and β are purely formal features that do not stand for anything else; but this state of affairs is not particularly worrisome when we take into account that the situation is not different with standard inflection class features like [I], [II], [III], and [IV] (if anything, the situation has improved because there are now two binary features instead of four privative features). The decomposition in (3) predicts (not surprisingly) that inflection classes I and IV form a natural class (characterized by [+α ]); but it also implies that natural classes are formed by (the predominantly feminine) inflection classes II and III (characterized by [–α ]), by inflection classes II and IV (characterized by [+β ]), and by inflection classes I and III (characterized by [–β ]). As a result, the system now permits inflection markers to be underspecified with respect to inflection class; for instance, the inflection marker i has only the inflection class feature [–α ], which makes it suitable for noun stems with either inflection class II ([–α ,+β ]) or inflection class III ([–α ,–β ]) specifications, but not for other noun stems. However, classes I and II do not form a natural class of inflection classes, and the same goes for classes III and IV. Consequently, no feature specification of an inflection marker can refer to either of these groups of inflection classes, and we expect that there is no instance of trans-paradigmatic syncretism that applies exclusively to classes I and II, or to classes III and IV. This prediction is borne out. Based on these assumptions about primitive inflection class features, we can now look at the lexical entries for the singular inflection markers that attach to Russian nouns. Underspecified class information is underlined in the feature specifications of markers in the list in (4). in Icelandic. For attempts to establish natural classes of noun inflection classes in Russian without invoking feature decomposition, see McCreight & Chvany (1991) and Wiese (this volume).

204

Gereon Müller

(4) Inflection markers for nouns in Russian: 1. /oj/ {[+N],[–α ,+β ],[+subj,–gov,+obl]} 2. /ju/ {[+N],[–α ,–β ],[+subj,–gov,+obl]} 3. /om/ {[+N],[+α ],[+subj,–gov,+obl]} 4. /e/ {[+N],[–α ,+β ],[–subj,+obl]} 5. /e/ {[+N],[+α ],[–subj,–gov,+obl]} 6. /o/ {[+N],[+α ,+β ],[–obl]} 7. /O/ {[+N],[–β ],[–obl]} 8. /i/ {[+N],[–α ],[+obl]} 9. /u/ {[+N],[–subj,+gov]} 10. /a/ {[+N]} These inflection markers, as lexical items, have the status of underlying representations; they are abstract elements that may undergo further phonological or morphological changes (hence, the / / notation which will be adopted from now on). Thus, I assume that the actual inflection marker realizations om and em both go back to underlying /om/; there is a morpho-phonological rule that realizes /om/ as em after a soft ([–back]) consonant. Similarly, underlying /oj/ is realized as ej after a [–back] consonant, and as oj otherwise. Furthermore, I postulate that there is a morpho-phonological rule that that realizes underlying /i/ as y after a hard ([+back]) consonant (and as i otherwise). In addition to these morpho-phonological rules, and perhaps somewhat more controversially, I assume that a general phonological rule is responsible for the realization of the underlying inflection marker /O/, which has extensively been argued to have inflection marker status by Halle (1994). /O/ is an abstract vowel (a “yer”) that Halle assumes to otherwise bear the same features as /o/; there is a general rule that deletes abstract vowels unless they immediately precede a syllable with another abstract vowel (which, of course, they never do if they are inflection markers at the end of a word). Thus, /O/ replaces the null marker Ø assumed in the above paradigms. 14 One advantage of adopting /O/ as an inflection marker is that it makes it possible to avoid positing null morphemes as inflection markers that are specified by case and inflection class features (this is a domain where inferential approaches to inflection may 14 /O/

surfaces in word forms like /ókOnO/ → okon (‘window’, genitive plural), where the inflection marker /O/ is deleted (see section 3.4 below), whereas the stem vowel /O/ survives (and is realized as o); compare the nominative singular form /okOnó/ → okn-o, where /O/ in the stem is deleted because it does not precede an abstract vowel itself. See Kenstowicz & Rubach (1987) (and literature cited there) for more on yers in Slavic.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

205

have an initial advantage over lexical approaches). A second advantage is that /O/, unlike a null morpheme, can be shown to fit very well into a system of form/function correlations that can be derived naturally from (4); see section 3.3 below. Note now that (4) comes close to a maximally successful execution of the program embodied in (1): Except for /e/, which has two lexical entries, there are no homophonous inflection markers in the singular. There is only one feature set for a given inflection marker; this feature set is underspecified in most cases. Thus, if (4) can be shown to correctly predict the paradigms in P1 –P4 , we can conclude that syncretism in Russian noun inflection in the singular has been accounted for (almost, given /e/) in its entirety. However, due to the very fact that most of the inflection markers are underspecified with respect to case and inflection class features, the system developed so far is not yet constrained enough. It overgenerates in the sense that, in many cases, there are two or more inflection markers that would be compatible with a given fully specified feature set on a noun stem. To see this, suppose that a noun stem like komnat- is taken from the lexicon, and enriched by dative and singular features, so that its specification includes the set {[+N],[–α ,+β ],[–subj,+gov,+obl],[–pl]}. The task now is to find an inflection marker with a compatible feature specification; and the problem is that, as things stand, we do not find one but four, viz.: /e/ in (4-4) (or /e/ 4 , as I will write from now on), /i/8 , /u/9 , and /a/10 . These markers compete in {[–α ,+β ],[–subj,+gov,+obl]} contexts. The situation is similar with nearly all other contexts characterized by combinations of fully specified inflection class features and case features that show up on noun stems. Thus, what is needed is a general principle that decides the competition of inflection markers and selects a winner among the competing markers that is the only grammatical form in any given context. A principle that has this effect is the Specificity Condition.15 15 One might try to avoid all instances of competition among inflection markers by revising the lexical entries for these markers in such a way that only one marker can be appropriate for any given full specification of case and inflection class features in the first place. However, such a move would necessarily conflict with (1), and would thus make a systematic account of syncretism impossible. To see this, consider a simple example. The inflection marker /i/8 shows up in the dative, genitive, and locative of inflection class III, and with the genitive only in inflection class II. Clearly, there is no way how the four feature specifications that characterize these four environments can form a natural class; the minimal set of specifictions that includes these four will invariably also have to include the specifications for dative and locative of inflection class II, which have different markers. Thus, in a nutshell, competition

206

Gereon Müller

3.2.4.

The Specificity Condition

For present purposes, the Specificity Condition can be formulated as in (5): (5) Specificity Condition: If two competing forms Fi , F j satisfy all local constraints on operations, and Fi is more specific than F j , then Fi is to be preferred over F j . Applying this general condition to the case at hand, the competing forms are different inflection markers that can be attached to a given noun stem. An operation in the sense of (5) is the concatenation of a noun stem and its inflection marker in the singular. The relevant local constraint is that stem and marker do not have incompatible values for case, inflection class, and number features (this ensures that highly specific inflection markers that are incompatible with a given stem cannot be chosen as the optimal (according to (5)) marker for this stem). This analysis presupposes the existence of two different types of constraints in grammar, viz., local constraints and translocal constraints (typical translocal constraints in syntax are transderivational constraints). To find out whether a local constraint is satisfied by some form, it suffices to consider only the properties of this form; in contrast, to find out whether a translocal constraint is satisfied by some form, the properties of competing forms also have to be taken into account. The Specificity Condition is a translocal constraint.16 The question then is how specificity can be defined. A simple assumption would be that an inflection marker F i is more specific than another marker F j if Fi has more morpho-syntactic (case and of markers (and a strategy to resolve it) is necessary to explain syncretism in cases where underspecification alone does not suffice. 16 The effects of the Specificity Condition on nominal inflection markers can also be derived in what is arguably a somewhat less insightful way by extrinsic ordering; this is most common for those morphological approaches that rely on rules; see, e.g., Bierwisch (1967), Wurzel (1984), Wurzel (1998), and Halle (1994). Similarly, optimality theory (see Prince & Smolensky (1993)) can account for all specificity effects, in phonology and morphology (see Prince (1996)) as well as in syntax (see Müller (2000)); this is so for the simple reason that optimality theory has a much more variable concept of competition, and is a much more powerful (and hence, less constrained) competition-based approach than one that only relies on the Specificity Condition. Finally, versions of the Specificity Condition are variously known as the Blocking Principle, the Subset Principle, the Elsewhere Condition, the Proper Inclusion Principle, and so on. Analyses that employ this kind of constraint include Kiparsky (1973), Kiparsky (1982), Aronoff (1976), DiSciullo & Williams (1987), Williams (1994), Williams (1997), and Fanselow (1991). Also compare the literature on specificity given in the text below.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

207

inflection class) features (alternatively, if F j ’s feature specification is a proper subset of that of the feature specification of F i ); on this view, the maximally underspecified inflection marker /a/ 10 will emerge as least specific, and fully specified forms like /oj/1 , /ju/2 , and /om/3 as most specific. However, it has often been argued that such a notion of specificity is not yet fine-grained enough, and must be supplemented by recourse to a general hierarchy of features; see Lumsden (1992), Noyer (1997), Wiese (1999), Gunkel (2003), and Zifonun (2003), among others. In line with this, I would like to propose that inflection class features are always more specific than (i.e., outrank) case features; and I will adopt the following notion of specificity of an inflection marker.17,18 (6) Specificity of inflection markers: An inflection marker Fi is more specific than an inflection marker F j iff there is a class of features C such that (i) and (ii) hold. (i) Fi bears more features belonging to C than F j does. (ii) There is no higher-ranked class of features C 0 such that Fi and F j have a different number of features in F 0 . Paradigm P6 shows how the Specificity Condition interacts with the assumptions about underspecification of inflection markers (with respect to case and inflection class features) made above to predict the system of inflection marking of Russian singular nouns.19 The most underspecified inflection marker /a/ 10 is a default marker that would in principle fit everywhere; but given the Specificity Condition, it can only survive in the few contexts where there is no alternative, more specific inflection marker that is compatible with the morpho-syntactic feature specification of the noun stem. Thus, /a/ 10 emerges as the unmarked inflection marker for Russian singular nouns, and this way, the analysis provides a uni17 A theory-internal reason for invoking the hierarchy of features in the definition of specificity is the distribution of /u/9 , which has two case features but no inflection class features and must qualify as less specific than the markers /o/6 , /O/7 , and /i/8 . The latter are restricted to certain inflection classes but have fewer case specifications, and may thus (in the case of /O/7 and /i/8 ) end up with an identical number of morpho-syntactic case and inflection class specifications overall. 18 Note that the concept of specificity in (6) is conceptually similar to the notion of optimality in optimality-theoretic approaches; see Prince & Smolensky (1993). 19 The markers chosen by the Specificity Condition are in bold face; compatible, but less specific markers are shown for each combination of case/inflection class in a second line in parentheses.

208

Gereon Müller

P6 : The interaction of inflection markers in the singular in Russian nom: [+subj,–gov,–obl] acc: [–subj,+gov,–obl] dat: [–subj,+gov,+obl] gen: [+subj,+gov,+obl] inst: [+subj,–gov,+obl] loc: [–subj,–gov,+obl]

I: [+α ,–β ]

II: [–α ,+β ]

III: [–α ,–β ]

IV: [+α ,+β ]

/O/7 (/a/10 ) /O/7 (/u/9 , /a/10 ) /u/9 (/a/10 ) /a/10

/a/10

/O/7 (/a/10 ) /O/7 (/u/9 , /a/10 ) /i/8 (/u/9 , /a/10 ) /i/8 (/a/10 ) /ju/2 (/i/8 , /a/10 ) /i/8 (/a/10 )

/o/6 (/a/10 ) /o/6 (/u/9 , /a/10 ) /u/9 (/a/10 ) /a/10

/om/3 (/a/10 ) /e/5 (/a/10 )

/u/9 (/a/10 ) /e/4 (/i/8 , /u/9 , /a/10 ) /i/8 (/a/10 ) /oj/1 (/i/8 , /a/10 ) /e/4 (/i/8 , /a/10 )

/om/3 (/a/10 ) /e/5 (/a/10 )

form account of /a/10 syncretism even though the morpho-syntactic feature specifications of its occurrence contexts (nominative of inflection class II, genitive of inflection classes I and IV) are radically different. The next least specified inflection marker is /u/ 9 , which emerges as the general accusative/dative inflection marker, without any inflection class restriction. However, due to the Specificity Condition, /u/ 9 actually shows up only in few of the accusative/dative cells of paradigm P 6 , where more specific markers are not available (still, /u/ 9 blocks less specific /a/10 here): /u/9 is selected in the accusative of inflection class II, and in the dative of inflection classes I and IV. The markers /i/8 , /O/7 , and /o/6 are more specific than /u/10 but still qualify as substantially underspecified forms: /i/ 8 is the general obliqueness marker for the [–α ] inflection classes II and III; /O/ 7 is the general non-obliqueness marker for the [–β ] inflection classes I and III; and /o/ 6 is the general nonobliqueness marker for inflection class IV. However, the uniform, homogeneous distribution that one might a priori expect under these classifications is severely disturbed by the existence of more specific forms. For instance, /i/8 is blocked by various more specific markers in four of the eight paradigm cells in which it would be compatible with the morpho-syntactic feature specification of the noun stem. In two of these cases, the blocking marker is /e/ 4 . In contrast to what is the case with the other inflection markers, the syncretism with /e/ is not fully resolved in the present analysis. As it stands, there are two lexical entries for /e/ in (4): /e/ 4 and /e/5 . This correlates with the fact

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

209

that both /e/ markers are quite specific (both /e/ 4 and /e/5 are fully specified except for one feature).20 Finally, the instrumental case marker /om/ 3 is minimally underspecified with respect to inflection class features so as to be compatible with inflection classes I and IV; and the instrumental case markers /oj/ 1 , /ju/2 for inflection classes II and III are not underspecified at all. The reason behind this is not that underspecification would be impossible here (it would not be); it is that these markers simply do not participate in competition, and fail to exhibit syncretism. Thus, most of the intra- and transparadigmatic instances of syncretism in Russian noun inflection are accounted for in a systematic way. Still, there is one important exception: The animacy effect with inflection class I (animates in this class exhibit accusative/genitive syncretism) is not yet systematically accounted for; in fact, so far it is not accounted for at all. It is indeed hard to see how a minor modification of feature specifications of inflection markers could derive the accusative/genitive syncretism with animates of inflection 20 See section 3.3 below for more on the special status of /e/. Also note that a conceivable alternative (which had in fact been adopted in an earlier version of the present paper) would be to view /e/4 as a fully specified inflection marker for dative contexts of inflection class II. This would imply that the occurrence of /e/ in the locative of inflection class II is accounted for differently. The obvious solution would then seem to be that /e/5 is treated as a locative marker for inflection classes I, II, and IV (rather than only I and IV, as in the present approach). However, I, II, and IV do not form a natural class of inflection classes under present assumptions. In view of this, would might assume a feature specification of /e/5 that replaces [+α ] with [¬(–α ,–β )]. On this view, /e/5 differs from the other markers in (4) in that it involves reference to the complement of a natural class, viz. [¬III)]: /e/5 then is compatible with all inflection classes except for inflection class III. Given deMorgan’s laws, this can be reformulated as a disjunction: [¬(–α ,–β )] = [+α ] ∨ [+β ]. There is some disagreement about whether or not disjunctions should be avoided in feature specifications of the type at hand (see, e.g., Blevins (1995) vs. Wunderlich (1997)). It seems to me that the use of low-level disjunctions of the type at hand (which could always be undone by introducing an additional feature) is in principle harmless and arguably independently motivated (cf. the analysis of pronominal inflection in German in Müller (2002)) – the basic idea here is that complements of natural classes can also function as natural classes, as has been suggested by Zwicky (1970). However, if one chooses not to draw this conclusion but still wants to maintain a different treatment of locative and dative /e/ in class II, the disjunction implicit in [¬(–α ,–β )] might have to be resolved in favour of two separate feature specifications ([+α ] and [+β ]). This would result in three entries for /e/, which does not strike me as very convincing. That said, I take the question of whether /e/ in the locative of class II is to be treated on a par with /e/ in the dative of class II, or with /e/ in the locative of classes I and IV, to be open; but at least for the purposes of this paper, I will continue to adopt the specification given in the main text, which does not involve reference to the complement of a natural class.

210

Gereon Müller

class I. A first problem is that the inflection marker that triggers the syncretism is /a/10 , which we have seen to be radically underspecified. Hence, /a/10 can only show up if there is no other suitable inflection marker; but there are already two other inflection markers that are compatible with accusative singular specifications in inflection class I (/O/ 7 and /u/9 ). A second problem is that, as things stand, accusative and genitive do not form a natural class in the present proposal ([–subj,+gov,–obl] vs. [+subj,+gov,+obl]). None of these problems strikes me as insurmountable. 21 Still, I will not pursue the strategy of accounting for this syncretism in terms of decomposition and specificity here.22 The main reason for not attempting this is that exactly the same pattern shows up with the plural (see below), and this is unlikely to be accidental (as it would be expected to be under an approach via decomposition and specificity). For the sake of concreteness, I would like to suggest that this syncretism is handled by a rule of referral (see Zwicky (1985)), i.e., a rule that explicitly states (and does not derive) the fact that the marker for a given morpho-syntactic context is identical to the marker of some other morpho-syntactic context; such a rule may thus override the results of the core system based on decomposition and specificity. The following rule of referral is based on similar rules in Corbett & Fraser (1993, 135) and Stump (2001, 229); the suspension of the decomposition- and specificity-based outcome by this rule is reflected in the formulation of the rule (where “I {...} ” stands for 21 For

instance, one might devise a system in which the markers /O/7 and /u/9 are in fact incompatible with an accusative specification of a noun that belongs to inflection class I and contains the feature [+animate]. It is also worth noting that there is a surplus case characterization [+subj,+gov,–obl] that might be considered a second version of the genitive, and that does form a natural class with the accusative ([+gov,–obl]); recall footnote 11. 22 Such a strategy is adopted, in one way or another, in Neidle (1988), Franks (1995), Gunkel (2003) (for Polish), and Wunderlich (this volume). In doing so, Neidle, Franks, and Gunkel rely on the idea that [+animate] and [–animate] noun stems give rise to different paradigms (i.e., inflection classes). Wunderlich’s solution is based on the assumption that accusative and genitive form a natural class (defined by the case feature [+hr]), which accounts for instances of A/G syncretism. Absence of syncretism is then derived either by postulating more specific markers for genitive and/or accusative (as with class II and class III noun stems); or (in the case of class I and class IV noun stems) by invoking what arguably amounts to a version of the impoverishment operation of distributed morphology: A special (violable, but highranked) constraint penalizes the realization of the case feature [+hr] in accusative contexts of inanimate (or neuter) nouns, and thus brings about a “retreat to the general case”, as Halle & Marantz (1993) put it – i.e., a retreat to the less specific marker that is also used in nominative contexts. See pp. 381-385; and Trommer (2001) for a general approach to impoverishment in terms of optimality-theoretic constraints.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

211

“the inflection marker determined by the Specificity Condition for context {...}”, and “→” stands for “is replaced by”); essentially, (7) triggers differential object marking (see Aissen (2003) and literature cited there), which overrides the basic morphological outcome (Comrie (1978)). 23 (7) A rule of referral for accusative/genitive syncretism in the singular: I{[+α ,−γ ],[−subj,+gov,−obl]} → I{[+α ,−γ ],[+subj,+gov,+obl]} /[+animate] . 3.3.

On Form and Function

At first sight, the system of inflection markers in (4) may seem arbitrary. However, closer inspection reveals that there is an interesting correlation of marker form and marker function. The inflection markers in (4) are basically ordered according to a property of their function: From top to bottom, specificity decreases. However, this order goes hand in hand with an independent order that concerns a property of the inflection markers’ form: From top to bottom, the rank of a marker on the Sonority Hierarchy (see Hankamer & Aissen (1974)) increases. Thus, the consonantal markers are at one end of the hierarchy, the most sonorous marker /a/ 10 is at the other end, and the other vocalic markers show up in between, with /u/ 9 being more sonorours than /i/8 , /O/7 , and /o/6 , and these being more sonorous than /e/ 4/5 .24 Thus, the hi23 Both Corbett & Fraser (1993) and Stump (2001) maximize the use of rules of referral in the account of syncretism, and also extend it to intra-paradigmatic syncretism. See section 3.5 below. 24 Three remarks: one on /e/, one on /O/, and one on /u/. First, there is an independent reason why /e/ should differ from vocalic markers like /i/ and /o/. The marker /e/ is in fact usually (except after consonants like /c/, /š/, /ž/) realized as je, which makes this marker quasiconsonantal. Thus, the high degree of specificity of /e/’s function (and the fact that the /e/ syncretism is not fully resolvable under present assumptions) directly corresponds to the fact that /e/ is less sonorous than purely vocalic markers. Second, we are now in a position to formulate the second of the arguments for assuming the null ending in the nominative and accusative of inflection classes I and III to be an abstract vowel /O/7 (that has otherwise the same features as /o/6 and is deleted in word-final position), and not a genuine null morpheme: The marker in question has a similar function (degree of specificity) as /o/6 . Hence, given that optimal grammar design maximizes form/function correspondence, we expect it to have a similar form as well. This is the case if the marker is /O/7 , but not if the marker is a null morpheme /Ø/ devoid of phonological features. Third, the classification of /u/9 as being more sonorous than /o/6 is not compatible with evidence from external sandhi in Greek (see Matthews (1974, 113-114)), which presupposes the order /i/ > /e/ > /u/ > /o/ > /a/ of increasing sonority; with evidence from binomial

212

Gereon Müller

erarchy in (8) reflects both the morphological function and the phonological form of the markers.25 (8) /oj/, /ju/, /om/ > /e/ > /o/, /O/, /i/ > /u/ > /a/ This correlation can be taken to suggest that a notion like optimal grammar design plays a role in inflectional morphology, and that, in addition to the Syncretism Principle in (1), fusional systems of inflection might adhere to a second, related meta-grammatical Iconicity Principle that differs from the Syncretism Principle only in that the concept of “identity” is replaced with the concept of “similarity”, and that may plausibly be assumed to guide (and simplify) acquisition of inflectional systems in the same way: (9) Iconicity Principle: Similarity of form implies similarity of function (in a domain Σ, and unless there is evidence to the contrary). 3.4.

Plural

Thus far, I have been exclusively concerned with singular paradigms. The plural paradigms of Russian noun inflection are indeed much less interesting than the singular paradigms from the point of view of syncretism. Still, mainly for the sake of completeness (but also to provide a further argument for decomposing inflection class features), I will now address plural paradigms. formation in German (see Ross (1980, 42), Müller (1997, 33)), which presupposes the order /i/ > /u/ > /e/ > /o/ > /a/; and with evidence from sonority-driven reduction in languages like Bulgarian and Catalan (see Crosswhite (2000), and also Kenstowicz (1994)). This may indicate some language-particular variability, or minor imperfections of some of the systems involved here. 25 An even more systematic correlation of marker form and (underspecified) marker function has been discovered for the system of pronominal inflection in German in Wiese (1996; 1999), on which the present discussion draws (as does the sonority-based approach to German pronominal inflection in Müller (2002)). As concerns the Russian system of noun inflection, it has not gone unnoticed either in the literature that there might be a correlation of form and function. Thus, Shapiro (1969, 14) and Plank (1979, 143) correlate a Jakobsonian hierarchy of cases Hc (nom > inst > gen2 > loc2 > acc > dat > gen1 > loc1 ) and a Sonority Hierarchy Hs (a > o, e, u, i > v, j, m > x); Plank states the following generalization: “The higher-ranked a case is in [Hc ], the more sonorous is the set of phonological segments used for its expression.” I would argue that replacing this hierarchy of cases with a hierarchy of specifications of decomposed case and inflection class features permits a more articulate (and verifiable) account that nevertheless preserves Plank’s and Shapiro’s basic insight.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

213

The distribution of markers in the plural across the four inflection classes is shown in paradigm P7 . P7 : Inflection classes I-IV in the plural

nom/pl acc/pl dat/pl gen/pl inst/pl loc/pl

I II III zavodm komnat f tetrad’ f (‘factory’) (‘room’) (‘notebook’) zavod-y komnat-y tetrad-i zavod-y komnat-y tetrad-i zavod-am komnat-am tetrad-jam zavod-ov komnat-Ø tetrad-ej zavod-ami komnat-ami tetrad-jami zavod-ax komnat-ax tetrad-jax

IV mestn (‘place’) mest-a mest-a mest-am mest-Ø mest-ami mest-ax

(10) is a (slightly simplified) list of lexical entries for plural inflection markers in Russian. (10) Plural inflection markers for nouns in Russian: 1. /ax/ {[+N],[+pl],[–subj,–gov,+obl]} 2. /ami/ {[+N],[+pl],[+subj,–gov,+obl]} 3. /am/ {[+N],[+pl],[–subj,+gov,+obl]} 4. /ov/ {[+N],[+pl],[–β ],[+subj,+gov,+obl]} 5. /O/ {[+N],[+pl],[+β ],[+subj,+gov,+obl]} 6. /i/ {[+N],[+pl],[¬(+α ,+β )],[–obl]} 7. /a/ {[+N],[+pl],[–obl]} Let us consider the locative, instrumental, and dative markers /ax/ 1 , /ami/2 , and /am/3 first. These markers are invariant across inflection classes (and genders), and generally seem to behave very differently from the singular markers discussed above – they resemble truly agglutinative markers. Even though underspecification of case features is technically possible in these cases, there is no evidence for doing this; and despite the fact that there is no reason for specifying inflection class features for these markers, we can assume that they are maximally specific, and can never be blocked in favour of other markers by the Specificity Condition. (As a matter of fact, it is questionable whether they should be subsumed under a decomposition/specificity-based approach in the first place, given that there is no interaction with other markers.) Next, there are two genitive markers in the plural: /O/ 5 (i.e., the null ending) shows up with inflection classes II and IV, and /ov/ 4 occurs with inflection classes

214

Gereon Müller

I and III (/ov/4 is realized as ej rather than as ov after a [–back] consonant as the result of a morpho-phonological rule; see Halle (1994, 53ff.)). This instance of trans-paradigmatic syncretism provides further evidence for decomposing inflection class features (the inflection classes II and IV form a natural class characterized by the feature [+β ], the inflection classes I and III form a natural class characterized by the feature [–β ]); but (even though it would again be technically possible) there is no need to underspecify case features and invoke the Specificity Condition with these two markers. At this point, a general conclusion concerning the decomposition of inflection class features can be drawn: For each natural class of inflection classes, there is in fact a feature specification of an inflection marker that refers to it: [+α ] (I, IV) is referred to by the singular markers /om/ 3 and /e/5 ; [–α ] (II, III) by the singular marker /i/8 ; [+β ] (II, IV) by the plural marker /O/ 5 ; and [–β ] (I, III) by the singular marker /O/7 and by the plural marker /ov/4 . There are only two instances of intra-paradigmatic syncretism in the plural: Nominative and accusative are identical in the presence of the feature [–animate], and accusative and genitive are identical in the presence of the feature [+animate]. Thus, the pattern of inflection class I shows up more generally in the plural. Accordingly, the analysis given here will be of the same type: Nominative/accusative syncretism is viewed as the unmarked case predicted by decomposition and specificity, and accusative/genitive syncretism with animates is stated by a rule of referral. Turning to nominative/accusative syncretism with inanimate nouns first, this is the only case where it makes sense to underspecify case features on inflection markers in the plural. For concreteness, I suggest that the only case information that /i/ 6 and /a/7 bear as plural markers is the feature [–obl]; and that /a/ 7 is not specified with respect to inflection class whereas /i/6 is characterized as being compatible with all inflection classes except class IV. Consequently, /i/ 6 is more specific than /a/7 in the nominative and accusative of inflection classes I, II, and III, and this is why /a/7 is blocked here via the Specificity Condition. Thus, /a/ 7 is the unmarked inflection marker in the plural as it it the unmarked inflection marker in the singular.26 26 Thus,

the feature specification of the plural marker /i/6 refers to the complement of a natural class; recall footnote 20. A priori, /i/ could also be considered the default marker; this would avoid a reference to complements of natural classes. However, treating /a/ as the default marker is not only motivated by a considerations related to a parallel behaviour of singular and plural, and to iconicity: There is also a tendency to replace /i/ with /a/ as the [–obl] plural marker in certain lexical domains in class I (see, e.g., Isaˇcenko (1975, 97-99);

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

215

The plural markers in (10) are marked [+pl], whereas the singular markers in (4) are not specified for number features. Suppose that number features are inherently more specific than inflection class features (which in turn are more specific than case features, see above). Then, the Specificity Condition will ensure that plural markers always block singular markers in any given plural context; conversely, plural markers (marked [+pl]) are always incompatible with fully specified singular noun stems (marked [–pl]), so they can never block the less specific singular markers in singular contexts. 27 The resulting plural paradigm is shown in P8 . P8 : Minimal interaction of inflection markers in the plural nom: [+subj,–gov,–obl] acc: [–subj,+gov,–obl] dat: [–subj,+gov,+obl] gen: [+subj,+gov,+obl] inst: [+subj,–gov,+obl] loc: [–subj,–gov,+obl]

I: [+α ,–β ]

II: [–α ,+β ]

III: [–α ,–β ]

IV: [+α ,+β ]

/i/6 (/a/7 ) /i/6 (/a/7 ) /am/3

/i/6 (/a/7 ) /i/6 (/a/7 ) /am/3

/i/6 (/a/7 ) /i/6 (/a/7 ) /am/3

/a/7

/am/3

/ov/4

/O/5

/ov/4

/O/5

/ami/2

/ami/2

/ami/2

/ami/2

/ax/1

/ax/1

/ax/1

/ax/1

/a/7

Finally, a rule of referral needs to be formulated that covers the accusative/genitive syncretism with animate nouns in the plural; the rule is a version of the rule of referral for the same syncretism with inflection class I members in the singular (see (7)), with inflection class features replaced by a number feature. Thus, the two rules can be viewed as different instantiations of a single general rule scheme. this productive strategy might be taken to indicate a default status of /a/. – On the other hand, /i/ replaces /a/ in neuter contexts in various Russian dialects; see Cubberley (2002, 325). 27 Thus, no attempt is made here to account for instances of singular/plural syncretism. Even the two /a/ markers must be distinguished – the “singular” marker /a/ (i.e., the one unspecified for number) is blocked by /O/ in nominative/accusative plural contexts of inflection class IV, and only the presence of the more specific plural marker /a/ (marked [+pl]) can ensure the correct outcome.

216

Gereon Müller

(11) A rule of referral for accusative/genitive syncretism in the plural: I{[+pl],[−subj,+gov,−obl]} → I{[+pl],[+subj,+gov,+obl]} /[+animate] . 3.5.

Interim Conclusion

To sum up so far, the decomposition of case and inflection class features into more primitive features, and the reliance on the Specificity Condition (a translocal constraint that picks out the most specific inflection marker from a set of inflection markers that are compatible with a noun stem), make it possible to account for many instances of both intra-paradigmatic and transparadigmatic syncretism in Russian noun inflection. As far as I am aware, a systematic analysis that derives (rather than simply states) this latter type of syncretism has so far been outstanding, even though there are many analyses of syncretism in Russian noun inflection. A brief overview may illustrate this. The original system of case feature decomposition into three semantically based primitives ([±mar(ginal)], [±quant(ified)], and [±dir(ectional)]) in Jakobson (1962b) is modified and extended to systems based on four primitive features by Neidle (1988) (who adopts the features [±locational], [±quantifying], [±directional], and [±partial]) and Franks (1995) (who suggests the features [±oblique], [±marginal], [±nonascriptive], and [±phrasal]). Both approaches have considerable success in accounting for intra-paradigmatic syncretism. However, these analyses significantly overgenerate cases (a cross-classification of four binary features yields sixteen possible cases). More importantly, trans-paradigmatic syncretism cannot be accounted for because inflection classes are taken as basic and do not form natural classes. Wunderlich (1996; this volume), and Gunkel (2003) (for Polish) suggest analyses that rely on case feature decomposition and the Specificity Condition. The use of this latter constraint makes it possible to account for intra-paradigmatic syncretism in a simple way; but again, an account of trans-paradigmatic syncretism is out of reach. In contrast to all of these approaches, the analysis in Halle (1994) captures instances of intra-paradigmatic as well as trans-paradigmatic syncretism. However, it does so only by having disjunctive application contexts in spellout rules for an abstract Q-morpheme that represents the inflection marker for nouns. Thus, it seems fair to say that syncretism is stated but not derived

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

217

in this approach.28 The situation is similar with the approaches in Corbett & Fraser (1993) and Stump (2001). These analyses manage to account for various kinds of intra-paradigmatic and, more importantly from the present perspective, trans-paradigmatic syncretism, but since they almost exclusively rely on rules of referral to achieve this, instances of syncretism are stated but not derived.29 The specific lexical-realizational framework of inflectional morphology that I have adopted throughout has not been crucial so far. Given some obvious adjustments, the gist of the above analysis can also be formulated in other approaches (including word-and-paradigm approaches, distributed morphology approaches, and classical lexical-incremental approaches), as long as they permit a reference to natural classes created by feature decomposition and incorporate a translocal constraint like the Specificity Condition. This translatability disappears when I discuss the role of inflection class features in the following section. The argument to be given there supports an approach that is both lexical (the inflection marker is a lexical item) and realizational (all morpho-syntactic features that are needed in syntax are present on the noun stem already). 4. 4.1.

Inflection Class Features as Triggers of Inflection Features in Morphology and Syntax

The features that play a role in inflectional morphology are generally considered morpho-syntactic, in the sense that they are visible in both morphology and syntax and mediate between the two components. Against this background, inflection class features (whether decomposed or not) are peculiar 28 For instance, Halle (1994, 51) accounts for all three occurrences of /a/ as a noun inflection marker in Russian (genitive singular of inflection classes I and IV, nominative singular of inflection class II, nominative/accusative plural of inflection class IV) by a single rule. This rule does not identify these distinct contexts as a natural class, though – rather, the three environments are simply listed as possible application contexts: Q → /a/ in the environments {[+N],[ClassI(IV)],[Sg-Gen]}, {[+N],[ClassII],[Sg-Nom]}, and {[+N],[ClassI(IV)],[Pl-Nom]} (under certain conditions, in the last case). 29 For instance, Corbett & Fraser (1993, 137) account for the /i/ syncretism in inflection classes II and III by assuming that /i/ is basic with a genitive singular specification of inflection class II, and rules of referral ensure that the genitive, dative, and locative singular markers of inflection class III are identical to it.

218

Gereon Müller

because they do not seem to be visible in syntax. Thus, whereas syntactic operations refer to case, gender, and number features, they completely ignore inflection class features. To see this, suppose, counterfactually, that inflection class features were relevant in syntax. Then, we might expect there to be verbs that select inflection class features such that, e.g., only inflection class III members were available as objects of these verbs in Russian; or we might expect subject-verb agreement with respect to inflection class (i.e., a designated morphological reflex of the subject’s inflection class on the verb). Things like these do not seem to occur. 30 So, I would like to conclude that inflection class features are of no use in syntax; they are not interpretable in this component. Assuming a general Legibility Condition (see Chomsky (1986; 2000; 2001)) according to which all material present at a given level of grammar must be interpretable at that level, the presence of inflection class features on nouns in the syntax is a problem. Given the assumptions of section 3, this problem is much more general, though: Case, number, and gender features are (or, at least, can be) present on both a noun stem and its inflection marker. A well-established generalization for inflecting languages is that the head of a word (with respect to some feature) in syntax is typically the rightmost element (that bears this feature); compare the notion of “relativized head” in DiSciullo & Williams (1987). If both a noun stem and an inflection marker have case features, the inflection marker is predicted to be the relavized head of the word with respect to case in Russian, for the simple reason that inflection is suffixal in this language. However, this leads to a dilemma, given that inflection markers can be underspecified with respect to case features: Underspecified case features of an inflection marker should at best be visible in syntax, and at worst also block the visibility of fully specified case features on the noun stem. 31 But if the underspecified case information of an inflection marker is visible in syntax, predictions are made which are not borne out. For instance, we would expect that there are verbs that select underspecified cases like [–subj,+gov], which is clearly not the case.32 Independently of these empirical problems, I take 30 Bernstein (1993) argues that inflection class is visible as a functional head in syntax; but see Alexiadou (this volume) for a refutation of this assumption. 31 It should be noted that this problem does not arise in inferential-realizational approaches in which inflection markers do not bear features as such. 32 The present system would predict an inflection class-invariant marker /u/ on all nouns selected by such a verb.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

219

the redundant proliferation of morpho-syntactic features on noun stem and inflection markers to be conceptually unwarranted. Taking these two problems together, I conclude that all inflection class features, and all morpho-syntactic features of an inflection marker, are uninterpretable in syntax and not visible in this component. These features are underlined in (12) for two nouns, tetradi (‘notebook’, dative singular, inflection class III) and komnatu (‘room’, accusative singular, inflection class II). (12) a. b.

/tetrad’/{[+N],[−anim],[−pl],[−α ,−γ ],[−subj,+gov,+obl]} -/i/{[+N],[−α ],[+obl]} /komnat/{[+N],[−anim],[−pl],[+α ,+γ ],[−subj,+gov,−obl]} -/u/{[+N],[−subj,+gov]}

Thus, we face the following situation: First, there are features that are necessary in morphology but uninterpretable in syntax; this looks like an imperfection (from the point of view of optimal grammar design). Second, the existence of inflection class-based noun inflection as such already looks like an imperfection – it is “uneconomical and dysfunctional”, as Plank (2002) puts it. Interestingly, the co-occurrence of these two imperfections is strongly reminiscent of a situation independently arising in minimalist syntax. 4.2.

Features in Syntax and Logical Form

Recent versions of the minimalist program (see Chomsky (1995; 2000; 2001)) recognize two fundamental operations in syntax. First, the operation Merge puts together two constituents α , β . Merge applies freely, but the succesful cases are typically restricted to contexts where there is a selectional relation between α and β . Second, the operation Move re-merges some subconstituent α of a larger constituent β (which has undergone Merge earlier in the derivation) with β . Simplifying a bit, Move is subject to the restriction that there are identical features on the head of the target (the probe) and on the head of the moved item (the goal) which enter an abstract Agree relation, and, crucially, that there are semantically uninterpretable features on both the probe and the goal, i.e., features that cannot be interpreted in the component of logical form (LF) that follows the syntactic component. Chomsky assumes that LF does not tolerate syntactic features that it cannot interpret; hence, these features have to be deleted in syntax. Generalizing this assumption, we

220

Gereon Müller

obtain the following restriction on feature interpretability, forced by the Legibility Condition: (13) Feature interpretability: Features that are uninterpretable at level L i must be deleted at level Li−1 . Furthermore, Chomsky postulates that the operation Move, which can only apply in the presence of LF-uninterpretable features on the probe, deletes all these features on the probe and the goal, under Agree. Features that are uninterpretable at LF include case features of nouns (but not, e.g., category, gender, number, person and animacy features of nouns) and gender, number, and person features on verbs. Chomsky notes that the existence of LFuninterpretable features looks like an imperfection of grammar design. The same, so he argues, goes for the existence of the operation Move (the “displacement property” of natural languages), which, e.g., removes argument NPs from the domain of verbs that they are arguments of. 33 4.3.

Inflection in Morphology is like Movement in Syntax

In view of this evident convergence of morphological inflection and syntactic movement, I think the hypothesis is worth pursuing that inflection (of the type considered in this article, i.e., by fusional, portmanteau markers) has the same status in morphology as movement in syntax: In both cases, the operation is triggered by features that are not interpretable in the next component, and as a result all uninterpretable features are deleted on the two items that participate in the operation. More specifically, I would like to suggest that the noun stem acts as the probe of an inflection operation, triggering Agree with an inflection marker as the goal. Thus, it must be a syntactically uninterpretable feature on the noun stem that triggers the operation; and the only candidate for this is an inflection class feature. Having triggered the inflection operation (in Russian, the suffixation of the noun stem by the inflection marker), the inflection class feature and the morpho-syntactic features of the inflection marker are deleted. Consequently, the inflected nouns that the morphological component delivers to the syntax do not look as in (12), but as in (14): (14) a. 33 See,

/tetrad’/{[+N],[−anim],[−pl],[−subj,+gov,+obl]} -/i/

however, Chomsky (2002) for a different view.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

b.

221

/komnat/{[+N],[−anim],[−pl],[−subj,+gov,−obl]} -/u/

This approach offers a straightforward account of indeclinable noun stems like kofe (‘coffee’). One does not have to make special assumptions for this case (like the stipulation that these noun stems belong to an additional inflection class, as it is assumed in Corbett & Fraser (1993)). The only assumption that is needed is that these noun stems do not have an inflection class feature: If there is no such feature on the noun stem, no inflection operation will be triggered because there is no need to get rid of uninterpretable features by applying inflection. As a result, the noun stem enters the syntax in its bare form. The analogy of morphology and syntax could be extended even further. E.g., one might argue that morphological operations like derivation and agglutinative inflection are similar to Merge operations in syntax, in the sense that the operation typically goes hand in hand with a selection relation (or can easily be conceived of as doing so). Furthermore, the Specificity Condition that has played an essential role in the analysis of inflection above can arguably be reinterpreted as a subcase of the constraint Maximize Matching Effects that Chomsky (2001, 15) proposes for syntax. 34 However, for reasons of space and coherence, I will not pursue these matters here; 35 neither will I pursue the many questions that the present approach raises. 36 I would like to conclude with two general remarks. First, the above reasoning supports the organization of grammar that I have adopted throughout this paper: Morphology precedes syntax (so features that play a role in morphology but are uninterpretable in syntax can be deleted before this level is reached), and syntax precedes LF. The main hypothesis in this context is that 34 This

constraint demands the deletion of as many uninterpretable features by an operation as is possible. Note that the more specific an inflection marker is, the more uninterpretable features will be deleted by applying the inflection operation. 35 See Alexiadou & Müller (2004) for further elaboration, and for a more general discussion of the issues in this section. 36 To name just one open question: The approach sketched in this section predicts that all kinds of (fusional) inflection are brought about by inflection class features. That is, even in those cases where invoking, say, gender features seems to suffice to determine the appropriate inflection marker for a given noun stem, the present approach will have to postulate inflection class features (that, in the simplest case, may co-vary with (and be parasitic on) the gender features) because gender features of nouns stems, being interpretable in syntax, cannot force inflection with a portmanteau marker.

222

Gereon Müller

inflection class features are uninterpretable in syntax and must be deleted by an inflection operation before the syntactic component; and I would like to contend that to the extent that this hypothesis is tenable (and plausible under minimalist assumptions), it argues against a late insertion (i.e., postsyntactic) approach to inflectional morphology (as it is standardly assumed in distributed morphology): At the point where a late insertion approach needs an inflection class feature, the feature has long been deleted. 37 Second, in discussing the two properties identified as basic imperfections in syntax – (i) uninterpretability of syntactic features at LF, and (ii) displacement –, Chomsky suggests that (i) might not be an imperfection after all because it is the device that makes (ii) possible; and (ii) might not be an imperfection upon closer inspection because there is an independent, functional motivation for displacement based on topic/focus structure and the like (see Chomsky (2000; 2001)). The same reasoning can be applied to the case at hand. There are two imperfections: (iii) uninterpretability of morphological inflection class features in syntax, and (iv) inflection by fusional markers. As argued above, (iii) is the only device that makes (iv) possible (Plank (2002, 4) speculates that inflection class features “can ... be made sense of as the (regrettable, but inevitable) byproduct of something other really intended”), so it may not be an imperfection after all; and (iv) may perhaps not be an imperfection either, given that inflection via fusional markers looks like a good compromise between explicitness (permitting a simple detection of an NP’s grammatical function in syntax) and economy (inflection via agglutinative markers needs more lexical items and creates more complex words). References Aissen, Judith 2003 Differential Object Marking: Iconicity vs. Economy. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21, 435-483. Alexiadou, Artemis this volume Inflectional Class, Gender, and DP Internal Structure. 37 It seems that the only way out in a late insertion approach would be to invoke a dissociation operation that inserts inflection class features post-syntactically (see Embick (1998) for the concept of dissociation). However, dissociation is at variance with the Inclusiveness Condition (see, e.g., Chomsky (2001)) and, more generally, does not seem to be a sufficiently restricted operation as it stands.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

223

Alexiadou, Artemis & Gereon Müller 2004 Class Features as Probes. Ms., Universität Stuttgart and IDS Mannheim. Anderson, Stephen 1992 A-Morphous Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aronoff, Mark 1976 Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 1994 Morphology by Itself. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett 2002 Case Syncretism in and out of Indo-European. In Mary Andronis et al. (eds.), The Main Session. Papers from the 37th Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 15-28. Chicago. Bailyn, John Frederick 2003 Genitive Case is (Always) Quantificational. Ms., SUNY at Stony Brook. Bailyn, John Frederick & Andrew Nevins 2003 The Form of Russian Genitive Plurals. Ms., SUNY at Stony Brook and MIT. Bernstein, Judy 1993 Topics in the Syntax of Nominal Structure across Romance. Doctoral dissertation, CUNY. Bierwisch, Manfred 1967 Syntactic Features in Morphology: General Problems of So-Called Pronominal Inflection in German. In To Honour Roman Jakobson, 239-270. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Blevins, James 1995 Syncretism and Paradigmatic Opposition, Linguistics and Philosophy 18, 113152. Bobaljik, Jonathan 2002 Syncretism without Paradigms: Remarks on Williams 1981, 1994. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2001, 53-85. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Carstairs, Andrew 1987 Allomorphy in Inflection. London: Croom Helm. Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew 1998 Paradigm Structure: Inflectional Paradigms and Morphological Classes. In A. Spencer & A. Zwicky (eds.), Handbook of Morphology, 322-334. Oxford: Blackwell. Chomsky, Noam 1981 Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. 1986 Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger. 1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. 2000 Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework. In R. Martin, D. Michaels & J. Uriagereka (eds.), Step by Step, 89-155. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2001 Derivation by Phase. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale. A Life in Language, 1-52. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 2002 Beyond Explanatory Adequacy. Ms., MIT, Cambridge, Mass.

224

Gereon Müller

Comrie, Bernard 1978 Morphological Classification of Cases in the Slavonic Languages, The Slavonic and East European Review 56, 177-191. Corbett, Greville & Norman Fraser 1993 Network Morphology: A DATR Account of Russian Nominal Inflection, Journal of Linguistics 29, 113-142. Crosswhite, Katherine 2000 Sonority-Driven Reduction . Ms. University of Rochester. To appear in Proceedings of BLS 26. Cubberley, Paul 2002 Russian. A Linguistic Introduction, 313-331. (Chapter “Dialects”.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DiSciullo, Anna-Maria & Edwin Williams 1987 On the Definition of Word. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Eisenberg, Peter 2000 Grundriß der deutschen Grammatik. Band 1: Das Wort. Stuttgart: Metzler. Embick, David 1998 Voice Systems and the Syntax/Morphology Interface. In H. Harley (ed.), Papers from the UPenn/MIT Roundtable on Argument Structure and Aspect (MITWPL 32), 41-72 Cambridge, Mass. Fanselow, Gisbert 1991 Minimale Syntax. Habilitation thesis, Universität Passau. Franks, Steven 1995 Parameters of Slavic Morphosyntax. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, Norman & Greville Corbett 1994 Gender, Animacy, and Declensional Class Assignment: A Unified Account for Russian. In G. Booij & J. van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1994, 123-150. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Gunkel, Lutz 2003 Syncretism and Case Underspecification in Polish Noun Paradigms. In P. Banski & A. Przepiórkowski (eds.), Generative Linguistics in Poland: Morphosyntactic Investigations. (Proceedings of the GLiP-5 Conference held in Warsaw, Poland, 30 November – 1 December 2002), 47-62. Warsaw: Inst. Podstaw Informatyki PAN. Gvozdanovi´c, Jadranka 1991 Syncretism and Paradigmatic Patterning of Grammatical Meaning. In F. Plank (ed.), Paradigms, 133-160. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Halle, Morris 1994 The Russian Declension: An Illustration of the Theory of Distributed Morphology. In J. Cole & C. Kisseberth (eds.), Perspectives in Phonology, 29-60. Stanford: CSLI Publications. Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz 1993 Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection. In K. Hale & S. J. Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20, 111-176. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features

225

Hankamer, Jorge & Judith Aissen 1974 The Sonority Hierarchy. In A. Bruck, R. Fox & M. Labaly (eds.), Papers from the Parasession on Natural Phonology, 131-145. Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago. Harley, Heidi & Rolf Noyer 1999 Distributed Morphology, GLOT International 4/4, 3-9. Isaˇcenko, Alexander 1975 Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart. München: Max Hueber Verlag. Jakobson, Roman 1962a Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre. Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus. In Selected Writings. Vol. 2, 23-71. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. 1962b Morfologiˇceskije Nabljudenija. In Selected Writings. Vol. 2, 154-181. The Hague and Paris: Mouton. Kenstowicz, Michael 1994 Sonority-Driven Stress. Ms. MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Kenstowicz, Michael & Jerzy Rubach 1987 The Phonology of Syllabic Nuclei in Slovak, Language 63, 463-497. Kiparsky, Paul 1973 “Elsewhere” in Phonology. In S. Anderson & P. Kiparsky (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 93-106. New York: Academic Press. 1982 From Cyclic Phonology to Lexical Phonology. In H. van der Hulst & N. Smith (eds.), The Structure of Phonological Representations. Vol. 1, 131-175. Dordrecht: Foris. Leskien, August 1955 Handbuch der altbulgarischen Sprache. (7th edn.) Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. Lieber, Rochelle 1992 Deconstructing Morphology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lumsden, John 1992 Underspecification in Grammatical and Natural Gender, Linguistic Inquiry 23, 469-486. Matthews, Peter 1974 Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCreight, Katherine & Catherine Chvany 1991 Geometric Representation of Paradigms in a Modular Theory of Grammar. In F. Plank (ed.), Paradigms, 91-111. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Müller, Gereon 1997 Beschränkungen für Binomialbildung im Deutschen, Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 16, 5-51. 2000 Elemente der optimalitätstheoretischen Syntax. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. 2002 Remarks on Nominal Inflection in German. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebels (eds.), More than Words: A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 113145. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 2003 Zwei Theorien der pronominalen Flexion im Deutschen (Versionen Standard und Mannheim). Deutsche Sprache 30, 328-363.

226 2004a 2004b

Gereon Müller Syncretism and Iconicity in Icelandic Noun Declensions: A Distributed Morphology Approach. Ms., IDS Mannheim. To appear in Yearbook of Morphology 2004. A Distributed Morphology Approach to Syncretism in Russian Noun Inflection. In Olga Arnaudova, Wayles Browne, Maria Luisa Rivero, & Danijela Stojanovic (eds.), Proceedings of FASL 12, 353-373. Michigan Slavic Publications.

Neidle, Carol 1988 The Role of Case in Russian Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Nesset, Tore 1994 A Feature-Based Approach to Russian Noun Inflection. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 2, 214-237. Noyer, Rolf 1997 Features, Positions and Affixes in Autonomous Morphological Structure. New York: Garland Publishing. Oltra Massuet, Isabel 1999 On the Notion of Theme Vowel: A New Approach to Catalan Verbal Morphology. Master of science thesis, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Plank, Frans 1979 Ikonisierung und De-Ikonisierung als Prinzipien des Sprachwandels, Sprachwissenschaft 4, 121-158. 2002 The Basic Questions of Inflection Classes, With Hints Towards Answers to Some. Ms., Universität Konstanz. Prince, Alan 1996 Elsewhere and Otherwise, GLOT International 1, 23-24. Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky 1993 Optimality Theory. Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Book ms., Rutgers University. Ross, John 1980 Ikonismus in der Phraseologie, Zeitschrift für Semiotik 2, 39-56. Shapiro, Michael 1969 Aspects of Russian Morphology. Cambridge, Mass.: Slavica Publishers. Steins, Carsten 1998 Against Arbitrary Features in Inflection: Old English Declension Classes. In W. Kehrein & R. Wiese (eds.), Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages, 241-265. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Stump, Gregory 2001 Inflectional Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trommer, Jochen 2001 Distributed Optimality. Doctoral dissertation, Universität Potsdam. Wiese, Bernd 1996 Iconicity and Syncretism. On Pronominal Inflection in Modern German. In R. Sackmann (ed.), Theoretical Linguistics and Grammatical Description, 323344. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 1999 Unterspezifizierte Paradigmen. Form und Funktion in der pronominalen Deklination, Linguistik Online 4.

On Decomposing Inflection Class Features 2001

227

Zur lateinischen Deklination: Die Form-Funktions-Beziehung. Ms., IDS Mannheim. this volume Some Cases of Case Syncretism: On Russian Declension. Williams, Edwin 1994 Remarks on Lexical Knowledge, Lingua 92, 7-34. 1997 Blocking and Anaphora, Linguistic Inquiry 28, 577-628. Wunderlich, Dieter 1996 Minimalist Morphology: The Role of Paradigms. In G. Booij & J. van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1995, 93-114. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 1997 Der unterspezifizierte Artikel. In C. Dürscheid, K. H. Ramers & M. Schwarz (eds.), Sprache im Fokus, 47-55. Tübingen: Niemeyer. this volume Is There Any Need for the Concept of Directional Syncretism?. Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich 1984 Flexionsmorphologie und Natürlichkeit. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 1998 Drei Ebenen der Struktur von Flexionsparadigmen. In R. Fabri, A. Ortmann & T. Parodi (eds.), Models of Inflection. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Zifonun, Gisela 2001 Grammatik des Deutschen im europäischen Vergleich: Das Pronomen, Teil 1: Überblick und Personalpronomen. Amades working paper 4/01, IDS Mannheim. 2003 Aspekte deutscher Reflexivkonstruktionen im europäischen Vergleich: Pronominale Paradigmen und NP-interne Reflexiva. In L. Gunkel, G. Müller & G. Zifonun (eds.), Arbeiten zur Reflexivierung, 267-300. Tübingen: Narr. Zifonun, Gisela, Ludger Hoffmann, Bruno Strecker et al. 1997 Grammatik der deutschen Sprache. Berlin: de Gruyter. Zwicky, Arnold 1970 Class Complements in Phonology, Linguistic Inquiry 1, 262-264. 1985 How to Describe Inflection. In M. Niepokuj, M. V. Clay, V. Nikiforidou & D. Feder (eds.), Proceedings of the 11th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 372-386. BLS, Berkeley, University of California. 1991 Systematic versus Accidental Phonological Identity. In F. Plank (ed.), Paradigms: The Economy of Inflection, 113-132. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking in Noun Phrases: The Tension between Economy and Faithfulness Albert Ortmann* 1.

Introduction

One aspect of linguistic theorizing from whatever perspective is that languages are in a permanent tension between morphosyntactic explicitness and semantic transparency on the one hand, and parsimony on the other. The object of investigation in this study is the typological variation found in number marking on the noun and on the constituents that potentially agree with it in the noun phrase.1 I argue that the various options of realising and avoiding number morphology on the involved constituents follow from the relative ranking of only a few general conflicting requirements, conceived of as constraints in the framework of Optimality Theory. This work concludes a trilogy of papers that are devoted to capturing the various empirical and theoretical aspects of number marking restricted by language economy. In Ortmann (2000), two major language types of plural marking in the DP are contrasted, and, after discussing potential alternatives, the interaction of morphological explicitness and economy is modelled in terms of OT constraints. 2 In Ortmann (2002b), the approach is extended so as to account for asymmetries in number agreement on verbs and on possessors, such as the splits in Arabic * The

work reported here was carried out as part of the research programme SFB 282 Theory of the Lexicon, financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG). For helpful discussion, I would like to thank Anja Latrouite, Christopher Piñón, Carsten Steins, and Dieter Wunderlich, as well as the participants of the workshop “Feature Distribution in the Noun Phrase”, held at the 24th annual conference of the DGfS (German Linguistic Society) at the University of Mannheim in February 2002. Special thanks go to Lutz Gunkel for his thorough reading of and many valuable comments on the prefinal version. 1 The notions “noun phrase” and “DP” are used synonymously throughout the paper. 2 This approach, the economic number agreement analysis, is supplemented and slightly revised in Ortmann (2002a). Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 229-267 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

230

Albert Ortmann

subject agreement and that of pronominal vs. lexical possessors in Hungarian. As a general theoretical implication of describing grammar as constraint ranking, some consequences for the lexical inventory with respect to underspecification are pointed out. Finally, the present paper highlights the typological aspects of plural marking in the DP. I show that for the constraints I have been proposing, the logically possible rankings are indeed attested in the languages of the world, and define the various subtypes of number morphology. The major parameters that the factorial typology accounts for are (i) DP-internal number agreement vs. non-redundant plural marking as the result of the relative ranking of M AX constraints and an Avoid constraint, (ii) lexical vs. phrasal plural markers, and (iii) sensitivity to such concepts as specificity and animacy in DP plural marking. The paper is organised as follows. In section 2, I give an overview of the main parameters that determine cross-linguistic variation with respect to the distribution of number markers over the constituents of the noun phrase. In section 3, I introduce the constraints of the economic number agreement approach of Ortmann (2000; 2002a). Against this background, I subsequently develop analyses of the above-mentioned main parameters of variation. Accounts will be given for the systems of, among others, Hungarian, Georgian and German (section 4), Tagalog (section 5), as well as Persian and Turkish (section 6). Section 7 concludes by providing an overview of the subtypes that result from the various possible rankings of the involved constraints. 2.

Parameters of Variation in the Distribution of Number Marking

In Ortmann (2000; 2002a), two major combinatory types of signalling plural reference of a noun phrase are distinguished. The type that is referred to as Type English involves several overt realisations of plural in the noun phrase. The English example (1) involves plural marking on two, and example (2) from German on three constituents of the noun phrase, in addition to a numeral that already indicates the concept of “more than one”. 3 3 The abbreviations of categories that I use in the glosses are the following: ACC “accusative”, ADJ “adjective”, AOR “aorist”, CLF “numeral classifier”, COP “copula”, DEM “demonstrative”, DAT “dative”, DET “determiner”, DF “definite article”, DL “dual”, EP “epenthetic consonant”, EZ “ezafe-suffix”, GEN “genitive”, GER “gerund”, ILL “illative”, INST “instrumental”, IRR “irrealis”, LOC “locative”, MOD “licenser of modifier”, NOM “nominative”, OBJ “object marker”, PL “plural”, POSS “possessive”, POR “possessor”,

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

231

(1) English: (2) German: a. this big tree a. der groß-e Baum b. these three big trees DF.SG large-SG tree ‘the large tree’ b. die drei groß-en Bäum-e DF.PL three large-PL tree-PL ‘the three large trees’ Similarly, in Yimas, a Papuan language of the Sepik family, the head noun is marked for number, and adjectives as well as possessives display agreement with respect to singular, dual, or plural (Foley (1991, 140)). 4 (3) Yimas: a. tnknt-k-ntrm tkt-ntrm ama-na-ntrm heavy-IRR-5.DL chair-5.DL 1SG-POSS-5.DL ‘my two heavy chairs’ b. nawray ama-na-ra urkpwica-k-ra armband.5.PL 1SG-POSS-5.PL black-IRR-5.PL ‘my black armbands’ Formally, number agreement in these languages is captured by assuming unification of inflectional features, of which number is one. The specifications of number are conceived of as attribute-value pairs of the sort [±pl], [±dual]. This assumption is inherent to those theories of agreement which take advantage of the concept of specifying compatible information, such as HPSG (Pollard & Sag (1994)) or Wunderlich (1994). Importantly, though, agreement with respect to number inflection is not the defining property of Type English. The essential factor is whether or not plural morphology is realised in contexts where the concept of plurality is already expressed by numerals or quantifiers. This can be easily verified from English itself, where neither the adjective nor any other modifier (except for the demonstrative pronoun) PRET “preterite”, RED “reduplicant”, REL “relative pronoun”, TOP “topic marker”, 1SG “first person singular”, 3SG “third person singular”, 3PL “third person plural”. Arabic numerals by themselves represent noun (or gender) classes. 4 The shape of the actual number marker differs according to the (at least) ten noun classes. The examples chosen here all involve nouns of class 5, the by far largest class. “IRR”, the “irrealis”, is a verbal category the use of which comprises “states whose duration cannot be bound” (Foley (1991, 94)). Precisely speaking, we are thus dealing with adjectival verbs in (3). Note that the orthography Foley uses renders underlying forms, hence does not reflect the rather complex processes of vowel insertion.

232

Albert Ortmann

exhibits inflection, but only the noun. The characteristic of Type Hungarian, by contrast, is that these languages do not permit more than one overt realisation of the concept of plurality within the noun phrase. Note that I understand this type not as to comprise those languages traditionally classified as “isolating”, in which no plural marker is found on the noun and elsewhere in the noun phrase, for the simple reason that those languages do not have any such marker, as is the case with, for example, Vietnamese. Rather, I refer to languages which in their morphological inventory do have grammatical plural markers yet the latter do not show up in certain environments. In this sense, the defining characteristic of Type Hungarian languages is that no plural marker is found on the noun if plurality is realised by a numeral or quantifier. Apart from Hungarian, this is the case, for example, in Turkish, Georgian, and the Northeast Caucasian languages, as well as Urarina, Quechua, and Tagalog, of which I here illustrate a few. (4) Hungarian: a. egy alma one apple ‘an/one apple’ b. almá-k apple-PL ‘apples’ c. négy alma four apple ‘four apples’ d. sok alma many apple ‘many apples’

(5) Turkish: (6) Urarina:5 a. yıl a. kat a year man ‘year’ ‘man’ b. yıl-lar b. kat a-uru year-PL man-PL ‘years’ ‘men’ c. sekiz yıl c. kuruwatahaj eight year two ‘eight years’ kat a








man ‘two men’

In addition to the omission of a plural marker in the presence of numerals, number marking is not realised in other environments where it would be redundant. One such instance is adjectival modification in languages such as Hungarian and Georgian, where adjectives fail to display plural agreement when used attributively, a phenomenon which will be discussed in 4.1. The overall theoretical question that arises is what prevents plural markers from applying to inflecting categories such as nouns or adjectives with which they 5 Urarina is a language isolate of Peru. I am grateful to Knut Olawsky, from whose field notes the examples in (6) are taken.

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

233

are otherwise found. In Ortmann (2000) it has been pointed out that an account of Type Hungarian data merely in terms of underspecification will fail. If the base form of the noun (the singular form) is formally unspecified, that is, neither specified as “+” nor as “–” plural, this will correctly predict the combination with numerals or non-plural adjectives as grammatical. However, what will not be explained is the ungrammaticality of combinations of [+pl] and [+pl], such as plural noun and plural adjective, which would be predicted to be equally compatible as the combination of [+pl] and [ ]. As one further parameter of typological variation, plural can be realised as a lexical affix or as a phrasal marker. Observe the positional contrast of the plural marker of Tagalog (Western Austronesian) with the corresponding affixes of German or Yimas as in (2) and (3) above on the one hand, and with that of Hungarian on the other hand. (7) Tagalog: mga bago-ng libro PL new-MOD book ‘new books’ In (7), plural is neither marked on the noun, nor marked redundantly on the modifier. Obviously, to characterise its position, reference must be made to the entire noun phrase. Yet another parameter of variation is the extent to which referential salience, most notably the concepts of definiteness and specificity, plays a role. Consider the following contrast that is displayed by Persian (Mahootian (1997, 193, 195); details of the glosses will be provided in section 6): (8) Persian: a. do(-ta) doxtær-a tu-ye hæyat-ænd two-CLF girl-PL in-EZ courtyard-COP.3PL ‘The two girls are in the courtyard.’ b. do(-ta) doxtær tu-ye hæyat-ænd two-CLF girl in-EZ courtyard-COP.3PL ‘Two girls are in the courtyard.’ In Persian, the plural suffix is realised only in contexts of definite reference, hence its presence in (8-b), but not in (8-a). Similar patterns are found in, for example, Hungarian and Turkish. In the remainder of the paper, the phenomena and typological parameters

234

Albert Ortmann

introduced here will be analysed. Before this, a few remarks are in order to make clear what the typology to be developed will not be about. First, I will not be concerned with languages where any explicit indication of plurality is mediated by noun classifiers, or maybe even more specifically, by numeral classifiers, as in Chinese and Vietnamese. Note, though, that the existence of number morphology, that is, overt inflection at least for the plural and maybe also for the dual or the singular, and the existence of classifiers are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Examples of languages in which both classifiers and number morphology exist, but are not used in combination, are Nepali (Indo-Aryan), as described by Clark (1963, 68), and Nivkh (a language isolate also known as Gilyak; Mattissen & Drossard (1998, 21f.)). Among the languages where plural marking and classifiers (optionally) even co-occur are Persian (see (8)) and Turkish, to be discussed in section 6. Second, one encounters constructions in which numerals are treated as grammatical heads with the counted noun as their dependent, where the latter bears genitive case. This pattern is found, for instance, in the Slavic languages, and in Arabic. I do not include it in the present typology, because the numeral and the head noun do not form one noun phrase, but rather involve two, where one is dominated by the other. 3.

The Constraints

The major pillars of the approach developed in Ortmann (2000; 2002a) are the following. I assume that the distribution of plural morphology is governed by the interplay of economy and explicitness. In Type Hungarian languages, obviously, economy is more important than in Type English languages. The analysis is developed within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky (1993)), which holds that the grammar of a language is the specific ranking of universal violable restrictions, known as constraints. More precisely, I use the variant of Correspondence Theory outlined in McCarthy & Prince (1995). As to the individual constraints, a crucial role is played by one that penalises any realisation of plural morphology within the syntactic domain of the DP:

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

235

(9) *PL(DP): Avoid the realisation of the specification [+pl] within the DP. *PL(DP) is a markedness constraint of the “Avoid” family, and it is multiply violable. The assumption that of all Avoid constraints, this particular one often interacts non-trivially is motivated by the fact that DPs may consist of several constituents all of which have in common that they specify the same referential object. Like other Avoid constraints, *PL(DP) is in conflict with the requirement of explicit marking, which is conceived of as a M AX constraint: (10) M AX(P L): A specification [+pl] in the input has a correspondent in the output. This constraint stars every “missing” exponent of plural. Belonging to the M AX family, it computes the faithfulness of the output with respect to the input. Furthermore, a semantically-based constraint is needed that requires plurality to be visible. (11) E XPRESS P LURALITY: The semantic concept of plurality is expressed in the output. One further condition concerns the locus of number marking, that is, whether it is realised on the head or on some other constituent. (12) M AX-H EAD(PL): A specification [+pl] in the input has a correspondent on the lexical head in the output. As opposed to M AX(PL), this constraint stars only the lack of plural on the lexical head of the phrase, that is, on the noun. As a consequence, among candidates with the same number of plural markers on the constituents of the DP, those where the lexical head is not marked will be penalised. Typologically, M AX-H EAD(PL) is easy to motivate: Functional categories such as case and number, or aspect, tense, and mood, are mostly realised either on the lexical head (N or V, respectively) or on a functional head (e.g., article, auxiliary). I propose that in the unmarked case, that is, in lack of evidence to the contrary, the context-specific M AX-H EAD(PL) will dominate the more general (“elsewhere”) M AX constraint, thus M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL). As will become clear from the discussion of languages with phrasal rather than lexical affixes, M AX-H EAD(PL) is in conflict with a specific, multiply

236

Albert Ortmann

violable alignment constraint that requires plural to be realised either initially or finally in the phrase: (13) A LIGN(PL,L/R,DP,L/R): Every marker of [+pl] is realised leftmost/rightmost in the DP. In addition, I assume an undominated constraint U NIFICATION, which states that categories standing in the syntactic relation of agreement have compatible values with respect to agreement features (gender, number, person). Being undominated, U NIFICATION is actually a restriction on the GEN function, its effect being that candidates with “non-unifiable” information are not generated. In the OT approach to morphology advocated here, underlying representations are conceived of as semantic forms with bound variables, associated with the morphological specification that is derived from the semantics. This derivation is achieved by default rules which state that, for example, something that is a referential object which has the property “female” is morphologically treated as [+fem] per default; likewise, an individual that is individuated as an aggregate of several objects of the same kind is usually treated as [+pl] (see Wunderlich (1994) and Pollard & Sag (1994) for such rules). The output candidates generated by the GEN function are surface forms associated with the morphosyntactic specifications that correspond to the realised inflectional categories. In the following sections, the interaction of the constraints introduced here as well as the consequences of the different rankings they allow for will be elaborated. 4. 4.1.

Factorial Typology of Economy and Faithfulness The Noun Combined with a Numeral

The relative ranking of M AX-H EAD(PL) and *PL(DP) fixes the first major parameter of the typology of number marking, the difference between what I have informally labelled the “English” and the “Hungarian” type. For Type English, it is obvious that *PL(DP) must be dominated by M AXH EAD(PL), for otherwise a *PL(DP) violation would be fatal; that is, the noun could not receive a plural marker. Consider the evaluation of the relevant output candidates in (14). We are dealing with an aggregate of objects

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

237

of the kind “apple” the cardinality of which is specified as 4. Hence, the semantic form is the conjunction of the predicates APPLE and AGGR ( EGATE ) and the CARDINALITY relation, all of which predicate over the referential argument of the noun.6 Due to the presence of the predicate AGGR (which is actually implied by a value of cardinality > 1), the specification +pl of the noun is part of the input, mediated by a default rule AGGR(x) → x . The resulting feature index is associated with the binder of the variable for the referent. (14) input: λ x [APPLE(x) & M AX-H EAD(PL) *PL(DP) AGGR(x) & CARD(x)=4] ☞four apples * four apple *! The consequence of this ranking is that numerals greater than “one” will always combine with the plural rather than with the singular – the major characteristic of this type. Type Hungarian, by contrast, is characterised by the opposite ranking of M AX-H EAD(PL) and *PL(DP). More specifically, I am going to justify the following ranking: (15) Ranking for Hungarian, Georgian, Turkish, Tagalog, Laz, ... E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL) *PL(DP) must be ranked so high as to dominate both M AX constraints, for otherwise the noun would have to be plural-marked. This is shown in the evaluation in (16-a). As for the constraint E XPRESS P LURALITY, its ranking above *PL(DP) ensures that a noun without a numeral but with plural reference will be plural-marked rather than left unspecified (az almák (‘the apples’) rather than *az alma), as shown in (16-b). 6 This

is, of course, a rather simplistic notation of the semantics of numeral constructions, used here for ease of exposition. An explicit theory of the combination of numerals and common (count and mass) nouns is found in Krifka (1995). Krifka assumes that numerals involve a measure function OKU (‘object or kind unit’) that for each possible world measures either the number of specimen of a kind (in our case, four individual apples) or the number of subspecies of that kind (four sorts of apples). To reconcile our example with this theory, we may note the meaning of four apples as λ i λ x [RTi (x,Apples) & OKU(Apples)(x) = 4], where R is the “realization relation”, T the “taxonomic relation”, and i a variable for possible worlds. Thus, what I note as a simple function CARD is in actual fact conceived of as counting relative to a predicate.

238

Albert Ortmann

(16) a.

b.

input: λ x [APPLE(x) & E XPR *PL M AX- M AX AGGR(x) & CARD(x)=4] P LUR (DP) H EAD(PL) (PL) négy almá-k *! four apple-PL ☞négy alma * * four apple input: ι x [APPLE(x) & AGGR(x)] ☞az almá-k DF apple-PL az alma DF apple

E XPR *PL M AX- M AX P LUR (DP) H EAD(PL) (PL) * *!

*

*

From (16-b), the role of E XPRESS P LURALITY becomes obvious: The two M AX constraints, both being dominated by *PL(DP), do not suffice to predict “non-counted” nouns as obligatorily marked for plural. 7 Interestingly, subject-verb agreement (as well as possessor agreement) in Type Hungarian languages is typically determined by the number of the head noun of the subject DP. That is, the verb does not show plural agreement if the subject involves a numeral or quantifier. Given the conception of agreement as feature unification, this state of affairs is correctly predicted by the ranking in (15) (see Ortmann (2000) for details). 4.2.

DP-Internal (Non)Agreement

The differences found among Type English languages are the result of the interaction of further constraints. In particular, whether or not a language marks plural redundantly on modifiers follows from the ranking of the more general M AX constraint, viz. M AX(PL), with respect to *PL(DP). For languages without adjectival agreement such as English or the Dravidian language Tamil (exemplified in (17), taken from Broschart and Dawuda (1999, 16)), M AX(PL) must be dominated by *PL(DP), the ranking thus being as in (18).8 7 A refinement of the analysis for nonspecific contexts, in which the plural is not obligatory, will be made in section 6. 8 The situation is slightly different in the colloquial style, where plural marking is, according to Asher (1989, 255f.), only optional for nouns with nonrational referents. The account of

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

239

(17) Tamil: a. aintu nalla caTTai-kaL five nice shirt-PL ‘five nice shirts’ b. cila ciri.ya kar-kaL few small stone-PL ‘a few small stones’ (18) Ranking for English, Tamil ... M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)  M AX(PL) As for the combination of numeral, noun and adjective in Tamil, this gives rise to the tableau in (19). The intended reading is that of “several nice shirts”. The input is therefore the conjunction of SHIRT, FIVE, NICE, and AGGR ( EGATE ): (19)

input: λ x [SHIRT(x) & AGGR(x) M AX- *PL M AX & NICE(x) & CARD(x)=5] H EAD(PL) (DP) (PL) aintu nalla-kaL caTTai-kaL **! ☞aintu nalla caTTai-kaL * *

It can easily be verified that without a numeral, the evaluation will lead to the same result for the adjective and the noun – namely, that only the latter will be in the plural.9 The opposite ranking of M AX(PL) and *PL(DP), given below in (21), is attested for such languages as German, Latin, Yimas, and the Bantu family, where modifiers observe number agreement with the noun. In the Bantu language Sesotho, for instance, each token of the concord prefixes expresses number, where C LASS 7 is the singular and C LASS 8 the plural of the same gender. (20) Sesotho: a. se-fate se-na sa-ka 7-tree 7-DEM 7-POSS ‘this tree of mine’ the similar behaviour of Persian, to be developed in section 6, would seem to also apply to colloquial Tamil. 9 To account for the fact that in English, only demonstrative pronouns display DP-internal agreement, I see no other way than to assume a high-ranked instantiation of M AX for this category; thus M AX(PL)/demonstrative  M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)  M AX(PL).

240

Albert Ortmann

b.

di-fate tse-na tsa-ka 8-tree 8-DEM 8-POSS ‘these trees of mine’

(21) Ranking for German, Latin, Sesotho, Yimas ... M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL)  *PL(DP) As an illustration, consider the German example (2-b), repeated here for convenience, and the tableau in (23). (The fusion of number with further inflectional features such as case, gender and strong/weak is disregarded here. 10 ) (22) German: die drei groß-en Bäum-e DF.PL three large-PL tree-PL ‘the three large trees’ (23)

input: ι x [TREE(x) & AGGR(x) M AX& LARGE(x) & CARD(x)=3] H EAD(PL) ☞die(PL) drei großen(PL) Bäume(PL) der(SG) drei große(SG) Bäume(PL) der(SG) drei große(SG) Baum(SG) *! der(SG) drei großen(PL) Bäume(PL)

M AX *PL (PL) (DP) *** *!* * *** *! **

Note in particular that in addition to M AX-H EAD(PL), the constraint M AX(PL), too, must dominate *PL(DP) in these languages, in order to render any inflecting modifier without a plural marker a fatal violation. For Type Hungarian, by contrast, the ranking of both M AX-H EAD(PL) and M AX(PL) below *PL(DP) entails an important empirical prediction: Attributive adjectives can never be plural-marked when the noun already bears 10 Note in this connection

that neither the article form nor the inflectional suffix of the adjective in (22), nor any other article or adjective ending of German, is an unambiguous exponent of plural. Thus, die is also used for feminine (nominative and accusative) singular, while -en is also used for dative and genitive (as well as masculine accusative) singular in the weak declension. Such syncretism is furthermore not only found in other “synthetic” languages such as Latin, but (albeit to a lesser degree) even in the Bantu languages. This raises interesting theoretical issues that concern such notions as markedness, underspecification, and disjunction (see the two different accounts by Blevins (1995) and Müller (2002) of the declensional morphology of German), as well as the question on which constituent the category of number is actually symbolised in the more functional sense. Since, however, each of the forms in (22) is in contrast to the forms of the singular variant (cf. der (eine) große Baum (‘the (one) large tree’)), they are all assigned the featural information +pl.

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

241

a plural marker. This prediction is borne out, as the examples from Hungarian and the South Caucasian language Georgian reveal: (24) Hungarian: a. A hajó-k gyors-ak DF ship-PL fast-PL ‘The ships are fast.’ b. gyors hajó-k fast ship-PL ‘fast ships’ (25) Georgian (Aronson (1991, 237, 266f.)): a. Es moc’ape-eb-i alian k’arg-eb-i arian DEM.NOM pupil-PL-NOM very good-PL-NOM COP.3PL ‘These pupils are very good.’ b. Es k’arg-i moc’ape-eb-i DEM.NOM good-NOM pupil-PL-NOM ‘these good pupils’ 

That Hungarian and Georgian adjectives do in principle inflect for plural is clear from their predicative use in (24-a) and (25-a), respectively. This inflection is, however, not realised when the adjective is used as an attribute in the noun phrase. (In Georgian, the situation is slightly more complex in that even when used predicatively, adjectives are plural-marked only in case of reference to animates. An account of such splits within the present approach is given in Ortmann (2002b).) Similarly, in Tagalog plural can be realised on the adjective under certain conditions (see section 5.2 for data on and analysis of the locus of plural marking in the DP). Crucially, however, it is not possible for adjectives to display number agreement with a noun that is marked for plural. And in Laz, another Kartvelian (i.e., South Caucasian) language chiefly spoken in northeast Turkey, there are plural forms of the demonstrative pronouns: proximal him (sg) vs. hini (pl), and distal ham vs. hani. These plural forms, however, are used only in isolation. In combination with a noun, the unmarked form (the “singular”) is used; thus we get ham bozomota-lepe, DEM.SG girl-PL “those girls” (Kutscher (1995, 32)). The following tableau shows that the ranking that was established above for Hungarian accounts for the use of the unmarked rather than the plural form of modifiers such as the attributive adjective in (24-b):

242 (26)

Albert Ortmann

input: λ x [SHIP(x) & E XPR *PL M AX- M AX FAST(x) & AGGR(x)] P LUR (DP) H EAD(PL) (PL) a. gyors-ak hajó-k *!* fast-PL apple-PL b. gyors-ak hajó * *! * ☞c. gyors hajó-k * * d. gyors hajó *! * **

Plural agreement on the adjective as in candidate (26-a) is precluded because more than one violation of *PL(DP) will always be fatal. The fact that plural is realised on the noun rather than on the adjective is explained by the interaction of M AX-H EAD(PL) in addition to M AX(PL): Leaving the non-head in the singular constitutes the minimal constraint violation. The latter statement calls for a clarification of the notion of “singular”. As mentioned in section 3, I assume the GEN component to be restricted so as to generate no output candidates which fail to respect the U NIFICA TION constraint on agreement features. This implies that for Type Hungarian languages, where plural marking is saved for the sake of economy, morphologically unmarked forms of modifiers that combine with plural nouns cannot be formally specified as singular: If, for instance, “singular” adjectives such as Hungarian gyors (‘fast’) and Georgian k’arg-i (‘good’) were specified as “minus” for the feature ±plural (thus, ), this would amount to a failure to unify with nouns such as hajó-k and moc’ape-eb-i in (24-b) and (25-b), respectively. For a morphologically unmarked form to successfully combine with a plural-marked word form on the one hand, but on the other with “true” singular forms as well (in contexts of reference to ), the only possibility is underspecification with respect to the feature ±plural. Notice that under the present approach, this kind of underspecification of parts of the lexicon is enforced by the ranking, hence by the grammar, rather than the other way around: A candidate such as (26-c) with an underspecified word form involves a M AX violation, but it involves only one violation of *PL(DP). As a consequence of the ranking, the rule of feature specification default that would assign minus values to morphologically unmarked forms by virtue of the paradigmatic contrast with plural forms cannot apply – in contrast to languages such as German, Latin etc., for which this rule renders singular forms as rather than < >. The issue of proper feature specifi-

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

243

cations for the categories involved in DP-internal and -external agreement in Type Hungarian languages is discussed in more detail in Ortmann (2002a). To summarise the results of the factorial typology so far, whether or not a language allows for redundant plural morphology is implemented by the relative ranking of M AX-H EAD(PL) and *PL(DP). In Type English, the former dominates the latter. Within this type, the ranking M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)  M AX(PL) characterises those languages in which the head noun is plural-marked in combination with numerals, while modifiers do not agree with it (e.g., Tamil), and M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL)  *PL(DP) enforces plural agreement on other modifiers, as in German. In Type Hungarian, where *PL(DP) dominates both M AX(PL) and M AX-H EAD(PL), there cannot be more than one constituent (usually the head noun) inflected for plural, while in the context of numerals, not even the noun will receive plural. Thus, the typology predicts that a language will not leave the head noun in the singular when combined with a numeral but otherwise display plural agreement between the noun and its modifiers.11 5. 5.1.

Phrasal vs. Lexical Plural Affixes True and Apparent Phrasal Plural Markers

We have seen that in Type Hungarian, no plural marker occurs if “plurality” is realised by some other constituent in the noun phrase, such as numerals or quantifiers. This type of limited occurrence of number markers within the noun phrase is to be distinguished from a superficially similar type that involves what is referred to as “number words” by Corbett (2000). By number words, Corbett understands those morphologically free markers (either clitics or words) whose position within the noun phrase is syntactically or phonologically determined. As an example, Corbett (2000, 135, 152) discusses Dogon, a Voltaic language of Mali and Burkina Faso. In Dogon, the plural marker mbe is phrase-final, hence it follows the article and the relative clause rather than being attached to the head noun in (27-b,c) respectively. 11 The only exceptions are those languages where number is fused with either case (as in Finnish) or gender (as in Archi, Northeast Caucasian). For those languages, obviously, a higher-ranked constraint requires concord with respect to these prototypical categories of noun phrase-internal agreement, which can only be realised along with number as a result of the fusion with the latter; see Ortmann (2002a) for analyses.

244

Albert Ortmann

(27) Dogon: n mbe a. goat PL ‘goats’ b. n g mbe goat DF PL ‘the goats’ c. n wo mi ob-i g mbe goat 3SG 1SG OBJ give-AOR DF PL ‘the goats which he gave me’ 

















Under the present account, phrase-final positions of markers can be explained as the result of the ranking of an alignment constraint as introduced in section 3, which dominates *PL(DP) and M AX-H EAD(PL). More precisely, the partial ranking in (28) accounts for the distribution of mbe. (28) Ranking for Dogon E XPRESS P LURALITY, A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R)  *PL(DP), M AXH EAD(PL)  M AX(PL) (29) input: ι x [GOAT(x) E XPR A LIGN *PL M AX- M AX & AGGR(x)] P LUR (PL,R,DP,R) (DP) H EAD(PL) (PL) a. n g *! * * goat DF b. n -mbe g *! * goat-PL DF ☞c. n g mbe * * goat DF PL d. n -mbe g mbe *! ** goat-PL DF PL 























The tableau shows that a realisation of the plural marker on the nominal head gives rise to a fatal violation of the alignment constraint. The only way out is to violate M AX-H EAD(PL). I have claimed above that the status of a phrasal affix is independent of a Type Hungarian ranking; that is, a phrasal plural marker may occur in combination with numerals, but nevertheless cannot be realised on more than one constituent. A case in point is Basque. In this language, either the noun or a

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

245

modifying adjective, depending on which is final, bears the phrasal suffix -ak, which represents a fusion of determination and plural. (30) Basque: a. etxe-a house-DET ‘the house’ b. etxe-ak house-DET.PL ‘the houses’ c. etxe handi-ak house huge-DET.PL ‘the huge houses’ d. etxe gorri handi ederr-ak house red huge beautiful-DET.PL ‘the red huge beautiful houses’ e. etxe-a-ren bi alde-ak house-DET-GEN two side-DET.PL ‘the two sides of the house’ That Basque is not a Type Hungarian language is revealed by (30-e), where -ak occurs in spite of “plurality” already being expressed by the numeral. *PL(DP) must therefore be dominated by M AX(PL). The position of the marker as in (30-c,d) is explained by the ranking A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R)  M AX-H EAD(PL). (31) a.

input: ι x [SIDE(x) & E XPR *A LIGN M AX- *PL AGGR(x) & P LUR (PL,R, H EAD (DP) CARD(x)=2] DP,R) (PL) ☞bi alde-ak * bi alde-a *!

246

Albert Ortmann

b.

input: ι x [HOUSE(x) & E XPR *A LIGN M AX- *PL RED(x) & HUGE(x) P LUR (PL,R, H EAD (DP) & BEAUTIFUL(x)] DP,R) (PL) etxe-ak gorri-ak handi-ak ederr-ak *!***** **** etxe gorri-ak handi-ak ederr-ak *!** * *** etxe-ak gorri handi eder *!** * ☞etxe gorri handi ederr-ak * * etxe gorri handi eder *! *

The tableau shows that any realisation of plural other than in final position will lead to a fatal violation of A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R), hence overt plural agreement between adjectives and nouns is precluded in spite of the economy constraint *PL(DP) being dominated by M AX-H EAD(PL). The fact that this type of marker does not occur with more than one constituent of the noun phrase, then, is owing to its phrase-final status rather than to the role of economy. Another example of a language with (optionally) phrasal plural, hence with an interacting alignment constraint, but with the Type English ranking M AX(PL)  *PL(DP) is the Northwest Caucasian language Abkhaz. Abkhaz uses the plural suffixes -co à for human and -ko à for non-human reference. Postnominal adjectives are obligatorily plural-marked, the noun only optionally so (Hewitt (1989, 44ff., 64)): (32) Abkhaz: a. a-là(-ko à) bz ya-ko à DF-dog(-PL) good-PL ‘the good dogs’ b. p t-yo +k’ a- gab(-co à) harak-co à several DF-girl(-PL) tall-PL ‘several tall girls’ 







Observe from (32-b) that plural is also marked in the presence of a quantifier signalling plurality, namely, on (at least) the adjective. We can conclude that Abkhaz is not a Type Hungarian language; hence M AX(PL) must dominate *PL(DP). The optionality of the plural marker on the head noun in addition to its occurrence on the postnominal modifier is correctly predicted if A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R) and M AX(PL), as well as M AX-H EAD(PL) and *PL(DP), are not ranked with respect to each other, thus: E XPRESS P LURAL -

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

247

ITY  A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R), M AX(PL)  M AX-H EAD(PL), *PL(DP). Consider the following evaluation for (32-a):

(33) input: ι x [DOG(x) & E XPR A LIGN *M AX M AX- *PL GOOD(x) & AGGR(x)] P LUR (PL,R,DP,R) (PL) H EAD(PL) (DP) ☞a. a-là-ko à bz ya-ko à * ** DF-dog-PL good-PL ☞b. a-là bz ya-ko à * * * DF-dog good-PL c. a-là-ko à bz ya * *! * DF-dog-PL good d. a-là bz ya *! ** * DF-dog good 







The analysis of Basque and Abkhaz has an appealing consequence for the representation of what superficially seems to be a selectional property of an affix: Being phrasal is not a property of the affix itself, but rather an effect of the constraint ranking. Under any analysis that assigned the property of being phrasal to the suffixes -co à and -ko à, it would remain unclear why they can appear in any other than the final position – that is, on the noun – at all. Under the present account, the fact that plural on the noun is not obligatory is captured by M AX-H EAD(PL) being dominated both by M AX(PL) and A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R). That it is, moreover, optional rather than impossible is expressed by the equal ranking of the latter two constraints – and what appears to be the selection of phrases is merely epiphenomenal. In order to check whether or not a plural marker in a given language is a genuine noun suffix (in other words, whether or not reference to an A LIGN constraint must be made), we must consider a noun phrase whose head noun does not appear phrase-finally. Such a context often results from modification by a relative clause. A language for which this criterion applies is Hungarian: (34) Hungarian: [ CP amely-ek Lát-t-am [ DP a gyors, angol hajó-k-at see-PRET-1SG DF fast English ship-PL-ACC REL-PL tegnap Hongkong-ba hatalmas rakomány-ai-k-kal yesterday Hong Kong-ILL huge good-PL/POR3-POR3PL-INST be-fut-ott-ak ]] arrive-PRET-3PL

248

Albert Ortmann

‘I saw the fast English ships that arrived in Hong Kong with huge goods yesterday.’ That the plural marker -(V)k has the status of a lexical suffix is obvious from its being attached to the noun stem, rather than to the postnominal relative clause. (The same holds for the accusative suffix -(V)t.) We can conclude that in Hungarian no A LIGN constraint interacts with any of the other relevant constraints, thus M AX-H EAD(PL)  A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R). For some languages, however, this criterion is inapplicable, for the simple reason that the head noun is always phrase-final. One such language is Turkish; consider (35) (taken from Broschart & Dawuda (1999, 58)): (35) Turkish: a. [ CP masa-nın üst-ü-n-de dur-an ] benim table-GEN above-POR3SG-EP-LOC stand-GER my bütün bu güzel tahta bilye-ler-im all DEM nice wooden ball-PL-POR1SG ‘all these nice wooden balls of mine which are lying on the table’ b. benim bütün bu [ CP masa-nın üst-ü-n-de my all DEM table-GEN above-POR3SG-EP-LOC dur-an ] güzel tahta bilye-ler-im stand-GER nice wooden ball-PL-POR1SG ‘all these nice wooden balls of mine which are lying on the table’ In Turkish noun phrases, the noun is always rightmost, thus preceded by all determiners, quantifiers, and modifiers, including possessor phrases and relative clause equivalents (where the latter are headed by a gerundial form and either occur phrase-initially as in (35-a) or immediately precede the head noun as in (35-b)). Therefore, no clear decision can be made for the plural suffix -ler/-lar, or for possessor and case inflection, with respect to their status as lexical or phrasal. Particularly revealing in this respect, by contrast, is the behaviour of Tamil. As an alternative to the noun-final word order in (36-a), the numeral can also follow the noun. Broschart & Dawuda (1999, 15f.) observe that in the latter case, plural is suffixed to the head noun, while the case marker is attached to the numeral; see (36-b).

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

249

(36) Tamil: a. aintu nalla caTTai-kaL-ai five nice shirt-PL-ACC ‘(the) five nice shirts’ b. nalla caTTai-kaL aint-ai nice shirt-PL five-ACC ‘(the) five nice shirts’ (Note that relative clauses also precede their heads in Tamil; hence unlike in Hungarian they do not occur to the right of the case marker.) The conclusion to be drawn is that plural -kaL is a lexical suffix, whereas the case markers are phrasal suffixes.12 Consequently, the ranking with respect to plural must be the same as for Hungarian, whereas for case, the alignment constraint must be higher: A LIGN(CASE,R,DP,R)  M AX-H EAD(CASE). For the present approach, this entails two crucial implications: First, for a given language, being either lexical or phrasal is not a general property of the inventory of grammatical markers, but may differ from category to category. (For example, Persian is another language where plural is suffixed to the noun, while the position of the case marker -râ requires reference to the phrase.) Second, the different behaviour of individual markers lends support to a major analytical device of current OT, namely the proliferation of faithfulness and alignment constraints according to the various inflectional features. 12 The

cliticlike status of case markers may at first appear to be questionable in the light of a particular kind of stem allomorphy that is exhibited by many nouns: One stem is used in all seven cases in the plural as well as in the singular nominative (e.g., maram (‘tree.NOM’), mara- aL-ukku (‘tree-PL-DAT’)), whereas the other stem is used with the six non-nominative (= “oblique”) cases in the singular (maratt-ai (‘tree-ACC’), maratt-ukku (‘tree-DAT’)); cf. Asher (1989, 103), who speaks of the case markers as “bound suffixes”. If this allomorphy were to be described as being purely morphological rather than (morpho)phonological in nature, it would indeed be unexpected for phrasal affixes. Notice, however, that its distribution defies a natural morphological characterisation (“oblique singular vs. all other”). Suppose therefore that we were to assign a condition to the case markers that forbids them to combine with a morphophonologically unmarked noun. This way, we can correctly predict that they attach either to a noun that is plural-marked or to the phonologically more complex allomorph, that is, the one with the geminate. Further support for their phrasal status comes from the fact that they are also used, without any further morphophonological complexities or irregularities, with pronouns, for which category it is cross-linguistically rather unusual to undergo perfectly regular affixation. 

250 5.2.

Albert Ortmann

The Case of Tagalog

In the following, I am going to investigate the properties of the Tagalog plural marker mga (phonologically /ma ah/). Observe first from (37), taken from Schachter & Otanes (1972, 111f., 231), that it is normal for this element to immediately precede the head noun: 13 

(37) Tagalog: para sa bata-ng mga libro for sa child-MOD PL book ‘books for the child’ That Tagalog belongs to Type Hungarian, hence does not involve redundancy in expressing plurality, is evident from noun phrases whose head is accompanied by numerals or other expressions of quantity, in which case mga is precluded (Schachter & Otanes (1972, 112, 121)): 14 (38) a. b.

dalawa-ng (*mga) bata two-MOD PL child ‘two children’ marami-ng (*mga) bata many-MOD PL child ‘many children’

Also note in this connection that plural marking is not obligatory in Tagalog. A plural interpretation is forced if mga is realised, but a bare noun such as libro in (39-b) can be understood as either singular or plural, depending on the context (Schachter & Otanes (1972, 111)). 15 (39) a.

13 The

Nasa mesa ang mga libro on table TOP PL book ‘The books are on the table.’

function of sa in combination with animate referents is, according to Schachter & Otanes (1972, 273), to indicate the owner of an object. The clitic ng, which alternates with na depending on the phonological shape of the host, is found with either the head or the modifier of all kinds of attributive constructions, hence my gloss here as “MOD” for the sake of simplicity; see Ortmann (2002a) for a more detailed semantic analysis. 14 Mga is possible, though, when it precedes the numeral, but in a different use, namely that of expressing approximation; thus mga dalawampu-ng tao (‘about twenty people’) (Schachter & Otanes (1972, 201f.)). 15 On the optionality and further issues regarding the complexity of the plural in Tagalog, as well as an appraisal of the literature on it, see Kolmer (1995).

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

b.

251

Nasa mesa ang libro on table TOP book ‘The book is / The books are on the table.’

Interestingly, Schachter & Otanes (1972, 111) also present an alternative to (37-a), namely, mga para sa batang libro, where mga starts the entire noun phrase rather than appearing on the noun. Phrase-initial occurrence would be a clear indication of a phrasal prefix. However, this positional variant is rejected by my informant as well as other speakers of Tagalog, for both spoken and written style.16 The picture is more subtle, though, with adjectival modification. The contrast of (40-b) and (40-d) shows that mga can be attached to the adjective rather than to the noun provided that the former precedes the latter.17 (40) a.

bago-ng mga libro new-MOD PL book ‘new books’ b. mga bago-ng libro PL new-MOD book ‘new books’ c. mga libro-ng bago PL book-MOD new ‘new books’ d. *libro-ng mga bago book-MOD PL new ‘new books’

We can draw the conclusion that mga is not a true phrasal plural marker (cf. the ungrammaticality of *mga para sa batang libro), but rather a prefix for nouns and adjectives.18 The following tableau shows that a ranking which dif16 Special

thanks to Anja Latrouite for clarifying this with several speakers of Tagalog. examples in (40) and (42) are due to Reyal Panotes Palmero, whose cooperation I hereby gratefully acknowledge. Note again that her judgements are not always in harmony with Schachter & Otanes’ description of the data at issue. 18 Note that it is typologically very common for affixes to select the [+N] categories. Very often, however, such affixes have been claimed to be clitics in the literature, due to the very fact that they are not restricted to nouns only. One such case is that of definite articles in Romanian and the other Balkan languages, which are shown to be lexical affixes in Ortmann & Popescu (2000) and Ortmann (2002). As for Tagalog mga, the affix at issue here, little hinges on the affixal or clitic status, the crucial observation being that the marker attaches only to the two categories mentioned. 17 The

252

Albert Ortmann

fers only slightly from the one that was proposed above for Dogon accounts for the variability of mga with the prenominal adjective order, and at the same time for the fixed position that is found with the postnominal adjective order. (I assume the two inputs in (41-a) and (41-b), respectively, to be specified for serialisation, probably as a consequence of a difference in the information structure. For simplicity, I express this somewhat inaccurately through the order of semantic predicates.) (41) a. input: λ x [NEW(x) E XPR *PL *A LIGN M AX- M AX & BOOK(x)] P LUR (DP) (PL,R,DP,R) H EAD(PL) (PL) mga bago-ng mga libro **! * PL new PL book ☞bago-ng mga libro * * * ☞mga bago-ng libro * * * bago-ng libro *! * ** b. input: λ x [BOOK(x) E XPR *PL *A LIGN M AX- M AX & NEW(x)] P LUR (DP) (PL,R,DP,R) H EAD(PL) (PL) mga libro-ng mga bago **! * libro-ng mga bago * *! * * ☞mga libro-ng bago * * libro-ng bago *! * ** The equal ranking of A LIGN(PL,L,DP,L) and M AX-H EAD(PL) correctly predicts that for the order “adjective–noun”, there are two optimal candidates: one where plural is realised on the head noun, and one where plural is realised leftmost in the phrase. For “noun–adjective”, by contrast, marking the adjective rather than the noun is illicit, because in this order, the two requirements match: The winning candidate is the one in which plural is realised both leftmost and on the head. The difference between Tagalog and Dogon, of which only the latter has a true phrasal plural marker, then, is captured by the ranking of the relevant A LIGN constraint: It dominates M AX-H EAD(PL) in Dogon, but not in Tagalog. To restrict plural marking to nouns and adjectives, that is, to the lexical [+N] categories, I propose a further markedness constraint *PL(DP)/non-

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

253

lexical. This constraint is ranked high for most languages, accounting for the fact that agreement is frequent with adjectives and verbs, but not with phrasal modifiers such as relative clauses or prepositional phrases. For languages such as Dogon with true phrasal suffixes, this constraint is ranked below A LIGN(PL,L/R,DP,L/R) (provided that the language allows categories other than noun or adjective to occur leftmost/rightmost, which is the case in Dogon, with relative clauses and articles following the noun, but not in Basque). For Tagalog, the ranking of *PL(DP)/non-lexical  A LIGN(PL,L,DP,L) entails an important prediction for cases of phrasal modifiers such as PPs or relative clauses preceding the adjective: The plural marker must be placed immediately before the adjective, since in noun phrase-initial position it would satisfy A LIGN(PL,L,DP,L) but invoke a fatal violation of *PL(DP)/non-lexical. Example (42) shows that this prediction is borne out: (42) a.

nasa mesa-ng mga bago-ng libro on table-MOD PL new-MOD book ‘new books on the table’ b. nakita ko-ng mga bago-ng bahay saw I-MOD PL new-MOD house ‘new houses that I saw’ a’. *mga nasa mesa-ng bago-ng libro b’. *mga nakita ko-ng bago-ng bahay

The ranking that can be established for Tagalog, then, is the following: (43) Ranking for Tagalog *PL(DP)/non-lexical, E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL), A LIGN(PL,L,DP,L)  M AX(PL) As one further intricacy, note that at first sight there seems to be some counterevidence to the claim that there is no redundant plural marking in Tagalog. Contrary to what has been said so far, plural agreement is reported to be possible with attributive agreement, provided that the adjective has an exponent other than mga, namely, the reduplication of the first consonant and vowel of the base. Consider the following examples from Schachter & Otanes (1972, 231), rendered with the translation they provide. Any of the (supposed) plural markers can be missing, but the point here is that they may also co-occur. (44) a.

ma-si-sipag na mga bata ADJ-RED-diligence MOD PL child ‘industrious children’

254

Albert Ortmann

b.

mga ma-si-sipag na bata PL ADJ-RED-diligence MOD child ‘industrious children’

Two crucial observations, however, render an analysis of the reduplicant in (44) as an exponent of the category plural implausible. First, the use of reduplication involves an interpretation of intensification for the adjective; thus, ‘very industrious children’ would seem to be a more adequate translation of (44) (Reyal Panotes Palmero, personal communication). Second, note that the same type of reduplication, namely prefixed CV, is also found with verbs in Tagalog. The semantics may also be characterised as intensifying – namely, with regard to the aspectual extension of the event, allowing for either the contemplated aspect interpretation or formation of the imperfective (cf. Schachter & Otanes (1972, 67f., 361-366)). Moreover, two other types of reduplication – disyllabic and total reduplication – are also associated with the concept of intensification. As for adjectives, even if mga is missing, CV reduplication is restricted to plural reference; that is, it does not occur in clear contexts of singular reference. It is not entirely clear why this type of intensification always entails a plural interpretation. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suppose that what is intensified is not first and foremost the number of individuals, but rather the property denoted by the adjective, or the degree to which it is attributed to the referent of the noun. In other words, CV reduplication is the exponent of intensification rather than of +pl, and “multitude” is an additional effect of this intensification. As a consequence, no fatal violation of *PL(DP) is incurred. Finally, we are still left with the optionality in plural marking that was illustrated by (39). Two possible analyses suggest themselves. Following a suggestion by Christopher Piñón (personal communication), I assume that in Tagalog a DP in the “singular” does not have exactly the same meaning as in languages such as English or German where plural marking is obligatory. While in both types DPs marked for plural will be interpreted as ≥2, only in the latter type will a noun phrase with the morphosyntactic specification [–pl] always have a non-aggregate interpretation, with the cardinality 1. In Tagalog, by contrast, a “singular” DP is interpreted as ≥1, thus still leaving the possibility of a plurality individuation. In other words, [+pl] vs. [–pl] DPs have interchangeable syntactic contexts, and only a slight difference in meaning, in that the former is more informative than the latter. For contexts of plurality, then, the choice between the more informative structure (that

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

255

is, a plural-marked DP) and the less informative one is a matter of Gricean pragmatics rather than of the grammar. The alternative strategy is to make use of a recent OT approach to variation, named Stochastic OT, as developed in a series of works by Joan Bresnan and several co-workers, starting with Bresnan & Deo (2001). The basic assumption is that for each evaluation, the rank of the constraints is variable. The extent of this variance is formally conceived of as being determined by a random value, giving rise to stochastic evaluations with potentially different optimal outputs for one and the same input. This model is shown to be able to account for both dialectal and idiolectal variation. Variation as to the optimal output is the more likely the closer the involved interacting constraints are in the normal ranking. Accordingly, we may assume that in the case of Tagalog, in which E XPRESS P LURALITY and *PL(DP) occupy neighbouring positions on the ranking scale, temporary perturbation of ranking values can have the effect that for some evaluation the latter constraint is higher than the former, rendering non-plural as optimal under such an evaluation, but plural under another. Since these two strategies are very different in nature and would both require further discussion of matters of formalisation and consequences, which would lie beyond the scope of this work, I would like to leave it an open question which is the more promising one for the present case. In sum, the discussion of Dogon on the one hand and of Basque and Abkhaz on the other hand indicates that the phrasal status of a plural marker is independent of economy in plural marking being enforced by a ranking *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL). We have thus arrived at the following factorial typology: Of those languages with M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP), Basque and Abkhaz have A LIGN(PL)  M AX-H EAD(PL), while Tamil, English, and German have M AX-H EAD(PL)  A LIGN(PL). As for languages with *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL), in Tagalog A LIGN(PL) is ranked as high as M AX-H EAD(PL), while Hungarian has M AX-H EAD(PL)  A LIGN(PL). For the case of Tagalog, which combines the Type Hungarian ranking with an interacting alignment constraint, the lack of any ranking between the constraints M AX-H EAD(PL) and A LIGN(PL,L,DP,L) accounts for the ability of the plural marker to occur immediately to the left of either the noun or the prenominal adjective, but not before any other constituent of the DP.

256 6.

Albert Ortmann

Salience Splits in Plural Marking

In section 4.1, we saw that the constraint E XPRESS P LURALITY plays a crucial role even for Type Hungarian languages, in that it forces plurality to be realised in spite of high-ranked *PL(DP). For the former constraint to be factorial-typologically justified, we must ask whether it can also be violated in order to satisfy a higher constraint, that is, whether we find noun phrases with no indication of plurality in clear contexts of aggregate individuation. 19 As a matter of fact, languages in which the expression of plurality is either not obligatory or systematically restricted are not uncommon, for instance, in North America or Australia. As is pointed out by Smith-Stark (1974) and, more recently, by Corbett (2000, ch. 3), there are many languages where plural marking is more limited than in, say, English or German, in that for certain semantic classes or modes of individuation it is only optional or even impossible. For example, a language may realise number marking for animate nouns, but not, or only optionally, for inanimates. A case in point is Lakota, where the plural suffix -pi is used only with animate nouns (Buechel (1939, 90)). Smith-Stark (1974) accounts for such plurality splits in terms of implications along the hierarchy in (45-a), which Corbett (2000) upon extensive re-examination revises as in (45-b). 20 (45) a.

b.

Plurality splits hierarchy (Smith-Stark (1974)): speaker > addressee > kin > rational > human > animate > inanimate Animacy hierarchy (Corbett (2000)): speaker > addressee > 3rd person > kin > human > animate > inanimate

The prediction is that if a language distinguishes singular and plural for, say, humans, it will also do so for all categories higher on the hierarchy. The two versions of (45) are largely identical to other salience (or “relevance”) 19 What is not meant here is the problem of “zero plurals” as encountered in languages with inflectional classes. For example, German non-feminine nouns ending in a liquid such as Löffel (‘spoon(s)’) take none of the various allomorphs for plural. 20 Notice that both Smith-Stark and Corbett deal with plurality splits found with either the noun itself or outside the noun phrase, essentially on the verb of which the noun phrase is an argument. In this paper, I am concerned only with splits of the former type, that is, with those of DP plural marking; see, however, Ortmann (2002b) for an account of the latter type in the present OT approach.

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

257

hierarchies that are known from the typological literature. The common denominator of salience split is that languages tend to mark certain inflectional categories only if the referent of the involved noun phrase ranges high on such conceptually based dimensions as animacy, definiteness, or topicality. 21 In this sense, plurality splits follow the same principles as the type of splits known as “differential object marking”. In the following, I analyse a few instances of plurality splits that involve the dimension of definiteness. I propose a proliferation of *PL(DP) constraints which allows us to capture the typological observations in the present approach. In Persian, according to Mahootian (1997, 193), “[p]lural is obligatorily marked on nouns carrying specific reference and obligatorily unmarked on nonspecific nouns”. Note that although Mahootian uses the term “specific”, one is led to suspect from her description that we are in fact dealing with definiteness.22 The following examples are provided (pp. 193, 195), where (46-a,b) have a definite interpretation and contrast with the indefinite (46c,d).23 (46) Persian: a. do(-ta) pesær-a two-CLF boy-PL ‘the two boys’ b. do-ta doxtær-a tu-ye hæyat-ænd two-CLF girl-PL in-EZ courtyart-COP.3PL ‘The two girls are in the courtyard.’ c. do(-ta) pesær two-CLF boy ‘two boys’ 21 On

the particularly crucial role of the dimension of animacy with respect to grammatical asymmetries, see Ortmann (1998). 22 The concepts of definiteness and specificity give rise to other intriguing phenomena in Persian as well. A much discussed example is the distribution of the case marker -râ, for an analysis of which see Ghomeshi (1997). 23 Observe from the examples that Persian (and Turkish as well; see Kornfilt (1997, 271f.)), has numeral classifers. They are obligatory in the context of short answers to “how many” questions, and optional elsewhere. The contrast of (46-a,b) and (46-c,d) proves that classification and plural marking may interact, rather than necessarily being in complementary distribution. “EZ” stands for the ezafe-suffix, which licenses complements and modifiers of nouns and of noun-like prepositions.

258

Albert Ortmann

d.

do-ta doxtær tu-ye hæyat-ænd two-CLF girl in-EZ courtyart-COP.3PL ‘Two girls are in the courtyard.’

In Hungarian, a question like Mit keres-ed? (‘What are you looking for?’) can give rise to answers which differ with respect to number, according to specificity. In a specific context (e.g., where the person who answers has dropped some apples), plural is obligatory, as in (47-a). By contrast, in the non-specific context of (47-b) (e.g., the speaker is looking for apples at the market), the plural suffix, unlike the case suffix, is not realised in spite of clear plural reference (that is, the speaker may definitely intend to buy more than one; András Komlósy, personal communication). (47) Hungarian: a. Alm-ák-at keres-ek apple-PL-ACC search-1SG ‘I am looking for some (specific) apples’ b. Almá-t keres-ek apple-ACC search-1SG ‘I am looking for apples’ Likewise, in Turkish, plural marking on the noun is, according to Kornfilt (1997, 265), “obligatory wherever number marking is possible (with the exception of nonreferential nouns, where plurality marking is optional if the noun is bare, i.e., if there is no determiner). In other words, there are syntactic contexts where, despite plural semantics of the noun phrase, the head cannot be marked for plurality.” Such contexts are those of numerals or certain quantifiers such as birçok (‘many’), as illustrated in (48-a,b), as well as in (5) above, and analysed in 4.1. (48) Turkish: a. be¸s çocuk five child ‘five children’ b. birçok çocuk many child ‘many children’ c. bazı çocuk-lar some child-PL ‘some children’

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

d.

259

bütün çocuk-lar all child-PL ‘all children’

A few quantifiers, among them the ones in (48-c,d), combine with the plural. I leave aside the issue of which indefinites pattern with numerals and which do not; rather, my point of interest is that Kornfilt observes that plural marking is only optional for nonreferential nouns. Thus, many speakers prefer s¸ür over s¸ürler in examples like the following: (49) Hasan s¸ür yaz-ar Hasan poem write-AOR ‘Hasan writes poems.’ Obviously, E XPRESS P LURALITY is violated in (49), as well as in the Hungarian example (47-b). Since, however, plural is obligatory in the context of (47-a), this constraint cannot be simply dominated by *PL(DP); in fact, the opposite order was argued for in 4.1. The key to the analysis I would like to propose lies in the fact that for all three languages at issue, Hungarian, Turkish, and Persian, we are dealing with a contrast that is best characterised as a salience split. More precisely, the dimension involved is that of definiteness/specificity, for which Aissen (2003, 444) proposes the following scale: (50) Definiteness Scale: Pronoun > Name > Definite > Indefinite Specific > NonSpecific Under the OT approach pursued so far, the most obvious way to account for such splits is in terms of differentiating several economy constraints with context information according to the scales of referential individuation, that is, either the animacy scale or the definiteness scale. Such a proliferation of micro-constraints for each step on the relevant scale is also applied by Aissen (2003) to account for object-marking asymmetries: The constraint hierarchy (i.e., the universal partial ranking) *Ob(ject)/Pro  *Ob/Name  *Ob/Def  *Ob/Spec  *Ob/Nspec renders a pronominal object “worse”; that is, its realisation constitutes a higher violation than that of proper name object, and this in turn than that of a definite one, etc. This mechanism is, in a version slightly modified along the lines of Stiebels (2002) so as to incorporate the faithfulness constraints of Correspondence Theory, used in Ortmann (2002b) to account for asymmetries in number agreement with subjects and with possessors (referred to as “plurality agreement splits”). For example, in Persian

260

Albert Ortmann

and Georgian, plural agreement on the verb is obligatory only with animate subjects. This state of affairs is argued to follow from a constraint hierarchy like the one in (51-a) that is derived by harmonic alignment of the animacy scale with a morphological scale plural > singular. Into this hierarchy, the relevant M AX constraint is interpolated as in (51-b). (51) a. b.

Constraint hierarchy for plurality agreement splits *PL(H EAD)/Inan  *PL(H EAD)/Anim  *PL(H EAD)/Hum Ranking for Persian and Georgian *PL(H EAD)/Inan  M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(H EAD)/Anim  *PL(H EAD)/Hum

(For examples and more analytical details, see Ortmann (2002b).) Accordingly, for the phenomena at issue here, that is, plurality splits in the DP rather than in verbal agreement, I suggest a proliferation of *PL(DP) along the animacy hierarchy and the definiteness scale, which yields the constraint hierarchies in (52-a) and (52-b), respectively. (52) a. b.

*PL(DP)/Inan  *PL(DP)/Anim  *PL(DP)/Hum  *PL(DP)/kin  ...  *PL(DP)/speaker *PL(DP)/NSpec  *PL(DP)/Spec  *PL(DP)/Def  *PL(DP)/Name  *PL(DP)/Pro

The assumption that the order among these micro-constraints is universal rather than subject to typological variation is sufficiently justified by the conceptual basis that underlies the salience scales. In order to state the exact cutoff point for a given language, an explicitness constraint is interpolated. For instance, the split of the Papuan language Marind, where, according to Corbett (2000, 59f.), only animates are plural-marked, will be predicted by the ranking *PL(DP)/Inan  M AX(PL)  *PL(DP)/Anim  *PL(DP)/Hum. And for Persian, where the split involves the definiteness scale, a M AX constraint is obviously interpolated between *[+pl]/Spec and *[+pl]/Def. It is worth noting that for each language displaying a split along these dimensions, it must not only be stated where in the hierarchy an explicitness constraint is interpolated, but also exactly which constraint that is. For Persian, the grammatical environment of the specificity split is that of a numeral modifying the head noun. (Informally speaking, the split defines the extent to which Persian belongs to Type Hungarian.) According to Mahootian (1997, 193), we find no cases where plurality goes unexpressed, since “either

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

261

a number or other quantifier precedes the noun.” We can conclude that E X PRESS P LURALITY is undominated, while M AX-H EAD(PL) is interpolated in the hierarchy of *[+pl] constraints, in the sense that it is violable in indefinite contexts, but inviolable in definite contexts, hence *PL(DP)/Specific  M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)/Definite. Evidence for the ranking of all *PL(DP) constraints that can be derived from the definiteness scale higher than M AX(PL) comes from the fact that plural is never marked on any other constituent than the head noun; in particular, adjectives do not inflect. Due to the cognitive basis of the salience scales from which the involved hierarchies are derived, it is unproblematic to assume all the individual constraints in (52) to be universal. In the grammar of individual languages, however, only those constraints of the hierarchy are activated which interact, that is, which can be demoted by the language learner on the basis of positive evidence. Therefore, instead of stating a complete but largely vacuous ranking E XPRESS P LURAL ITY  *PL(DP)/NonSpecific  *PL(DP)/Specific  M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)/Definite  ...  *PL(DP)/Pronominal  M AX(PL), I consider in (53) only those two micro-constraints between which the conflicting M AXH EAD(PL) is interpolated. I use the shorthand notation *PL(DP)/≥Specific, meant to refer to all *PL(DP) constraints with the context Spec(ific) or higher on the hierarchy (52-b), and *PL(DP)/≤Definite for all *PL(DP) constraints with the context Def(inite) or lower. (53) Ranking for Persian E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)/≥Spec  M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)/≤Def  M AX(PL) (54) a.

definite E XPR *PL(DP)/ *M AX- *PL(DP)/ M AX interpretation: P LUR ≥Spec H EAD(PL) ≤Def (PL) ☞do pesær-a * two boy-PL do pesær *! *

b.

indefinite E XPR *PL(DP)/ *M AX- *PL(DP)/ M AX interpretation: P LUR ≥Spec H EAD(PL) ≤Def (PL) do pesær-a *! ☞do pesær * *

262

Albert Ortmann

As can be seen from the tableau in (54), the interpolation of M AX-H EAD(PL) renders the candidate with the plural-suffix on the noun optimal for definite, but not for (specific or nonspecific) indefinite reference. In contrast to Persian, for both Hungarian and Turkish the grammatical environment of the specificity split is that of bare nouns, thus permitting cases such as (49), in which plurality is not realised at all in the DP. This means that Turkish – at least for many speakers – and Hungarian are languages where E XPRESS P LURALITY can be violated in favour of *PL(DP)/NSpec. Furthermore, since Turkish, like Hungarian, avoids plural in combination with numerals (see (48-a,b)), we know that it must also observe the Type Hungarian ranking, according to which (all instantiations of) *PL(DP) must dominate the M AX constraints; thus, *PL(DP)/NSpec  *PL(DP)/Spec  *PL(DP)/Def  ...  M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL). As in (53), only *PL(DP)/NSpec and *PL(DP)/≤Spec are actually activated for Turkish and Hungarian, hence the ranking is as in (55). (55) Ranking for Turkish, Hungarian *PL(DP)/NSpec  E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)/≤Spec  M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL) (56) a.

specific *PL(DP)/ E XPR *PL(DP) *M AX- M AX interpretation: NSpec P LUR ≤Spec H EAD(PL) (PL) ☞s¸ür-ler * poem-PL s¸ür *! * *

b.

nonspecific *PL(DP)/ E XPR *PL(DP) *M AX- M AX interpretation: NSpec P LUR ≤Spec H EAD(PL) (PL) s¸ür-ler *! ☞s¸ür * * *

Since in the ranking for Turkish and Hungarian E XPRESS P LURALITY is interpolated (rather than M AX -H EAD as in Persian), a noun without the plural suffix is correctly predicted to be preferred even in contexts without a numeral. Summing up, for languages where plural is avoided altogether in contexts of less concrete individuation, E XPRESS P LURALITY must be dominated by a context-specific *PL(DP) constraint. A universal hierarchy of such constraints derives from the definiteness scale. It was shown that the interpola-

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

263

tion of M AX-H EAD(PL) into the hierarchy of *PL(DP) constraints leads to different predictions from that of E XPRESS P LURALITY. The fact that both rankings are indeed attested, namely, for Hungarian and Turkish on the one hand and for Persian on the other, lends further plausibility to the constraint inventory that has been proposed and the factorial typology that results from it. 7.

Results

The object of this study was to establish a factorial typology of plural morphology in the framework of Optimality Theory. The starting point of the analysis was the relative ranking of a general economy constraint *PL(DP) and two faithfulness constraints of the M AX family, the relative order of which was shown to predict the behaviour found with Type Hungarian as opposed to Type English. For languages of Type Hungarian, the former is ranked so high as to dominate the latter two, thus *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL). For Type English languages, *PL(DP) is dominated by M AXH EAD(PL), and the ranking of M AX(PL) will determine whether the language displays number agreement on modifiers of the noun: Where this is not the case, as in English and Tamil, the ranking is M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)  M AX(PL), while M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL)  *PL(DP) characterises German, Latin, the Bantu languages, and Yimas, which do have DP-internal agreement. Further parameters were shown to be characterised by the different rankings among a few general constraints; the status of a plural marker as either phrasal or lexical was explained by the interaction of A LIGN(PL,R/L,DP,R/L) and M AX-H EAD(PL). For languages such as Dogon and Basque with phrasefinal (“clitic”) number morphology, M AX-H EAD(PL) is dominated by the alignment constraint. It was shown that we are dealing with two independent parameters of typological variation: Restrictions on the realisation of a plural marker can be either due to its morphological status, namely that of a phrasal affix, or it can be due to the ban on redundancy in the presence of another category in the noun phrase that already expresses plurality, by virtue of the ranking *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL), M AX(PL). Plurality splits along the dimensions of specificity or animacy were explained by activating constraint hierarchies that are derived from cognitively based scales, which give rise to context specifications of *PL(DP), such as

264

Albert Ortmann

*PL(DP)/specific, *PL(DP)/definite etc. Into the hierarchy of these contextspecific constraints E XPRESS P LURALITY or M AX-H EAD(PL) is interpolated. This kind of constraint interaction is found in languages such as Hungarian, Turkish, and Persian. The following list summarises the partial rankings that could be established for the individual languages of which data portions were analysed in the paper. (57)

Abkhaz: E XPRESS P LURALITY  A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R), M AX(PL)  M AX-H EAD(PL), *PL(DP) Basque: E XPRESS P LURALITY, A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R)  M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP) Dogon: E XPRESS P LURALITY, A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R)  *PL(DP), M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL) English: M AX-H EAD(PL), M AX(PL)/demonstrative  *PL(DP)  M AX(PL) Georgian: E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL) German: M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL)  *PL(DP) Hungarian: *PL(DP)/NSpec  E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)/≤Spec, M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL), A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R) Laz: *PL(DP)/NSpec  E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)/≤Spec  M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL) Persian: E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)/≥Spec  M AX-H EAD(PL)  *PL(DP)/≤Def  M AX(PL)

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

265

Tagalog: *PL(DP)/non-lexical, E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)  M AX-H EAD(PL), A LIGN(PL,L,DP,L)  M AX(PL) Tamil: M AX-H EAD(PL), M AX(CASE)  *PL(DP)  M AX(PL)  A LIGN(PL,R,DP,R); A LIGN(CASE,R,DP,R)  M AX-H EAD(CASE) Turkish: *PL(DP)/NSpec  E XPRESS P LURALITY  *PL(DP)/≤Spec, M AX-H EAD(PL)  M AX(PL) References Aissen, Judith 2003 Differential Object Marking. Iconicity vs. Economy. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 21, 435-483. Aronson, Howard 1991 Modern Georgian. In Alice Harris (ed.), The Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus. Vol. 1: The South Caucasian Languages, 219-312. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan. Asher, Ronald 1989 Tamil. London: Routledge. Blevins, James 1995 Syncretism and Paradigmatic Opposition. Linguistics and Philosophy 18: 113152. Bresnan, Joan & Ashwini Deo 2001 Grammatical Constraints on Variation: “Be” in the Survey of English Dialects and (Stochastic) Optimality Theory. Ms, Stanford University. Broschart, Jürgen & Carmen Dawuda 1999 Beyond Nouns and Verbs: Typological Studies in Lexical Categorisation. Arbeiten des Sonderforschungsbereichs 282 “Theorie des Lexikons” no. 113. Universität Düsseldorf & Universität Wuppertal. Buechel, Eugene 1939 A Grammar of Lakota – The Language of the Teton Sioux Indians. Rosebud, South Dakota: Rosebud Educational Society. Clark, T.W. 1963 Introduction to Nepali. University of London. Corbett, Greville G. 2000 Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Foley, William 1991 The Yimas Language of New Guinea. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

266

Albert Ortmann

Ghomeshi, Jila 1997 Topics in Persian VPs. Lingua 102, 133-167. Hewitt, George 1989 Abkhaz. In George Hewitt (ed.), The Indigenous languages of the Caucasus. Vol. 2: The North West Caucasian Languages, 37-88. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan. Kolmer, Agnes 1998 Pluralität im Tagalog. Arbeitspapier no. 31, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Köln. Kornfilt, Jaklin 1997 Turkish. London: Routledge. Krifka, Manfred 1995 Common Nouns: A Contrastive Analysis of English and Chinese. In Gregory Carlson & Francis Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book, 398-411. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Kutscher, Silvia 1995 Nomen und nominales Syntagma. In Silvia Kutscher, Johanna Mattissen & Anke Wodarg (eds.), Das Mu˘tafi-Lazische. Arbeitspapier no. 24, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität zu Köln. Mahootian, Shahrzad 1997 Persian. London: Routledge. Mattissen, Johanna & Werner Drossard 1998 Lexical and Syntactic Categories in Nivkh (Gilyak). Arbeiten des Sonderforschungsbereichs 282 “Theorie des Lexikons” no. 81. Universität Düsseldorf & Universität Wuppertal. McCarthy, John & Alan Prince 1995 Faithfulness and Reduplicative Identity. In Jill Beckmann, Susanne Urbanczyk & Laura Walsh (eds.), Papers in Optimality Theory, 249-384. Amherst: GSLA (= University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18). Müller, Gereon 2002 Remarks on Nominal Inflection in German. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebels (eds.), More than Words. A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 113145. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Ortmann, Albert 1998 The Role of [±animate] in Inflection. In Ray Fabri, Albert Ortmann & Teresa Parodi (eds.), Models of Inflection, 60-84. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 2000 Where Plural Refuses to Agree: Feature Unification and Morphological Economy. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47/1-4, 249-288. 2002a Kategorien des Nomens: Schnittstellen und Ökonomie. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 2002b Economy-Based Splits, Constraints and Lexical Representations. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebels (eds.) More than Words. A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 147-177. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Ortmann, Albert & Alexandra Popescu 2000 Romanian Definite Articles are Not Clitics. In Birgit Gerlach & Janet Grijzenhout (eds.), Clitics in Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax, 295-324. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

A Factorial Typology of Number Marking

267

Pollard, Carl & Ivan Sag 1994 Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky 1993 Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Book ms., Rutgers University & University of Colorado. Schachter, Paul & Fe T. Otanes 1972 Tagalog Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press. Stiebels, Barbara 2002 Typologie des Argumentlinkings: Ökonomie und Expressivität. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Smith-Stark, Cedric 1974 The Plurality Split. Chicago Linguistics Society 10, 657-671. Wunderlich, Dieter 1994 Towards a Lexicon-Based Theory of Agreement. Theoretical Linguistics 20, 1-35.

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs Wolfgang Sternefeld* 1.

Introduction

The aim of this article is to reanalyze the evidence discussed in Gallmann (1990), Gallmann (1996), Gallmann (1998), and Müller (2002) that certain morphological Case markings of German nouns can or must be “dropped” under specific syntactic conditions (judgments below from the literature cited): (1) Accusative a. ein Orchester ohne Dirigent an orchestra without conductor b. *ein Orchester ohne Dirigent-en (singular) Dirigent-en c. ein Orchester ohne eigen-en an orchestra without its.own-ACC conductor-ACC d. *ein Orchester ohne eigen-en Dirigent (2) Dative a. ein Schiff aus Holz a ship made.of wood b. *ein Schiff aus Holz-e c. ein Schiff aus hart-em Holz(-e) a ship made.of hard-DAT wood(- DAT) These examples show that certain nouns can appear inflected or uninflected within their DPs, but an inflected form is possible only in combination with another inflected element. Even if a Caseless form cannot appear uninflected for independent reasons, as with the genitive singular nouns in (3), the gen* Thanks

to Sam Featherston, Gereon Müller, Marga Reis, and my Syntax I class WS 2002/3 for inspiring discussion. The usual disclaimers apply. Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 269-299 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

270

Wolfgang Sternefeld

eralization seems to hold that Case marking of a noun is grammatical only in conjunction with another inflected element within its DP: (3) Genitive a. die Verarbeitung d-es Holz-es the manufacturing the-GEN wood-GEN b. *die Verarbeitung Holz-es c. die Verarbeitung tropisch-en Holz-es the manufacturing tropical-GEN wood-GEN d. *die Verarbeitung (d-es) (tropisch-en) Holz I will discuss two analyses of this phenomenon: one that proceeds in terms of Optimality Theory and another which accounts for the data within a (minimalist) checking theory. I will argue that the OT account runs into difficulties on conceptual and empirical grounds. The empirical problem we will face is that the generalization the OT account builds on is incorrect; an alternative is developed which can easily be embedded in a feature checking theory. The main result will be that the observed phenomena are more adequately described in terms of conditions on the shape of certain suffixes than in terms of their grammatical content. 2.

An OT Analysis

The general rule obeyed by the data above seems to be the following: (4) If N is Case-marked, there exists another Case-marked pre-nominal element (an adjective or a determiner) within N’s DP. Let us call this Gallmann’s agreement rule. (4) is adopted from Müller (2002); Gallmann’s original wording is translated in (5-a), another variant of (4) is given in (5-b): (5) a.

Nouns are Case indifferent except when they agree with a word form that has a Case suffix. (“Nomen sind kasusindifferent, außer wenn sie mit einer Wortform mit Kasussuffix kongruieren.” Gallmann (1996, 290))

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

b.

271

Nominal word-forms are underspecified with respect to Case (and therefore necessarily have no Case suffixes), unless they are preceded by an adjectivally inflected word-form with Case suffix within their DPs. (Gallmann (1998, 151))

As has been observed by Müller, (4) is too strong because it would predict that the following data are ungrammatical, contrary to fact: (6) a. b. c.

Holz mit [ DP 0/ Nägel-n ] wood with nails-DAT [ DP 0/ Kinder-n ] gebührt mehr Aufmerksamkeit children-DAT deserve more attention [ DP (Europas) 0/ Wälder-n ] droht der Tod Europe’s woods-DAT threatens the death

The dative plural Case suffix, like the genitive singular in (3), is in fact obligatory, i.e., cannot be omitted without causing severe ungrammaticality. Müller therefore distinguishes between primary and secondary suffixes. Given the following table of the most frequent inflectional paradigms, 1 it is the optional e-suffix (marked by ! in (7)) and the dative and accusative singular (e)n-suffix in P6 (also marked by !) which are secondary suffixes and which therefore, according to Müller, can be dropped; all others are primary suffixes and therefore cannot be dropped. (7) SG N G D A PL N G D A

Staat Mann Hund Streik Vogel Junge Frau Wurst Bar Mutter state man dog strike bird boy woman sausage bar mother 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ es es es es s n 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ (e!) (e!) (e!) (e!) 0/ n! 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ n! 0/ 0/ 0/ 0/ en er e s 0/ n en e s 0/ en er e s 0/ n en e s 0/ en er+n e+n s 0+n / n en e+n s 0+n / en er e s 0/ n en e s 0/ P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10

1 I have ignored

a number of details, which play no role in the following, including umlaut, the phonological predictability of schwa, the phonological predictability of the missing dative plural inflection in P4 and P9 (cf. Wurzel (1998)), and the inflection of names, the discussion of which would exceed the limits of this paper.

272

Wolfgang Sternefeld

Accordingly, Müller assumes that the OT-input is always inflected, if possible, whereas a candidate in the competition may contain uninflected N-stems. The relation between input and output is governed by the rules summarized in (8): (8) a. b. c.

Don’t drop primary Case. Agree (= Gallmann’s rule as stated in (4)). Don’t drop secondary Case.

Rule (8-a) is ranked highest, which means that the relevant data we are looking at involve dropping of secondary forms only. Then comes (8-b), which is violated in (6); this violation is acceptable, however, because removing the Case suffix in order to satisfy (8-b) would violate (8-a), because the dative plural suffix is classified as primary. The data in (1) can now be explained by the ranking between (8-b) and (8-c): (1-b) (=*ohne Dirigent-en) violates (8-b), and (1-a) (=ohne Dirigent) violates (8-c), but since (8-b) is ranked higher than (8-c), (1-a) wins and (1-b) is ungrammatical. 2 The data in (2) and (3) will be discussed in the next section. 3.

Some Problems with the Analysis

3.1.

Optionality

In his (1996) paper Gallmann assumes a principle to the effect that more specific forms are to be preferred over less specific ones. As pointed out by Müller, this condition is at odds with the optionality of the e-dative of P 1 to P4 . Both dem Mann and dem Mann-e are possible, but as the latter has more specific Case marking than the former (which has no Case marking on the noun at all), we would expect that the second blocks the first one. In fact, however, although the e-dative is old-fashioned and dispreferred, it is nonetheless fully grammatical. In order to account for this optionality we must guarantee that (9-a) does not block (9-b): (9) a. b.

ein Schiff aus hartem Holze ein Schiff aus hartem Holz

Müller’s analysis solves the problem by a standard assumption of Prince & Smolensky (1993), namely, that the generator GEN can produce two distinct 2 Some

speakers do not share these judgments, a matter to which we return in section 5.4.

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

273

input forms Holz/Mann/. . . and Holze/Manne/. . . It is then assumed that outputs based on different inputs do not compete with each other. The analysis of (2-a) and (2-b) then proceeds more or less as before. This solution, however, somewhat weakens the OT-theory because the above assumption renders the distinction between primary and secondary inflection obsolete in case of the e-suffix. This follows, since the consequence of being weak, namely, of being deletable, can be replaced by the assumption of not being generated at all, i.e., being a member of an alternative input. More importantly, the assumption of parallel generation of non-competing forms goes only halfway and does not take into account that in contemporary German the remaining secondary inflection, namely, the en-form of the weak inflection in P6 is also beginning to perish. To illustrate, it is undisputable that the presence and absence of the accusative and dative suffixes in (10) are equally acceptable: (10) der Bär (the bear), des Bär*(-en), dem Bär(-en), den Bär(-en) As has occasionally been pointed out in reference grammars, cases like (11), where the n-suffix sounds rather old-fashioned, indicate a gradual change of the inflection class, in particular, since the s-genitive does not belong to the original paradigm P6 (and Storch ended up in P3 ). (11) der Storch (the stork), des Storch*(-s/?-en), dem Storch(??-en), den Storch(??-en) Somewhat surprisingly, although this change of inflection class is acknowledged for cases like (11), reference grammars only reluctantly tolerate the optionality of Case marking in (10) – witness the most prestigious reference grammar of German, which treats the subject under the heading Nicht anerkannte Unterlassung der Deklination (“unapproved omission of declension”), Duden (1998, § 438). D UDEN also specifies a list of nouns for which a missing declension has been observed as a “strong tendency”. I tested this list (see pp. 274-275) by an Altavista search for inflected and uninflected items in the context of definite and indefinite determiners.

274

Wolfgang Sternefeld

(12) Bär Bub *Bursche Elefant Fink Fürst Geck Graf Held Hirt Kamerad Mensch Mohr Narr *Ochse *Pfaffe Prinz Soldat †Spatz †Steinmetz Tor3 Vorfahr Automat Barbar Diplomat Dirigent Dramaturg Exponent Fabrikant Gendarm †Gnom Jurist Komet Kommandant Konkurrent Lakai Leopard

3 This

einem X einem X-en dem X dem X-en einen X einen X-en 179 22 0 61 5 27 5 35 143 2 20 537 9 13 0 1 49 38 80 169

1145 219 271 1684 8 571 4 520 1066 535 811 32637 26 373 383 41 525 1586 30 13

696 165 2 136 33 398 8 509 342 30 42 2748 72 77 0 0 629 90 318 140

2428 662 794 1676 22 3727 16 6609 3233 967 443 73322 178 552 991 198 3752 1896 98 24

430 56 0 117 4 31 9 36 150 16 9 594 22 38 2 1 152 49 181 170

2542 571 450 3359 13 543 10 436 2402 630 1719 54935 72 1691 321 109 1117 2283 73 16

34 59 22 8 36 1 13 2 5 88 6 15 3 7 4 52

191 1571 66 146 74 24 198 88 47 2 1011 670 115 1489 37 156

12 494 58 19 74 6 29 5 57 219 15 34 105 23 9 161

101 5543 318 208 3314 203 303 338 74 16 1004 1016 2281 2844 22 154

18 71 18 9 4 0 4 1 20 121 5 27 5 8 8 88

234 1384 176 266 564 27 184 78 70 11 805 794 116 4040 39 254

item cannot be tested because it is semantically ambiguous (fool vs. goal), with the two lexemes belonging to different declension classes.

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

275

einem X einem X-en dem X dem X-en einen X einen X-en Obelisk Paragraph Passant Philanthrop Präsident Regent Therapeut Vagabund Zar

34 17 4 1 45 8 10 4 3 15.22%

162 260 588 7 1700 40 1250 35 8

99 197 12 1 843 73 61 7 91 21.18%

239 540 270 10 29932 348 2722 47 713

46 39 6 0 32 3 6 3 11 11.46%

207 569 1345 0 2266 90 1359 48 23

It is obvious that items ending with a schwa (marked by an asterisk) must not be included in the list. That is, not all members of P 6 behave like Bär in (10), i.e., some cannot lose their inflection, cf.: (13) a.

dernom Experte (‘the expert’), desgen Experten, demdat Experte*(-n), denacc Experte*(-n) b. *eine Kommission ohne Experte a commission without expert

Moreover, some items have lost their inflection in present-day German more or less completely. This type of exception is marked by a dagger. For the remaining items I calculated the percentage of non-inflected occurrences; the last line shows the mean percentage of non-inflected occurrences (items marked with † or * having been excluded from the calculation). Returning to the OT-analysis, it is fairly obvious that neither Experte nor Bär can be handled correctly. As concerns the former, the assumption that its inflection is secondary must be modified; as concerns the latter, the condition (8-c) is too strong. In order to handle the first problem, the theory under consideration would need a further distinction between primary and secondary n-suffixes (or otherwise a new inviolable constraint to the effect that the secondary suffix in (13) cannot be dropped). Considering the second problem, the theory seems to adhere to the normative judgment of the DUDEN in blocking the coexistence of the inflected and uninflected forms. But given the 16% probability that an N in P 6 is uninflected, one cannot claim that lack of inflection is substandard or ungrammatical. It therefore seems that the best solution would be one which recognizes that one and the same noun may belong to different inflection classes. Given this state of affairs, it is fairly ob-

276

Wolfgang Sternefeld

vious that Bär, but not Experte belongs to two different paradigms, with the new paradigm 0, / -en, 0, / 0/ not being listed in (7). Observe furthermore that it is also not true, as seems to be suggested in the exposition of the DUDEN, that Case omission affects only an idiosyncratic subclass of nouns. On the contrary, apart from the exception mentioned above, namely nouns ending with a schwa, omission of dative and accusative Case in P6 is a very general phenomenon which even does not require a specific syntactic context. This very much resembles the conclusion already reached for the e-dative. Therefore, the consequence should be the same: optional overt Case marking in non-competing inputs. But now the distinction between primary and secondary case becomes completely obsolete; the original OT-analysis cannot be maintained because its main distinction has collapsed.4 3.2.

Agreement

Note that this reasoning does not affect the validity of the agreement rule for inflected Ns as such; indeed, it seems that this part of the analysis still might survive as a rule that is violable, as in (14): (14) ?eine Kommission ohne Experten (singular) For me, (14) is slightly marked but still much more acceptable than (13-b), which is completely ungrammatical. In order to account for this in OT terms, one might suggest that base generated inflected and uninflected forms of the P6 type still compete, and that the only criterion that might distinguish between them is whether or not there is an agreeing element within DP. If agreement is possible, a non-agreeing form loses the competition. There is further evidence that the original agreement rule is too strong. A potential counterexample is appositive constructions like ihn als Christ-en (‘him/me as a Christian’), where ‘him/me’ and ‘Christian’ agree in Case. An 4 Empirically,

this is not a result that would be entirely unproblematic, since entertaining these assumptions would not allow for an explanation of the purported ungrammaticality of (1-d) – a matter to which I return in section 5.4.

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

277

Altavista search confirms that both the Case-marked and the unmarked forms are acceptable:5 (15)

Christ-en Christ ACCUSATIVE ihn als 22 16 mich als 56 277 DATIVE ihm als 7 10 mir als 20 73

The Case-marked forms might pose a problem for the agreement rule, since there is no other agreeing inflection within the als-projection. And even inside the DP containing the als-phrase we do not find the kind of Case suffix that usually licenses overt Case marking. One might speculate, however, that in cases like (16), (16) mich / dich Idiot-en me / you idiot the apposition Idiot should be analyzed as a complement to the pronoun, which thereby turns into a transitive determiner (cf. Abney (1987) for English and Rauh (2003) for German). Given this analysis the problem for the agreement rule is much less severe, since now we do find a Case-marked element, namely, the pronoun, that can license the Case marking of Idiot. The two problems that remain are (a) that pronouns are not really inflected and (b) that it is not clear whether this analysis carries over to the als-construction. Part of the evidence that motivates the analysis of Idiot as a complement derives from the fact that the adjective in (17-a) has weak inflection. Assuming that definiteness of the determiner implies weak inflection, this follows because wir is a definite transitive determiner. 6 However, in the als-construction, the inflection of the adjective is strong: (17) a. wir unbestechlich-en Richter b. *wir als unbestechlich-en Richter c. wir als unbestechlich-e Richter d. *wir unbestechlich-e Richter 5 This alternation is not really relevant for the following argument, because the root Christ in (15) could, as an alternative to being a reduced dative or nominative, also be interpretated as a nominative. 6 Unfortunately, the most elegant description of adjectival inflection would not assume that weak inflection is a consequence of definiteness, but a consequence of D’s being inflected. Since pronouns are not inflected, we still need a stipulation here.

278

Wolfgang Sternefeld

(17-c) is usually analyzed as adjunction to DP (cf. Lawrenz (1993)) and it is not really clear whether or not the als-phrase has an empty D on its own, and, if not, how the (intransitive) pronoun in mich als Christ-en could constitute an element of the relevant domain for the inflection inside the als-phrase. Another set of data (from the COSMAS Corpus, IDS Mannheim) exhibiting potential disobedience to the agreement condition is (18): (18) a. b. c. d. e. f.

die Doppelmoral manch Arbeitgebers the double.standard many.an employer-GEN ‘the double standard of many an employer’ zu manch Theaterfreunds Entzücken to many.a theater-lover-GEN delight Der “Riecher” manch Trainers hat ausgedient the “nose” many.a coach-GEN has had.its.day ‘Certain coaches no longer have a nose for the best players’ der Vater manch Gedankens the father many.an idea-GEN aus Fehlern manch Vorgängers [lernen] from mistakes many.a predecessor-GEN [learn] . . . , der sich über die Egomanie manch Vorgängers . . . , who REFL at the egomania many.a predecessor-GEN mokierte sneered

Since the determiner manch is uninflected, inflection on N does not imply any other inflection. This is the more surprising in that manch can be inflected, as we will illustrate in (40) below. A way out would be the assumption that manch is a phonologically reduced but underlyingly inflected form derived from manch-en or manch-es. But this approach would of course be inconsistent with the general idea pursued above that lack of Case marking is checked after potential deletions of Case markings, i.e., at the surface only. 3.3.

Ineffability

Let us now turn to the data in (3), repeated as (19): (19) Genitive a. die Verarbeitung d-es Holz-es

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

279

b. *die Verarbeitung Holz-es c. die Verarbeitung tropisch-en Holz-es Here the problem is to account for the ungrammaticality of (19-b), which differs from (19-a) in not having a determiner to agree with. Note that, due to different lexical material, the constructions in (19) cannot compete. In order to rule out (19-b), we would expect it to be blocked by (20), which unfortunately is ungrammatical as well: (20) *die Verarbeitung Holz To solve the problem, Müller adopts Gallmann’s idea that besides Casedropped forms we are also allowed to throw the Ersatzform (21) with a PP into the competition. (21) die Verarbeitung [ PP von Holz ] the manufacturing of wood Lack of Case marking is grammatical in (21), because the preposition von governs (abstract) dative Case. It is not clear, however, how this can be worked out without construction-specific assumptions. One problem would be that additional constraints must be invoked that allow overriding the requirement of faithfulness to the primary inflected input (19-b). A more recalcitrant problem, however, is that such a solution might work only with postnominal DPs; there is no such way out in other syntactic contexts where the genitive is governed by a verb, as in (22-c): (22) a. *Wir bedurften Holz-es we needed wood b. *Wir bedurften von Holz c. *Er enthielt sich (von) Widerstand(-es) he refrained REFL (from) resistance(-GEN) (from Gallmann (1998, 156)) Since an Ersatzform like (22-b) is not available, and since the Case-marked forms are ruled out by Müller’s highest constraint (which implies that a genitive has to agree), we would expect (23) to be the winners of the respective competitions. (23) a. *Wir bedurften Holz b. *Er enthielt sich Widerstand

280

Wolfgang Sternefeld

Since all conceivable alternatives are ungrammatical, we here face the standard OT problem of ineffability. Although most OT-syntactitians would accept a solution in terms of a null parse, it is still not clear how, for the case under discussion, the required constraints should be formulated in a non adhoc way. 4.

Feature Checking within DP

In this section I will briefly outline a minimalist checking system that has been designed to describe all major agreement phenomena within the German DP. It generates forms fully specified for Case inflection as one would expect from the above discussion, by assuming that certain lexical items might belong to more than one inflection class. The generation of inflection as such will not be discussed here; I explicitly refer the reader to Sternefeld (to appear) where the system has been fully developed and formalized. In this section I will only informally outline the basic principles needed in order to see how some of the phenomena discussed above could be handled in a feature checking mechanism. As an example of the general checking format I will be assuming, let us examine the (still incomplete) analysis of the dative plural phrase den Steuern (‘the taxes’): (24)

? [DAT, PL , FEM] D [DAT, PL , FEM]

⇑ N [DAT, PL , FEM]

D [STRONG]

F [∗STRONG∗] [DAT, PL , FEM]

N [ n- DATIVE] [FEM]

F [∗ n- DATIVE∗] [DAT, PL]

d-

-en

Steuer

-n

S YNTAX M ORPHOLOGY ⇓

Consider first M ORPHOLOGY. Given that the determiner has number, gender, and Case, these features are generated by the suffix (characterized by the letter F) and are projected onto the word level, where they are head features of D. Likewise, the Case and number feature of the nominal F-suffix are projected onto the word level, where they are head features of N. The features

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

281

[STRONG] and [ n- DATIVE] are formal morphological features that characterize the inflection class of the respective stems D and N; these features are checked inside morphology by affixation. Checking proceeds via the corresponding features [∗STRONG∗] and [∗ n- DATIVE∗], respectively, in a M ERGE configuration, where features of the form [α ] and [∗α ∗] are sisters. The feature [FEM] of N is an inherent feature of the stem and is therefore projected onto the word level. Within inflectional morphology, features must be projected from both the stem and the inflectional element, unless they enter a checking relation. As explained above, such a configuration arises if and only if features of the form [∗α ∗] and [α ] are sisters. If so, a feature of the form [∗α ∗] cannot project any further; concerning its counterpart [α ], features of this form will not project if they are “contextual” (in Chomsky’s terminology, non-interpretable), but they must project if they are “inherent” (to Chomsky, interpretable). We assume the Case features [NOM], [GEN], [DAT], [ACC] are inherent within morphology, but contextual in syntax, whereas number and gender features of this form (i.e., without asterisks) are always inherent. All features of the form [∗α ∗] are contextual. Contextual features must, at some point of the derivation, enter into a checking relation; inherent features need not. Since possible checking configurations require sisterhood and serve as a precondition for Merge, checking is maximally local, the only kind of possible non-locality arising from projecting a feature from X to X 0 , with X being the head of X 0 . Assuming that all nodes are composed of features only, we may ask what sort of feature F should be. Obviously F in (24) does not project, which according to the above should be necessary, as all inflectional structures are double-headed. I therefore assume that F marks the level of morphology as a purely notational device, it should be considered an abbreviation for the relevant morphological subcategorization feature. Strictly speaking then, the F of -en in (24) should be replaced by [∗D∗], and that of -n by [∗N∗]. Turning next to S YNTAX, features behave in the same way except that only one branch can be the head. That is, features can project only up to their maximal projection, i.e., the non-head of a branching structure. We thus have to decide whether D or N in (24) is the head of the construction. As will become apparent further below, it is decisive that D be the head. The question then arises how agreement can be captured in the checking system outlined above. A natural way of doing so is to assume that the features of D in (24)

282

Wolfgang Sternefeld

are head features and that for the purpose of checking within the DP we have to add complement features as shown in (25): (25)

DP [DAT, PL , FEM] D [∗DAT, PL , FEM∗] [DAT, PL , FEM] D

d-

NP [DAT, PL , FEM]

F

N

[∗DAT, PL , FEM∗] [DAT, PL , FEM]

[FEM]

F [DAT, PL]

-en

Steuer

-n

We thus distinguish between head and non-head features; the former project to the phrasal level, whereas the latter, being always features of the form [∗α ∗], only partially project until they merge with their counterparts of the form [α ]. Going bottom up, complement features are features which must be satisfied before specifier features can. Obviously, the relation between the [CASE], [NUMBER], and [GENDER] features of F and the corresponding features [∗CASE∗], [∗NUMBER∗], and [∗GENDER∗] is not arbitrary: The values of these feature dimensions must be identical. We account for this by the following agreement rule: (26) Default agreement: If a functional category X has the feature [α ] and if for every Y , Y being the category of a possible complement of X, Y must be specified for the feature dimension of [α ], then the lexical item containing [α ] also contains [∗α ∗]. Note that the approach presupposed here is stricly lexicalist in that morphology projects into syntax; moreover, within syntax we cannot add any features not already present in morphological items (stems, affixes, roots etc.). All syntactic rules must be redundancy rules that ultimately operate on lexical items by adding to or selecting from features stored in lexical entries. Accordingly, (26) is a rule that adds to items already stored in the lexicon or to lexical items that might already have received features by rules. To illus-

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

283

trate the former, the suffix {-es,[∗D∗], [GENITIVE ], . . .} is a lexical element, to which (26) adds [∗GENITIVE∗]. The stem {ein,[D], [ACCUSATIVE ], . . .} has received [ACCUSATIVE] by rule, because no suffix with that feature is available, and (26) adds [∗ACCUSATIVE∗]. (26) holds without exception in German, but might still be considered a default rule only, in case individual lexical items already have features that would contradict the outcome of (26). An illustration of a possible exception to (26) might be number words in Russian, which will be discussed further below. Turning next to agreement with adjectives in German, a crucial assumption is that determiners subcategorize for the inflection class of the following adjective. Traditional grammar distinguishes the three classes exemplified for the masculine singular paradigm in (27): (27)

MASC . SG . NOMINATIVE GENITIVE DATIVE ACCUSATIVE

weak -e -en -en -en

mixed -er -en -en -en

strong -er -en -em -en

The weak class is said to be selected by strongly inflecting determiners, the mixed class by weakly inflecting determiners, and the strong class by noninflecting determiners. This view presupposes that selection is a matter of subcategorization of different determiners. It is historically derived from the fact that the strong/weak distinction traces back to a definiteness marking of the adjective that agrees with the definiteness of the determiner. Synchronically, however, this is no longer true. Rather we find the weak inflection iff the particular form of a determiner is inflected (ein-e gut-e, nom.sg.fem), and the strong inflection iff it does not inflect (ein gut-er, nom.sg.masc.), the mixed case now being an epiphenomenon. Given that subcategorization is a matter of complement selection, we assume that uninflected Ds have a feature [∗STRONG∗] that selects strong adjectival inflection, whereas any inflection of D may have [∗WEAK∗], which first projects onto D within morphology and then selects weak inflection in syntax. In both cases the adjectival morphology must be a complement of D. We therefore expect structures as in (28) (irrelevant features of the DP being omitted):

284

Wolfgang Sternefeld

(28) a.

the old man: DP D [∗NOM , WEAK∗]

AP [NOM , SG , MASC , WEAK]

d-er

A NP [∗NOM , SG∗] [NOM , SG , MASC] [NOM , SG , WEAK] alt-e

b.

Mann

an old man: DP D [∗NOM , STRONG∗] ein

AP [NOM , SG , MASC , STRONG]

A NP [∗NOM , SG∗] [NOM , SG , MASC] [NOM , SG , STRONG] alt-er

Mann

However, since adjectives do not subcategorize for NP complements, but rather govern DPs, PPs, or CPs, we must assume a more abstract structure, containing an additional “agreement phrase” with an AP as its specifier. This functional projection, which I will call AgrDP, erects a shell hosting an AP as a specifier and an NP or alternatively another AgrDP as a complement. Cf. (29), where the adjective has a DP complement: (29) a.

ein mir fremd-er Mann a to.me unknown man ‘a man unknown to me’

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

b.

285

DP D ein

AgrDP AP mir fremd-er

AgrD0 AgrD

NP

0/

Mann

I will assume that structures like (29-b) are universally available. AgrD and its determiner features can, in principle, also be realized by overt morphology, as will be exemplified further below. In a language like German, AgrD always remains silent and therefore the head features of AgrD must be “passed on” either to the specifier as a case of specifier head agreement, or to the complement as a case of head complement agreement. As for the description of agreement in German, we thus make the following assumptions: (30) a. b. c.

AgrD always has contextual head features for case, number, gender, and adjectival inflection. All head features [α ] of AgrD can have counterparts [∗α ∗] as specifier or complement features. AgrD has exactly one inflection class specifier feature, i.e., one of [∗STRONG∗], [∗WEAK∗], or [∗−INFLECTION∗].

The feature [−INFLECTION] accounts for a small class of adjectives (mainly color terms) that cannot be inflected, I will discuss examples further below. Otherwise inflection of the adjective is obligatory. However, if the adjective is inflected, not all features of AgrD must go to the specifier; in fact, adjectival inflection, in particular the weak inflection, is highly syncretistic, so that particular adjectival suffixes can be underspecified with respect to the features of AgrD. Complement features are in principle also optional, but in fact are enforced by properties of the complement: If the complement of AgrD 1 is another AgrD2 , then by (30-a) AgrD2 has contextual head features that must be checked, these features can only be checked by complement features of AgrD1 which thereby become obligatory. Much the same holds if the complement is an NP; in that case, however, the strong/weak distinction is passed

286

Wolfgang Sternefeld

on only to a small number of nouns like Beamter (‘official’) that exhibit adjectival inflection. This way, the information encoded in the determiner is spreading through the entire DP. Part of it may be relevant to adjectives only, part of it may only involve NPs. As an example for the latter, consider proper names in German some of which require the presence of a determiner, like die Karpaten (‘the Carpathians’). This requirement must be formally encoded, because plural nouns can usually occur without determiner. Accordingly, some formal feature of N, say [DEF] must be checked by die having [∗DEF∗]; this information will be transmitted through AgrD in die wilden Karpaten without affecting the adjective. In general, then, spreading affects the entire DP; in principle, however, nothing excludes partial spreading or no spreading at all. Looking at different kinds of information in different languages, this is in fact what can be observed. As a case of appearent partial spreading, we may consider determiner spreading in Greek (cf. Androutsopoulou (1996) and Alexiadou and Wilder (1998)). Optionally, the definite determiner can be repeated in every AgrD-Position: (31) a. b.

to megalo kokkino vivlio the big red book to megalo to kokkino to vivlio the big the red the book

The relevant case for partial spreading is illustrated in (32): (32) a. ?to megalo to kokkino vivlio the big the red book b. *to megalo kokkino to vivlio the big red the book The generalization seems to be that once an AgrD-Position is left empty, all subsequent positions must be so. This can readily be accounted for, if the AgrD-to has a contextual feature [DEF]. Assuming next that only to (and not an empty AgrD) can (optionally) have the feature [∗DEF∗], the observed facts follow immediately. If to has [∗DEF∗], the following AgrD position is to, if not, the following AgrD cannot be to, and no other subsequent AgrD can be. A case with no speading at all is the definite marking in Balkan languages. Assuming with Ortmann and Popescu (2000) that Romanian definite articles

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

287

are not clitics but inflectional markers on N and A, we can account for the distribution of these markings by saying that the definite article position is in fact an empty D-Position with an obligatorily feature [∗DEF∗]. If the complement is an NP, the definite inflection marker [DEF] appears on the head of NP; if the complement is AgrDP, the empty head AgrD must realize [DEF] via Spec-head-agreement, i.e., via a Spec-feature [∗DEF∗]. The point to be noted here is that there is no option of speading here, i.e., the complement feature [∗DEF∗] is available only for D, not for AgrD. Thus, the visibility of the definite marking is restricted to the first NP or first AP within DP. Thus, definiteness can be made visible only once. We will return to other instances of visibility in section (5.1). Some further variation in the behavior of spreading results from the possibility of assigning different values of feature dimensions to different positions. A complicated case in point is agreement with number words in Russian (cf. Maltzoff (1984)). In general, numerals agree with the adjective and the noun; however, number expressions ending with 2, 3, and 4 (except 12, 13, and 14) in nominative and accusative DPs are followed by genitive marked As and Ns. Given that numbers are Ds, these special numerals have the feature [∗GEN∗]. The relevant observation now is that N is marked singular, whereas A is marked plural: (33) dv-a bol’š-ix stol-a two-NOM big-GEN.PL table-GEN . SG Given that the suffixes have only one single specification for number, and given that a complement feature of an adjective should agree with its head feature, it is plausible to assume that a functional category like AgrD can host both pieces of information as specifier and complement features at a time, passing them on to the relevant morphemes. Assuming that the abovementioned number expressions have the feature [∗NP, GEN , SG∗], it is clear that they must be passed on from AgrD to NP. At the same time, however, the determiner has the features [∗AGRDP, GEN , PL∗]. In addition, feminine DPs prefer a nominative marking on the adjective (instead of an equally grammatical genitive): (34) dv-e bol’š-ie komnat-y two-NOM.FEM big-NOM . PL room-GEN . SG The following structure, from which the relevant lexical assumptions con-

288

Wolfgang Sternefeld

cerning possible combinations of features of AgrD can easily be inferred, accounts for these requirements: (35)

DP

D [∗NP, GEN , SG , FEM∗] [∗AGRDP, AP, NOM , PL∗] dv-e

AgrDP [NP, GEN , SG , FEM] [AP, NOM , PL] AP [NOM , PL]

bol’š-ie

AgrD [∗AP, NOM , PL∗] [NP, GEN , SG , FEM] [AP, NOM , PL] AgrD [∗NP, GEN , SG , FEM∗] [∗AP, NOM , PL∗] [NP, GEN , SG , FEM] [AP, NOM , PL]

NP [GEN , SG , FEM]

0/

komnat-y

Note that in structures with more than one adjective, the entire set of head features of AgrD would subsequently have to be passed on to AgrDP. Returning to our exposition of agreement phenomena within the German DP, let us briefly examine what seems to be an exception to the general rule that inflection features propagate from one AgrD to the next. Consider (36), where the strong inflection is followed by dative singular weak inflection: (36) gut-emstrong alt-enweak Wein good-DAT. STRONG old-DAT. WEAK wine Formally, a sequence of strong and weak AgrDs would not necessarily contradict any of the above principles; we only have to add a lexical entry that permits [∗WEAK∗] on [STRONG] AgrD. This, however, does not explain that the change of the inflection class can only occur in the very first AgrD of any sequence of AgrDs. More promising seems the idea that the adjectival inflection stands in for the pronominal inflection we normally would expect on an overt determiner, like d-em. We would then start off with something like (37):

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

(37)

289

DP D [∗WEAK∗] D

AgrDP [WEAK]

F

alten Wein

[∗WEAK∗] -em Clearly, the pronominal inflection always requires weak adjectival inflection, and this is what is implemented in (37). However, since -em is assumed to be so-called pronominal inflection (i.e., F = [∗D∗]), the D-position cannot host an adjective; rather we must assume that D assimilates to AgrD in that it allows for an adjectival specifier. Moreover, since D is silent, the strong D-inflection cannot be realized in situ, but must be reinterpreted as strong adjectival inflection, as shown in (38): (38)

DP D [∗STRONG∗] 0/

DP [STRONG] AP

D0

[STRONG]

[∗STRONG∗] [STRONG]

gutem

D [∗WEAK∗] [∗STRONG∗] [STRONG] D

0/

AgrDP [WEAK]

F alten Wein [∗WEAK∗] [∗STRONG∗] [STRONG] 0/

290

Wolfgang Sternefeld

Note that the feature [STRONG] plays a double role: As a head feature on D it characterizes strong pronominal inflection, as a head feature on A it characterizes strong adjectival inflection. The two do not always coincide, because the genitive singular form of the determiner is d-es vs. that of the adjective being gut-en. Furthermore, we assume that [STRONG] on F is a purely contextual feature that must be licensed by checking. Hence we need a second DP on top of the first; this DP is independently required in order to avoid a conflict with constructions that require a specifier other than AP, as exemplified in (39): (39) [ DP Johann-sgen 0/ [ DP gut-em 0/ [ AgrD alt-en 0/ [ NP Wein ]]]] 5.

Implementing Weird Agreement

In this section I will return to the data that were analyzed as a sort of weird agreement effect discussed in section 2. Before trying to reanalyze these data, I would like to account for a closely related phenomenon also discussed by Gallmann in the references cited. 5.1.

The Visibility Condition

In German, the determiner manch (‘many.a’) can have either strong or weak inflection as in (40-a,c) and (40-b,d) respectively, or no inflection at all, as shown in (18). (40) a.

der Traum manch-es Schüler-s the dream many.a-GEN pupil-GEN ‘the dream of many a pupil’ b. der Traum manch-en Schüler-s c. der Traum manch-es Dirigent-en d. *der Traum manch-en Dirigent-en

As (40-d) illustrates, the difference between strong and weak inflection is significant. Its effect has not yet been captured by anything discussed above. Following Gallmann again, the relevant condition seems to be that within a genitive DP there must be at least one genitive er- or es-suffix. This condition is satisfied in (40-a,b,c) but violated in (40-d); it is further corroborated by the examples in (41):

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

(41) a.

b.

291

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (i)

Der Traum manch klug-en Schüler-s der Traum manch*(-es) (klug-en) Student-en *der Traum manch(-en) (klug-en) Student-en der Traum manch*(-er) Studentin Er bedurfte (zwei) überzeugend-er Beweis-e he needed (two) compelling-GEN proof-PL (ii) Er bedurfte zwei*(-er) Beweis-e (iii) *Er bedurfte Beweis-e

Formulating this generalization in Müller’s rule format, i.e., as a condition on the Case features on N, and referring to the er- and es-suffixes as “g-strong inflection”, we arrive at something like (42): (42) If a genitive N does not have g-strong inflection, some other agreeing element within DP has. Now this condition looks very similar to the other agreement conditions discussed in sections (1-3). By now, it is easy to see how such a condition can be reformulated in the present system. Our point of departure is of course not N but D: (43) If D itself does not bear g-strong inflection, it must have [∗G - STRONG∗] as a complement feature. Naturally, the functional head AgrD itself cannot realize this feature. Subsuming [G - STRONG] under the features in (30-b) it follows that AgrD has [∗G - STRONG∗] either as a specifier or as a complement feature. By the logic of checking it should be clear by now that the feature must be satisfied somewhere within the DP by g-strong inflection, and this is exactly what we wanted to achieve. Note in passing, however, that this kind of visibility requirement is in fact not one concerning Case marking proper; as has been observed by Fuhrhop (2003), (44) is fully grammatical although the adjective Berliner cannot be inflected: (44) der Protest (manch) Berliner Studenten the protest (of-many.a) Berlin students Rather, -er here is a derivational suffix that derives an adjective from a noun. We thus have to assume the following structure:

292

Wolfgang Sternefeld

(45)

DP D [∗G - STRONG∗]

AgrDP [G - STRONG]

(manch)

AP

AgrD

[G - STRONG]

[∗G - STRONG∗] [G - STRONG]

N

Berlin

A AgrD [G - STRONG] [∗G - STRONG∗] [G - STRONG] er

0/

NP

Studenten

Obviously, it is the derivational suffix (rather than inflection) that can satisfy the visibility condition. Thus, the latter seems to be a (phonological) requirement on the shape of suffixes, not one on particular Case markings. 5.2.

Bare Genitives

Returning now to Gallmann’s agreement rule cited in section (2), let us first reconsider the data in (46): (46) a. *der Geschmack [ DP 0/ [ NP Wein-es ]] the taste wine-GEN b. der Geschmack [ DP 0/ [ AgrDP gut-en Wein-es ]] c. die Doppelmoral [ DP manch [ NP Arbeitgeber-s ]] d. der Traum [ DP manch [ AgrDP gut-en Schüler-s ]] The agreement rule is satisfied in (46-b,d) but violated in (46-a,c). Nonetheless (46-c) is grammatical. Observe also that already (45) violates the agreement rule. It seems then that the rule has to be replaced by something much more simple and elementary, namely, the descriptive fact (47): (47) The left edge of a genitive DP cannot be an NP.

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

293

This can be implemented by saying that an empty genitive determiner cannot subcategorize a NP; rather the subcategorization of a strong adjectival inflection seems to be obligatory. Let us now look at two counterexamples to Gallmann’s agreement rule that would not be counterexamples to (47). The first involves prepositions followed by a genitive marked N: (48) a. b.

wegen Meckern-s des Platzes verwiesen because.of grumbling-GEN the-GEN field-GEN expelled ‘expelled from the field for grumbling’ trotz Todesfall-s geöffnet despite death-GEN open

We can easily account for this by assuming that the complement of the preposition in (48) is an NP rather than a DP: Since there is no D involved in these cases, there is no need to subcategorize an adjectival AgrDP here. The second is more involved. Apart from the partitive genitive in (49), which obeys the agreement condition, there is also another construction, called appositive, which shows Case agreement as exemplified in (50): (49) a.

mit [ DAT einem Glas [ GEN kühl-en Wasser-s ]] with a glass cool-GEN water-GEN b. *mit einem Glas Wassers

(50) a. b.

mit [ DAT einem Glas [ DAT kühl-em Wasser ]] with a glass cool-DAT water mit einem Glas Wasser

The construction becomes ambiguous when the higher DP is itself a genitive. The following data are taken from Gallmann (1998, 156): (51) a.

b. c.

der Genuss [ GEN ein-es Glas-es [ GEN kühl-en the consumption a-GEN glass-GEN cool-GEN Wasser-s ]] water-GEN der Genuss eines Glases Wassers der Genuss eines Glases Wasser

Now, Gallmann judges (51-c) grammatical, but (51-b) ungrammatical. This contrasts sharply with the intuitions of many speakers who get the opposite judgments. The problem for Gallmann would be that the grammaticality of

294

Wolfgang Sternefeld

(51-b), if real, contradicts his agreement rule. But as we saw above, this seems to be possible in other appositive constructions like (15) as well. Again, the obvious solution here is to give up the agreement idea and simply adopt the stipulation that an empty determiner requires an adjective. The explanation of (51-a) is again, that there is no reason to believe that there is such a D between Glases and Wassers. Rather, Wassers is a bare NP, a direct sister of N. Although empty determiners always select strong inflection on AgrD, it is not the case that this is always to be realized morphologically. We thus cannot derive that the left edge always has strong inflection, because our rules explicitly acknowledged the possibility of non-inflected adjectives. Note that this is precisely what we need in order to rule in example (45). On the other hand, Schachtl (1989) claims that adjectives like lila, which cannot be inflected, cannot occur at the left edge of a genitive DP. 7 (52) a. *die Verarbeitung the manufacturing b. die Verarbeitung the manufacturing

lila (brasilianisch-en) Holz-es purple (Brasilian-GEN) wood-GEN lilafarben-en Holz-es purple.colored-GEN wood-GEN

This still does not follow from the above. Judgments concerning (52-a) are shaky, however, and some speakers seem to tolerate the construction even without the additional adjective brasilianisch. I therefore leave it open how to account for the deviance, if any, of (52-a). 5.3.

Visible Datives

Given our checking mechanism for g-strong inflection, it is easy to see that an analogous procedure can account for the distribution of the dative e-suffix. And this time there seems to be no further problems with Gallmann’s original agreement rule; the dative is the only subcase where it really works. Assume that the e-suffix has a contextual feature, as [D - VISIBLE] that must somehow be checked. As a potential checking element, the presence of any other inflection will suffice, so that the required lexical redundancy rules are the ones in (53): 7 Note

that changing the order of the adjectives is not an option in the example, since there are independent order restrictions that keep brasilianischen adjacent to the noun, cf. Cinque (1995, 298).

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

295

(53) Assume that X has the feature [DATIVE] and a. X is the inflection of a determiner, or b. X is an AgrD with specifier features other than [∗−INFLECTION∗]. Then X can optionally acquire the feature [∗D - VISIBLE∗]. This explains the data in (2) as well as the judgment in (54): (54) *aus [ DP 0/ [ AgrDP lila 0/ [ NP Holz-e ]]] made.of purple wood-DAT Note that there is a difference between introducing [∗D - STRONG∗] and passing it on in a tree. Thus, (53) is a lexical rule that adds a feature to an already existing set of features. This being done, the feature can spread, as would be required in (55): (55) aus [ DP 0/ [ AgrDP hartem 0/ [ AgrDP lila 0/ [ NP Holz-e ]]]] made.of hard-DAT purple wood-DAT Feature introduction occurs at the first AgrDP, feature transportation at the second AgrDP. Concerning the formal status of the above agreement phenomenon, I do not assume that the dative marking is still a kind of grammatical morpheme, i.e., I do not want to claim that the phenomenon under discussion is one that involves real agreement between grammatical morphemes. Rather, I consider the e-marking as a merely phonological way of making the Case of an already Case-marked N more “visible”. Since real inflection is no more possible, the e-marking seems to depend on the existence of some other real inflection, much in the same way as the weak inflection of the genitive is only legitimate if some other more stronger marking is around. Seen from this perspective, what has to be licensed is the particular shape of a word, not a particular inflection. 5.4.

Invisible Accusatives

Returning to the data in (1), repeated below, we have already mentioned that judgments vary considerably. (56) a.

ein Orchester ohne Dirigent an orchestra without conductor

296

Wolfgang Sternefeld

b.

ein Orchester ohne jedwed-en Dirigent-en an orchestra without any-ACC conductor-ACC c. *ein Orchester ohne Dirigent-en (singular!) d. *ein Orchester ohne jedwed-en/eigen-en Dirigent

Whereas (56-b) seems to be unproblematic, some speakers judge (56-c) grammatical and (56-a) and (56-d) ungrammatical, which would conform to a dialect where Dirigent still follows the P 6 paradigm. Others share the acceptability judgments in (56), commenting that (56-c) should nonetheless be considered grammatical but ambiguous between the singular and the plural form (which applies to all suffixes in P 6 , whereas the suffixes of D and A are unambiguous), and that therefore the Caseless form (56-a) is preferred in order to avoid the ambiguity of (56-c). If this is on the right track, then distribution of morphemes is a matter of pragmatics, not of grammar. Without further empirical research it is hard to see what an accurate description of the data should build on. Observe also that (56-a,c) are peculiar yet in another respect: Nouns in P6 are animate and therefore normally require an overt determiner. But (56-a) is judged grammatical. Above, however, when dealing with (48), we already observed that prepositions allow such determinerless constructions like: (57) Er ging ohne Hut nach Hause He went without hat home Given that prepositions can have NP-complements, it is not even clear whether the nouns we are looking at are full-fledged DPs. One might speculate then that lack of Case in (56-a) could be an idiosyncrasy of this particular kind of DP-less construction. Returning to the attempt to explain the data by extra grammatical factors like ambiguity, consider (58) (the judgments are my own): (58) Nach Tübingen verschlagen hat es schon to Tübingen brought has it already a.

manch Student-en many.a student-ACC b. ??manch Student c. manch-en Student-en d. ?manch-en Student ‘Many students have ended up in Tübingen’

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs

297

Under the OT theory we should judge (58-a) ungrammatical, whereas (58-b) should be fine; according to my judgment the opposite should hold. Note also that for me manch is unambiguously singular, but other speakers also allow a plural interpretation; for these (58-a) is as ambiguous as (56-c) with respect to number; nonetheless, they strongly prefer (58-a) over the non-ambiguous (58-b). This implies either that an explanation in terms of ambiguity avoidance is on the wrong track or that some additional property of (58) is relevant.8 Looking for such additional factors, prosody seems a relevant issue. For me, (58-a) is slightly marked, so that (58) gives us a hierarchy of four degrees of acceptability. This hierarchy precisely corresponds to the deviance with respect to ideal syllabification. Trochaic forms are preferred, the worst form being the one where each of the accented syllables are adjacent. Furthermore, (58-a) is better than (58-d) because the clash in (58-a) involves only secondary stress (the main stress being on the second syllable of Student). Of course this cannot be the whole story, because otherwise we would not expect diachronic loss of inflection to be possible at all. On the other hand it would be very surprising if the conditions that govern this process interfere with syntax. If that were the case, syntax would have to recognize particular inflection classes, like the weak inflection P 6 , which would become relevant outside morphology; this, however, is nowhere else attested in the grammar of German.9 In other words, it would be highly surprising if the distribution of inflection of N is governed by the kind of principles proposed in the literature. In particular, we are not dealing with specific Case morphemes; what I am suggesting instead is that the observed phenomena somehow involve minor 8 The

conditions under which Caseless manch is acceptable need to be studied more carefully – a topic that is beyond the scope of the present paper. An attempt to collect more data from a web-based search in the COSMAS corpus failed. Although I obtained 8990 hits for uninflected manch, only 937 were combinations of manch plus N. The vast majority of these Ns are nominalized adjectives, leaving only 376 Ns without adjectival inflection. Of these, only a few are inflected, and only a handful, namely, Auguren, Passanten, Interessenten, Klassenkollegen, Herrn, and Experten, belong to P6 and could reasonably be interpreted as being nonplural. Sorting out Experte and Klassenkollege as irrelevant, and admitting some uncertainty with repect to the interpretation as non-plural, no significant number of cases like (58-a) was found; on the other hand I did not find a single instance of an uninflected form as in (58-b). 9 Note that adjectives do not have inflection class features, apart from the trivial case of adjectives that do not inflect at all. Therefore adjective inflection is syntactic, i.e., sensitive to syntactic environment. Inflection of N is not; Ds are insensitive to the inflection classes Pi .

298

Wolfgang Sternefeld

conditions on the form and shape of suffixes, not all of which are sufficiently understood at present. References Abney, Steven 1987 The English Noun Phrase in Its Sentential Aspect. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Alexiadou, Artemis & Chris Wilder 1998 Adjectival Modification and Multiple Determiners. In A. Alexiadou & C. Wilder (eds.), Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, 303-332. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Androutsopoulou, Antonia 1996 The Licensing of Adjectival Modification, Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 14, 17-31. Cinque, Guglielmo 1995 Italian Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Duden 1998 Die Grammatik; Band 4, 6. Auflage. Bibliographisches Institut, Mannheim. Fuhrhop, Nanna 2003 “Berliner Luft” und “Potsdamer Bürgermeister”. Zur Grammatik der Stadtadjektive. Linguistische Berichte 193, 91-108. Gallmann, Peter 1990 Kategoriell komplexe Wortformen. Niemeyer, Tübingen. 1996 Die Steuerung der Flexion in der DP. Linguistische Berichte 164, 283-314. 1998 Case Underspecification in Morphology, Syntax and the Lexicon. In A. Alexiadou & C. Wilder (eds.), Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, 141-175. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Lawrenz, Birgit 1993 Apposition. Begriffsbestimmung und syntaktischer Status. Narr, Tübingen. Maltzoff, Nicholas 1984 Essentials of Russian Grammar. A complete guide for students and professionals. Lincolnwood, Illinois: Passport Books. Müller, Gereon 2002 Syntaktisch determinierter Kasuswegfall in der deutschen DP. Linguistische Berichte 189, 89-114. Ortmann, Albert & Alexandra Popescu 2000 Romanian Definite Articles are not Clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grijzenhout (eds.), Clitics in Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax, 295-324. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Prince, Alan & Paul Smolensky 1993 Optimality Theory. Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Unpublished book ms., Rutgers University and University of Colorado at Boulder.

Feature Checking, Case, and Agreement in German DPs Rauh, Gisa 2003

299

Warum wir Linguisten “euch Linguisten”, aber nicht “sie Linguisten” akzeptieren können. Eine personendeiktische Erklärung’, Linguistische Berichte 196, 389-424. Schachtl, Stephanie 1989 Morphological Case and Abstract Case: Evidence from the German Genitive Construction. In C. Bhatt, E. Löbel & C. Schmidt (eds.), Syntactic Phrase Structure Phenomena in Noun Phrases and Sentences, 99-112. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Sternefeld, Wolfgang to appear Syntax. Eine merkmalbasierte Analyse des Deutschen. Band 1. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag. Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich 1998 Drei Ebenen der Struktur von Flexionsparadigmen. In R. Fabri, A. Ortmann & T. Parodi (eds.), Models of Inflection, 223-243. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German Rolf Thieroff* 1.

Introduction

In German, the distribution of the case suffixes on nouns is subject to a number of rules which are, at least in part, difficult to grasp and, from a typological perspective, rather astonishing, to say the least. Until the publication of Gallmann (1990), the idiosyncrasies of the inflection of nouns in German were only sporadically mentioned in the literature and few attempts were made to understand what the underlying rules are. A first article treating some of the existing problems is by Keseling (1968), who gives quite a number of examples like that in (1): (1) Das Wasser war mit Schaum bedeckt (*... mit Schaume ...) ‘The water was covered with foam.’ (Keseling (1968, 234)) Keseling rightly observes that in sentences like (1), although the preposition mit governs the dative, the form of the dative (Schaume) is ungrammatical and that this ungrammaticality is due to the fact that in (1) the noun Schaum (‘foam’) stands alone, without an article or an adjective. As soon as the noun is accompanied by either an article or an adjective (or a pronoun), the form of the dative is correct: (2) Das Wasser war mit dem/diesem/weißem Schaume bedeckt ‘The water was covered with the/this/white foam.’ Similar observations are made in the grammars of Brinkmann (1971, 14) and Admoni (1982, 126) and in two more recent grammars of German, Duden (1998, 252) and Eisenberg (1999, 158). However, in none of these works is a * The present article is a revised and enlarged version of Thieroff (2002). For a more detailed analysis of nominal inflection in German see Thieroff (2000). I am grateful to Lutz Gunkel for valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 301-320 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

302

Rolf Thieroff

comprehensive description of all the factors determining the case marking of the noun in the German noun phrase to be found. A first attempt to describe all these factors was made by Gallmann (1990), followed by further work of the same author with several refinements (Gallmann (1996; 1997; 1998)). With respect to the use and non-use of case suffixes on the noun in German, Gallmann formulates the following generalization: Suffix Corollary (German): Nominal word-forms are underspecified with respect to Case (and therefore necessarily have no Case suffixes) unless they are preceded by an adjectivally inflected word-form with Case suffix within its DP. (Gallmann (1998,151)) While this rule is accurate for constructions like that in (1), it does not hold for all the phenomena which can be observed in the German noun phrase. 2.

The Data

In modern German, no more than four nominal case suffixes have survived. These are the dative singular (dat sg) -e of the strong declension (nonfeminine nouns), the oblique singular (obl sg) -(e)n of the weak declension (masculine nouns), the genitive singular (gen sg) -(e)s of the strong declension (non-feminine nouns and proper names of all genders) and the dative plural (dat pl) -n occurring in declension classes of all genders. Strikingly, all four suffixes behave differently in the noun phrase. In (3) an overview is given of the behaviour of the case suffixes in the German NP (A = article/pronoun/adjective, X = case suffix; examples partly from Gallmann (1998)). (3) Case suffixes in the German noun phrase

dat sg -e +A +X aus diesem Holze / aus hartem Holze ‘of this wood /of strong wood’ +A –X aus diesem Holz / aus hartem Holz –A +X *aus Holze ‘of wood’ –A –X aus Holz obl sg -(e)n +A +X von diesem Planeten / von E.T.s rotem Planeten ‘from this planet / from E.T.’s red planet’ +A –X ?von diesem Planet / ?von E.T.s rotem Planet

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

303

–A +X ??von E.T.s Planetensg / ??von E.T.s lila Planetensg ‘from E.T.’s planet / from E.T.’s violet planet’ –A –X von E.T.s Planet / von E.T.s lila Planet gen sg -(e)s (i) common noun +A +X die Verarbeitung dieses Holzes / die Verarbeitung tropischen Holzes ‘the treatment of this wood / the treatment of tropical wood’ +A –X *die Verarbeitung dieses Holz / *die Verarbeitung tropischen Holz –A +X *die Verarbeitung Holzes ‘the treatment of wood’ –A –X *die Verarbeitung Holz (ii) common noun in prepositional phrase +A +X wegen des Saftes ‘because of the juice’ +A –X *wegen des Saft –A +X *wegen Saftes ‘because of juice’ (exception: wegen Regens ‘because of rain’) –A –X wegen Saft (iii) proper name(-s) +A +X *das Buch des lieben Peters ‘the book of the dear Peter’ +A –X das Buch des lieben Peter –A +X Peters Buch ‘Peter’s book’ –A –X *Peter Buch dat pl -n +A +X Eis mit frischen Früchten ‘ice cream with fresh fruits’ +A –X *Eis mit frischen Früchte –A +X Eis mit Früchten ‘ice cream with fruits’ –A –X *Eis mit Früchte

In (4) an overview of the possible, questionable, and ungrammatical constellations is given. As can be seen, each single case suffix behaves differently. (4) Distribution of case suffixes

dat sg -e obl sg -(e)n gen sg -(e)s common noun common noun in PP proper name dat pl -n

+A RT /P RON /A DJ –A RT /P RON /A DJ +suffix –suffix +suffix –suffix OK OK * OK OK ? ?? OK OK * * * OK * *a OK * OK OK * OK * OK * a exceptions with infolge, mittels, trotz, wegen

304

Rolf Thieroff

Gallmann’s suffix corollary predicts that all combinations in the first and last row in (4) are grammatical, whereas all combinations in the second and third row are ungrammatical. In fact, however, there are ungrammatical combinations in the first and last row as well as grammatical combinations in the second and third row of (4). The fact that not all case suffixes follow Gallmann’s predictions is also observed by Müller (2002). From the observation that the obl-sg -en and the dat-sg -e must be omitted when there is no article, pronoun, or adjective, whereas the dat-pl -n (and the gen-sg -s) must not be omitted in the same context, Müller (2002, 100) concludes that there are two different types of case suffixes, the primary case suffixes -n (dat pl) and -(e)s (gen sg) and the secondary case suffixes -e (dat sg) and -(e)n (obl sg). 1 But even this differentiation does not suffice to explain every single detail in (4). Müller delivers convincing arguments for the behaviour of the dat-sg -e (2002, 103f.) and of the gen-sg markers in attributes both of common nouns (2002, 105ff.) and of proper names (2002, 108ff.), but, like Gallmann, he considers phrases like ?ohne eigenen Dirigent (‘without [one’s] own conductor’) with the obl-sg -en missing and ?ohne Dirigenten (‘without conductor’) with obl-sg -en to be completely ungrammatical, no less than *in unseren Wälder (2002, 102). However, while the latter expression is ungrammatical indeed, the grammatical status of the former phrases is far less clear. And while it is true that a genitive attribute is ungrammatical without a suffix, the grammaticality of suffixless common nouns after prepositions governing the genitive is not mentioned by Müller. 3.

The Morphological Cases of German

With both Gallmann and Müller I agree that the distribution of the case suffixes can best be explained by assuming paradigms containing forms underspecified for case. So before trying to explain why the four case suffixes behave as they do, it is necessary to know which cases can be morphologically marked on the noun in German. Assuming that only those noun forms have morphological case which have a case suffix, we arrive at the five paradigms in (5). 1 Instead of the oblique, Müller has a dat-sg -(e)n, an acc-sg -(e)n and a gen-sg -(e)n. The last-named he counts among the primary endings, the dat-sg -(e)n and the acc-sg -(e)n among the secondary endings.

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

305

(5) Underspecified paradigms 1. F EM, unmarked (Frau ‘woman’, Oma ‘grandma’) sg pl sg pl Frau – -en Oma – -s 2. F EM, marked (Hand ‘hand’, Mutter ‘mother’) sg pl sg pl Hand – ¨-e undersp Mutter – ¨– undersp ¨-e-n dat ¨-n dat 3. N-F EM, mixed, s-plural, without plural suffix (Staat ‘state’, Opa ‘grandpa’, Laden ‘store’) sg pl sg pl sg pl undersp Staat – -en Opa – -s Laden – ¨– gen -es -s -s 4. N-F EM, strong (Hund ‘dog’, Wolf ‘wolf’) sg pl sg pl undersp Hund – -e undersp undersp Wolf – ¨-e undersp gen -es -e-n dat gen -es ¨-e-n dat 5. M ASC, weak (Affe ‘ape’, Mensch ‘human being’) sg pl undersp Affe – -n obl -n

This results in five patterns with the three features “morphologically marked gen sg”, “morphologically marked dat pl” and “morphologically marked obl sg”, represented in (6).2 (6) Features of the five paradigmatic patterns F EM F EM N-F EM N-F EM M ASC unmarked marked mixed, s strong weak gen sg – – + + – dat pl – + – + – obl sg – – – – + From (5) and (6) it follows that a noun can have no morphological case at all (unmarked feminines); it can have morphological case only in the plural, which is necessarily the dative (marked feminines); it can have morphological case only in the singular, there being two possibilities, either genitive (strong non-feminines) or oblique (weak masculines); and it can have maximally one case in the singular and one case in the plural, in which case the singular case 2 Note

that the presence of gen sg and the presence of obl sg logically exclude each other.

306

Rolf Thieroff

is the genitive and the plural case is the dative (strong non-feminines). Finally, each case is opposed to another form which is underspecified for case. As for the description of the morphology and the syntax of the nominal phrase, it is necessary to determine the cases found in nominal groups consisting of a determiner (article, pronoun or adjective) and a noun. Altogether, there are eleven different nominal groups, represented in (7). (7) Definite article + noun (Mann (‘man’), Frau (‘woman’), Kind (‘child’)) N-Fem Fem Pl Masc Neut Nom der Mann Dir das Kind die Frau die Männ-er/Kind-er/Frau-en Acc den Mann Dat dem Mann/Kind der Frau den Männ-er-n/Kind-er-n/Frau-en Gen des Mann-es/Kind-es der Frau der Männ-er/Kind-er/Frau-en The eleven nominal groups in (7) are the maximum of what can be formally differentiated in the German noun phrase. The fact that the nominative and the accusative are, with the sole exception of the masculine gender, never differentiated justifies the assumption that we are dealing in German with a case I call “direct” (dir). In contrast, the dative and the genitive are formally well differentiated. Since there is only one instance where the dative and the genitive have the same form, this formal identity must be interpreted as an example of (incidental) homonymy. 3 This means that the primary genders are N-Fem (non-feminine) and Fem (feminine) in the singular and in the plural, and the primary cases are dir, dat, and gen. In addition, there is a secondary differentiation of the genders Masc (masculine) and Neut (neuter) within the non-feminine gender, and there are the secondary cases nominative and accusative, restricted to the masculine gender. If we now compare the paradigms in (5) with the picture in (7), we see that noun phrases containing a determiner (article, pronoun, or adjective) always have morphological case, whereas bare noun phrases, i.e., noun phrases consisting of a noun only, do not necessarily have morphological case. 3 A table similar to (7) can already be found in Vater (1979, 35). In contrast to (7), however, Vater treats the dative and genitive feminine as belonging to one “syncretism field”. This same view is also taken by Wiese (1996, 325) with regard to the paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun dieser (‘this’). For further reasons for assuming two homonymous forms, see Thieroff (2000, 339f.).

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

307

Having presented the data and reconstructed the morphological case marking system in German, we are now able to address the question of why the phrases in (3) seemingly behave so chaotically. Both Gallmann and, more exhaustively, Müller have developed very fine grained rules which in almost all cases are able to predict when a nominal case suffix appears and when it is dropped. In the present paper I am not going to add anything to these excellent rules. Instead, it is my aim to find an answer to the question of what the reason for all these intricate rules might be. In other words, is there something which can explain why a natural language might bother to have such unusual rules? There are, recall, no more than four different nominal case suffixes, and for each single suffix different rules apply. Is there an explanation behind the explanations delivered by Gallmann and Müller? 4. 4.1.

Predominance of Feminine Morphology – Some Examples Functional Verb Constructions

German possesses a number of “functional verb constructions” (Funktionsverbgefüge) which consist of a preposition, a verb nominalization, and certain “functional verbs” such as bringen (‘bring’), kommen (‘come’), stehen (‘stand’) and others. In these constructions, either the verb nominalization can be used without any article, or the definite article can be amalgamated with the preposition. In more than 90% of the functional verb constructions the preposition is either in (‘in’) or zu (‘to’). The ability to amalgamate is restricted to a limited number of prepositions, and these prepositions cannot be amalgamated with every gender or case form of the article. The only preposition which can be amalgamated with the feminine article is zu (‘to’), which governs the dative. This yields the forms zur (< zu der) (‘to the’, fem) and zum (< zu dem) (‘to the’, masc/neut). The preposition in (‘in’), which governs the accusative and the dative, cannot be amalgamated with the feminine article. With the masculine article, an amalgamation with the dative is possible (im < in dem (‘in the’, [masc])), but not with the accusative (in den (‘into the’ [masc])). And finally, in can be amalgamated with both the accusative and the dative of the neuter article, yielding ins (< in das) (‘into the’, neut acc) and im (< in dem) (‘in the’, neut dat). In an examination of the amalgamations and uses without the article in German functional verb constructions with zu and in, Eisenberg (1999, 303f.)

308

Rolf Thieroff

obtains the following results: Of 160 constructions with zu, 142 are used with the amalgamation, irrespective of the gender of the noun. However, almost all constructions with in and a masculine noun are used without the amalgamation, although in the dative the amalgamation would be possible, as is shown in (8). (8) Amalgamations of preposition and article in functional verb constructions a. zu: amalgamation possible with F EM – amalgamation in all genders: zur VernunftFem kommen ↔ zum AbschlussMasc kommen ↔ ‘get reasonable’ ‘get finished’ zum HaltenNeut kommen ‘come to a stop’ b. in: no amalgamation possible with F EM – in general no amalgamation with M ASC: in BeziehungFem stehen → in KontaktMasc stehen ‘be in relation (with)’ ‘be in contact (with)’ (rarely: im Kontakt) It seems that here the (existing) forms of the masculine gender are not used because in the feminine gender the corresponding forms do not exist. In other words, the (poorer) morphology of the feminine gender obviously determines the use (and non-use!) of masculine forms. Although in the masculine gender more differentiated forms are available, they cannot be used because there are no corresponding forms in the feminine gender. This seems to be a general principle which can be observed in other cases as well. 4 4.2.

Measure Constructions

Another case where the influence of female morphology on the syntax is well attested are measure constructions. In earlier stages of German, the measured item was an attribute in the genitive (genitivus partitivus) to the noun expressing the measuring unit. However, in Middle High German the feminine 4 Lutz Gunkel (p.c.) has drawn my attention to the fact that with most functional verbs in governs the accusative. Since there is no amalgamation of in with the definite article in the masc acc, the absence of the amalgamation in the accusative might have an additional impact on the use of masculines in the dative without amalgamation.

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

309

nouns (and also nouns in the plural) lost their specific genitive case suffixes. The resulting forms, morphologically no longer differentiated from the nominative, were reinterpreted as non-genitive forms, and the noun signifying the measured item was reanalyzed as an apposition to the measuring unit (Paul (1919, 294f.); Eisenberg (1985; 1999, 253ff.)). This process is represented in (9). (9) Measure constructions with partitive genitive and apposition a. Original Analysis: Genitive in all genders ein Löffel [Suppe]Fem,gen ; drei Pfund [Äpfel] pl,gen ↔ ‘a spoonful of soup’; ‘three pounds of apples’ eine Flasche [Weins]Masc,gen /[Biers]Neut,gen ‘a bottle of wine/beer’ b. Reanalysis: Underspecified form in all genders ein Löffel [Suppe]undersp ; drei Pfund [Äpfel]undersp → eine Flasche [Wein/Bier]undersp *eine Flasche [Weins/Biers]gen Again, although the masculine (and neuter) nouns still possess a distinct genitive form, the partitive construction is no longer grammatical in modern German – here the morphology of the feminine noun has caused a syntactically new construction. 4.3.

Prepositions Governing the Genitive and the Dative

German prepositions can govern either 1) the accusative and the dative or 2) the dative or 3) the genitive.5 With regard to the prepositions governing either the dative or the genitive, there is considerable insecurity among speakers of German as to which case is to be used – many prepositions originally governing the dative are used with the genitive, and, conversely, quite a few prepositions originally used with the genitive are nowadays also used with the dative. In section 3 we saw that the dative and the genitive of feminine noun phrases are always homonymous. (10) wegenGen der/dieser/großer Unruhe ‘because of the/this/great unrest’ 5 In

addition, three or four prepositions of foreign origin govern the accusative.

310

Rolf Thieroff

In prepositional phrases like the ones in (10) there is no way to determine whether the noun phrase is in the dative or in the genitive; i.e., a preposition governing the genitive can, as soon as it is followed by a feminine noun phrase, not be identified as governing the genitive as opposed to the dative. 6 As a consequence, in such instances the case of the NP can be perceived as being indifferent with respect to the distinction between genitive and dative, or it can even be interpreted or reanalyzed as a dative. Such a reanalysis of feminine NPs then leads to the dative in non-feminine NPs. Once there is confusion with respect to the case of non-feminine NPs, the opposite development is possible as well, i.e., the development from the dative to the genitive, which is likewise supported by the homonymy of the feminine NP. Schematically, this process can be pinned down as in (11). (11) Change of case with prepositions governing the dative or the genitive a. Original analysis: Identical case in feminine and non-feminine NP wegen [der Unruhe]gen ↔ wegen [des Aufstands]gen trotz [der Unruhe]dat

b.

↔ trotz [dem Aufstand]dat

Reanalysis:

Case in NP(Fem) Case in NP(N-Fem) two possibilities ambiguous not clear for NP(N-Fem) wegen [der Unruhe]gen/dat → wegen [A RT Aufstand]gen/dat → wegen [des Aufstands]gen → wegen [dem Aufstand]dat trotz [der Unruhe]dat/gen → trotz [A RT Aufstand]dat/gen → trotz [dem Aufstand]dat → trotz [des Aufstands]gen

So the dative in the PP wegen dem Aufstand is possible because in the PP wegen der Unruhe the NP der Unruhe can be (mis)understood as a dative. Once again, the morphology of the feminine NP is responsible for changes in the NP in general, again despite the fact that the distinction of dative and genitive could very well be maintained in the non-feminine noun phrase. 5.

How Feminine Morphology Determines the Noun Phrase

If the morphology of feminine items can have such an important impact on the syntax as is illustrated in section 4, the question must be asked whether there are further influences of feminine morphology on the syntax of the noun phrase in general. And indeed, a fresh look at the morphology of feminine 6 This

has also been observed by Möcker (1980, 441).

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

311

nouns and noun phrases can explain most, if not all, strange idiosyncrasies displayed in (3). 5.1.

Accusative and Dative Singular

A noun phrase in the singular with a feminine noun as its nucleus can be casespecific only if it contains, in addition to the noun, a pronominally inflected word, i.e., an article, a pronoun, or an adjective, as is shown in (12). (12) NP(Fem) with attributive adjective a. N OM: [ NP Frische Milch]dir ist gesund ‘Fresh milk is good for the health.’ b. ACC: Ich trinkeAcc gerne [ NP frische Milch]dir ‘I like to drink fresh milk.’ c. DAT: MitDat [ NP frischer Milch]dat geht alles besser ‘With fresh milk everything works better.’ d. G EN: WegenGen [ NP frischer Milch]gen gehe ich meilenweit ‘For fresh milk I’ll walk miles.’ Noun phrases with a non-feminine noun in the singular do not differ with regard to their case specificity from NPs with a feminine noun, with the sole exception that masculine (but not neuter) noun phrases in nominative and accusative positions have the morphological cases nom and acc, respectively, where feminine and neuter NPs have the morphological case dir. Accordingly, the structures in (13) and in (14) do not differ in any relevant way from the structures in (12). (13) NP(N-Fem) with attributive adjective a. N OM: [ NP Frischer Saft]nom ist gesund ‘Fresh juice is good for the health.’ b. ACC: Ich trinkeAcc gerne [ NP frischen Saft]acc ‘I like to drink fresh juice.’ c. DAT: MitDat [ NP frischem Saft(e)]dat geht alles besser ‘With fresh juice everything works better.’ d. G EN: WegenGen [ NP frischen Saftes]gen gehe ich meilenweit ‘For fresh juice I’ll walk miles.’

312

Rolf Thieroff

(14) NP(Masc) with attributive adjective a. N OM: [ NP Der Dirigent]nom und [ NP der Organist]nom sind da ‘The conductor and the organist are there.’ b. ACC: Das Orchester spielt ohneAcc [ NP den Dirigenten]acc ‘The orchestra is playing without the conductor.’ c. DAT: Das Orchester spielt mitDat [ NP dem Dirigenten]dat ‘The orchestra is playing with the conductor.’ d. G EN: Das Orchester versagt wegenGen [ NP des Dirigenten]gen ‘The orchestra fails because of the conductor.’ If, in contrast to (12), a feminine noun constitutes a noun phrase on its own, i.e., if there is no article, pronoun, or adjective in the (feminine) noun phrase, then the entire phrase can only be underspecified for case, since the feminine noun does not possess any case marking in the singular. At the same time, this is the reason why bare NPs with a non-feminine noun cannot have a specific case, even if the morphology provides a case suffix. This is illustrated in (15). (15) NP(Fem) and NP(N-Fem) without pronominally inflected word a. N OM F EM [NP Milch]undersp ist gesund N-F EM = [NP Saft]undersp ist gesund b. ACC F EM Ich trinkeAcc gerne [NP Milch]undersp N-F EM = Ich trinkeAcc gerne [NP Saft]undersp c. DAT F EM MitDat [NP Milch]undersp geht alles besser N-F EM = MitDat [NP Saft]undersp geht alles besser 6= *MitDat [NP Safte]dat geht alles besser d. G EN F EM WegenGen [NP Milch]undersp gehe ich meilenweit N-F EM = WegenGen [NP Saft]undersp gehe ich meilenweit 6= *WegenGen [NP Saftes]gen gehe ich meilenweit In (15) it can be seen that with the non-feminine (in the examples, masculine) items all those constructions are grammatical which have the underspecified form of the noun. This is so because in the case of the feminine NPs only underspecified forms are possible. The case-specific forms for the dative (Safte) and for the genitive (Saftes) are ungrammatical because there is a class of nouns (the feminines) which have no case-specific forms and therefore do not admit (bare) case-specific noun phrases. In other words, Safte for the dative is ungrammatical, because it would imply a case-specific NP. Such a case-specific NP, however, cannot exist, because the corresponding NP with a feminine noun (Mit Milch geht alles besser) is underspecified for case.

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

313

If underspecified forms are admitted and case-specific forms are forbidden in noun phrases consisting of a bare noun, what about the forms of the oblique? With respect to case specificity, these forms are between the underspecified and the specific case forms. The specific forms can by definition occur only in the position of one (abstract) case: A morphological dative is possible only where the grammar allows a dative; a morphological genitive, only where a genitive is allowed; etc. The underspecified forms can (as long as there is no case-specific form blocking them) occur everywhere, i.e., in nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive positions, as we have just seen in (15). The forms of the oblique, however, like the case-specific forms (and in contrast to the underspecified forms) cannot occur everywhere (they never appear in the nominative singular), but, like the underspecified forms (and in contrast to the case-specific forms), they can occur in different case positions; they can occur where an accusative, a dative or a genitive is required. The oblique forms could in this respect also be called “unspecific”. In any case they are less specific than the dative or the genitive forms, but they are more specific than the underspecified forms. This intermediate status of the oblique forms between the completely underspecified and the fully specified forms is exactly mirrored in their behaviour in the bare NP. As expected, the underspecified forms are in each case fully grammatical. However, the acceptability of the oblique forms is questionable; i.e., it lies between the grammaticality of the underspecified and the obvious ungrammaticality of the fully specified forms. This is illustrated in (16). (16) NP(Masc) without pronominally inflected word a. N OM F EM [NP Milch]undersp ist gesund M ASC = [Dirigent]undersp und [Organist]undersp sind da N-F EM = [NP Saft]undersp ist gesund b. ACC F EM Ich trinkeAcc gerne [NP Milch]undersp M ASC = Das Orchester spielt ohneAcc [Dirigent]undersp N-F EM = Ich trinkeAcc gerne [NP Saft]undersp M ASC ≈ ?Das Orchester spielt ohneAcc [Dirigenten]obl,sg c. DAT F EM MitDat [NP Milch]undersp geht alles besser M ASC = Das Orchester spielt mitDat [Dirigent]undersp N-F EM = MitDat [NP Saft]undersp geht alles besser M ASC ≈ ?Das Orchester spielt mitDat [NP Dirigenten]obl,sg N-F EM 6= *MitDat [NP Safte]dat geht alles besser

314

Rolf Thieroff

d. G EN F EM WegenGen [NP Milch]undersp gehe ich meilenweit M ASC = Das Orchester versagt wegenGen [NP Dirigent]undersp und [NP Organist]undersp N-F EM = WegenGen [NP Saft]undersp gehe ich meilenweit M ASC ≈ ?Das Orchester versagt wegenGen [NP Dirigenten]obl,sg und [NP Organisten]obl,sg 6= *WegenGen [NP Saftes]gen gehe ich meilenweit The observations made so far clearly show that the distribution of the forms of non-feminine noun phrases is determined by the forms of feminine noun phrases. More precisely, if an NP whose nucleus is a feminine noun is casespecific (has morphological case), a corresponding non-feminine NP is casespecific too. If an NP whose nucleus is underspecified for case (has no morphological case, i.e., is a bare NP), a corresponding non-feminine NP is underspecified for case too. We now have found a reason why noun phrases consisting of a bare noun cannot have morphological case. With the predominance of the morphology of the feminine noun, further peculiarities of the morphology of the noun in noun phrases can be explained. 5.2.

Genitive Singular

In addition to the “suffix corollary” cited in section 1, Gallmann formulates the following “Genitive Condition”: Genitive Condition: A Genitive phrase must have at least one head with a word-form positively specified for Genitive. (Gallmann (1998,152)) This rule does not seem to hold for all genitive phrases. In prepositional phrases governing the genitive, the “genitive phrase” may well be unmarked for case, as we have seen in (15). The relevant part is repeated here as (17). (17)

G EN F EM WegenGen [NP Milch]undersp gehe ich meilenweit N-F EM WegenGen [NP Saft]undersp gehe ich meilenweit

Occasionally, genitive objects also appear in the form of a bare noun underspecified for case as in (18) and in (19). (18) Die 1,2 Millionen Bewohner erfreuten Gen sich Wachstumsratenundersp

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

315

von durchschnittlich 4 bis 5 Prozent 7 ‘The 1.2 million inhabitants enjoyed growth rates of an average of four to five percent.’ (19) In großen Hauptstellen von Geldinstituten bedarf Gen es außerdem [viel Platz]undersp für Technik [...] und [...] [einer Kundenhalle] gen 8 ‘In big main branches of financial institutions, in addition much space is needed for machinery and a customer service hall.’ For attributes, however, Gallmann’s Genitive Condition does hold almost without exception;9 i.e., a genitive attribute must be clearly marked for genitive. Again, such a marker is not available with bare feminine noun phrases, as in (20), and in addition it is not possible in the plural, as in (21). In nonfeminine bare noun phrases, the noun could very well be marked for genitive, and it is no problem for a speaker of German to understand what a phrase like the one in (22) would mean. Yet (22) is ungrammatical. According to Gallmann’s suffix corollary, it is ungrammatical because there is no “adjectivally inflected” word form in the phrase. While this observation is correct, the question remains open why an “adjectivally inflected” word form should be needed. The answer is, once again, that (22) is ruled out because in the corresponding feminine noun phrase the genitive cannot be marked. (20) F EM: *die Förderung Kohleundersp ‘the mining of coal’ (21) P L: *die Gefahr Aufständeundersp ‘the danger of revolts’ (22) N-F EM: *der Geschmack Weinsgen ‘the taste of wine’ Again, we can see here how the grammar of the feminine noun phrase determines the grammar of the non-feminine noun phrase. An NP with a specific structure is permitted only if this NP can have a feminine noun as its nucleus. Or to put it differently, only what is possible in a feminine NP is possible in an NP in general. 7 Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, 09/02/1998, p. 16. of the bank Sparkasse Neuwied on the occasion of its 150th anniversary, 1998. 9 For an exception see below.

8 Brochure

316

Rolf Thieroff

The following data even suggest that, if a feminine NP is grammatical, a corresponding non-feminine NP is “made” grammatical, even if more specific rules would forbid certain constructions. Consider the following examples: (23) dieses Stück [ NP nächtlich funkelndergen Sternenweltundersp ]gen ‘this piece of nocturnally sparkling firmament’ (24) der Segen [ NP echtergen Demokratieundersp ]gen ‘the blessing of real democracy’ In (23) and (24) the feminine noun phrases modified by an adjective are grammatical due to the genitive marker of the adjective. 10 However, in (25) and (26), quoted by Leirbukt (1983, 104), the corresponding non-feminine noun phrases have no distinct genitive form: (25) dieses Stück [ NP nächtlich funkelndenacc/gen Impressionismusundersp ]acc/gen ‘this piece of nocturnally sparkling impressionism’ (26) der Segen [ NP echtenacc/gen Sozialismusundersp ]acc/gen ‘the blessing of real socialism’ The nouns Impressionismus and Sozialismus are among the few masculine nouns which (due to the fact that they end in -s) do not mark the genitive; i.e., they have no morphological case in the singular, very much like the feminine nouns. The suffix -en of the adjective can be both the marker of the accusative and of the genitive. Consequently, the NPs nächtlich funkelnden Impressionismus and echten Sozialismus can be either accusative or genitive; thus, these noun phrases are not “positively specified for Genitive” (see Gallmann’s Genitive Condition). Nonetheless, (25) and (26) are grammatical. The fact that (25) and (26) are grammatical although the Genitive Condition is violated is again due to the grammaticality of (23) and (24). Since this construction is possible with feminine NPs, it is also made possible with non-feminine NPs. 5.3.

Dative Plural

The distribution of the dative plural suffix -n, which is radically different from that of the other three case suffixes, also follows from the priority of the 10 Recall that the feminine suffix -er is a genitive suffix despite its homonymy with the dative

suffix; see (7) in section 3.

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

317

feminine noun morphology. There is exactly one position where nouns with feminine gender can have morphological case, and that is precisely the dative plural of the marked feminine class (see (5) in section 3). This means that there is one context where a noun phrase consisting of a bare feminine noun can be case specific. And since feminine bare NPs are capable of marking the dative plural, morphological marking on the noun is obligatory in the dative plural wherever it is possible. Consequently: (27)

DatPl F EM mit [NP Früchten]dat N-F EM = mit [NP Büchern]dat

(28)

DatPl F EM *mit [NP Früchte]undersp N-F EM = *mit [NP Bücher]undersp

Overall, then, a noun phrase containing a feminine noun as its nucleus normally can have morphological case only if this NP includes a pronominally inflected word (*die Förderung Kohle → die Förderung der Kohle). Because this is so with feminine nouns, it also holds for non-feminine nouns (*die Förderung Öls → die Förderung des Öls). But since there are feminine nouns which can mark the dative plural (and only the dative plural!) without a pronominally inflected word, all noun phrases in the dative plural have to be marked for case provided the (only existing) suffix -n is morphonologically possible. This also means that a distinction has to be made between the case marking of the NP on the one hand and the case marking of the noun on the other hand. It is the case marking of the NP which is determined by the casemarking ability of the feminine NP. The fact that there are cases where a noun can have case marking only if the NP contains a pronominally inflected word thus follows only secondarily from the rule that the morphosyntax of the non-feminine NP is determined by the morphosyntax of the feminine NP. 6.

Reasons for the Dominance of the Feminine NP

A last question remains to be answered. What is the reason that the feminine nouns give the orders; why do non-feminine nouns (or rather, noun phrases) have to follow the syntactic and even the morphological vagaries of feminine noun phrases? The reason for this strength of the feminine nouns is their weakness. What

318

Rolf Thieroff

is the weakness of the feminine nouns? The weakness of the feminine noun phrases is the fact that in general (with the exception of the dative plural of the marked feminine nouns mentioned in section 5.3) they cannot mark case on the noun. So since, for example, genitive attributes always have to be specified as genitive, bare feminine noun phrases cannot appear as genitive attributes (*die Lieferung Kohle is ungrammatical). In contrast, the NP *die Lieferung Öls could be easily understood. However, the acceptability of such an NP would mean that German nouns would belong to two different groups whose members would have quite different syntactic capacities insofar as the nouns of one group could appear as bare attributes whereas the nouns of the other group could not. If a syntactic difference between F EM and N-F EM with regard to the ability to be used as a bare genitive attribute were maintained, while planning a phrase with such an attribute speakers would be forced to bear in mind whether the noun they intended to use were permitted for the construction (N-F EM) or not (F EM) – alternatives due only to arbitrary morphological features of the noun in question. A distinction between grammatical die Lieferung Öls and ungrammatical *die Lieferung Kohle would be completely dysfunctional. Obviously, it is more reasonable for the principles of constructing noun phrases to be the same irrespective of the gender of the noun used. If the principles for the construction of noun phrases do not vary from gender to gender, then it is logical for these principles to be determined by that gender which is morphologically the least differentiated and therefore is subject to the maximum of syntactic restrictions in constructing NPs. It is clear that in cases like the ones discussed, the blocking of a (morphologically possible) construction (*die Lieferung Öls) is much more straightforward than the alternative, which would consist of inventing a new genitive suffix for the feminine noun in the NP die Lieferung Kohle. Of course, the elimination of a morpheme is in general considerably easier than the introduction of new grammatical morphemes. So if syntactic differences between the feminine and non-feminine noun phrases are to be prevented, then the adoption of the restrictions on the feminine NP by the non-feminine NP is the simplest way. Yet, this does not mean that the opposite process, i.e., the adoption of nonfeminine morphology by feminine nouns, is excluded. This has happened with feminine proper names, which have overtaken the genitive marker -s from the masculine nouns.

Feminine vs. Non-Feminine Noun Phrases in German

319

References Admoni, Wladimir 1982 Der deutsche Sprachbau. 4th edition, revised and extended. München: Beck. Brinkmann, Hennig 1971 Die deutsche Sprache. Gestalt und Leistung. 2nd edition, revised and extended. Düsseldorf: Schwann. Duden 1998 Grammatik der deutschen Gegenwartssprache. 6th edition, revised. Edited by the Dudenredaktion. Mannheim etc.: Dudenverlag. Eisenberg, Peter 1985 Maß und Zahl. Zur syntaktischen Deutung einer ungefestigten Konstruktion im Deutschen. In T. Ballmer & R. Posner (eds.), Nach-Chomskysche Linguistik. Neuere Arbeiten von Berliner Linguisten, 311-320. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. 1999 Grundriß der deutschen Grammatik. Vol. 2: Der Satz. Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler. Gallmann, Peter 1990 Kategoriell komplexe Wortformen. Das Zusammenwirken von Morphologie und Syntax bei der Flexion von Nomen und Adjektiv. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1996 Die Steuerung der Flexion in der DP. Linguistische Berichte 164, 283-314. 1997 Zur Morphosyntax der Eigennamen im Deutschen. In E. Löbel & G. Rauh (eds.), Lexikalische Kategorien und Merkmale, 73-86. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1998 Case Underspecification in Morphology, Syntax and the Lexicon. In A. Alexiadou & Ch. Wilder (eds.), Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase, 141-175. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Keseling, Gisbert 1968 “Irregularitäten” in der deutschen Substantivflexion. Zeitschrift für Mundartforschung 35, 233-243. Leirbukt, Oddleif 1983 Über einen Genitiv des besonderen Typus. Muttersprache 93, 104-119. Möcker, Hermann 1980 “Fahren Sie schon Rad, oder fahren Sie noch rad?”. Österreich in Geschichte und Literatur 24, 416-445. Müller, Gereon 2002 Syntaktisch determinierter Kasuswegfall in der deutschen NP. Linguistische Berichte 189, 89-114. Paul, Hermann 1919 Deutsche Grammatik. Vol III, part IV: Syntax (first half). Tübingen: Niemeyer. [Reprint 1968] Thieroff, Rolf 2000 Morphosyntax nominaler Einheiten im Deutschen. Unpublished habilitation thesis, University of Bonn. 2002 Die Kasus-Markierung in der deutschen Nominalphrase. In P. Wiesinger (ed.), Akten des X. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses Wien 2000. Zeitenwende

320

Rolf Thieroff – Die Germanistik auf dem Weg vom 20. ins 21. Jahrhundert. Vol. 2: Entwicklungstendenzen der deutschen Gegenwartssprache – Lexikologie und Lexikographie, 125-131. Bern: Peter Lang. (Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik. Series A: Kongreßberichte. No. 54)

Vater, Heinz 1979

Das System der Artikelformen im gegenwärtigen Deutsch. 2nd edition. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Wiese, Bernd 1996 Iconicity and Syncretism. On Pronominal Inflection in Modern German. In R. Sackmann (ed.), Theoretical Linguistics and Grammatical Description. Papers in Honour of Hans-Heinrich Lieb, 323-344. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Categories and Paradigms. On Underspecification in Russian Declension Bernd Wiese* 1.

Introduction

In morphological systems of the agglutinative type we sometimes encounter a nearly perfect one-to-one relation between form and function. Turkish inflectional morphology is, of course, the standard textbook example. Things seem to be quite different in systems of the flexive type. Declension in Contemporary Standard Russian (henceforth Russian, for short) may be cited as a typical example: We find, among other things, cumulative markers, “synonymous” endings (e.g., dative singular noun forms in -i, -e, or -u), and “homonymous” endings (e.g., -i, genitive, dative, and prepositional singular). True, some endings are more of an agglutinative nature, being bound to a specific case-number combination and applying across declensions, e.g., -am (dative plural, all nouns); and some cross the boundaries of word classes, e.g., -o, which serves as the nominative/accusative singular ending of neuter forms of pronouns (and adjectives) and as the nominative/accusative singular ending of (most) neuter nouns as well. Still, many observers have been struck by the impression that what we face here are rather uneconomic or even, so to speak, unnatural structures. But perhaps flexive systems are not as complicated as they seem. What seems to be uneconomic complexity may be, at least partially, an artifact of uneconomic descriptions. 1 * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Workshop on Inflectional Paradigms, held at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS), Mannheim, May 23-24, 2003. I should like to thank the participants of the workshop and the editors of this volume for helpful comments, Gereon Müller in particular, whose analysis of Russian noun declension (Müller (this volume)) has been highly stimulating. Special thanks to Matthew Baerman for making available Baerman (2003). The study presented here is part of an inquiry collateral to the IDS project Grammatik des Deutschen im europäischen Vergleich (principal investigator Gisela Zifonun). 1 See Lyons (1968, 290-293) and Plank (1991) for contrastive presentations of Turkish and Latin; cf. Matthews (1991, 179) on Russian and Plank (1999) on flexion-agglutination splits in various languages, including Russian.

Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 321-372 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

322

Bernd Wiese

Taking traditional paradigmatic tables as a point of departure we note that, in Russian, the number of paradigmatic cells is rather large compared to the number of morphological markers, especially endings, which serve to distinguish the forms that fill the cells.2 Paradigms serve to list the various forms and to relate forms to “bundles of categories” so as to provide for “categorizations”. But unfortunately, tradition has little to offer when we ask for the factors, if any, that control the distribution of markers over forms or cells in paradigms. In the present essay, I argue that distribution is not random but reflects a structured roster of declensional endings that will be detailed below. As a result, a tangled web of many-to-many form-function relations reduces to a rather well organized common structure that underlies declensional paradigms and is formed by a set of about twenty ending-categorization pairs (more precisely, pairs of types of endings and sets of categories). Systematic syncretisms are resolved and endings are given characterizations that account for their functional unity as well as for their diversity of application. Regarding the inventory of Russian declensional endings and their morphophonological analyses, I shall take my lead from Jakobson (1958). Considerations of markedness and iconicity will be integrated; however, I shall not adopt Jakobson’s feature-based analysis of Russian cases (first developed in Jakobson (1936)). In fact, the present approach is not feature-based but classificatory, couched in a “declarative” surface-morphological approach, and as such relates to Trubetzkoy (1934). Often, Russian is assumed to show two basic types of declensions: adjectival and nominal. In reference grammars, pronouns tend to come last and are said to show a “mixed” declension. However, pronouns definitely occupy a central position in declensional systems. Starting with pronouns proves to be profitable as we aim at a more coherent view of Russian declension. Section 2 presents an analysis of Russian pronominal declension based on a conception of underspecified paradigms that will be outlined as discussion proceeds.3 The paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun ÈTOT (‘this’) serves 2 Assuming

(at least) six cases, two numbers, three genders, three declensions of nouns, plus paradigms for adjectives and pronouns, even disregarding animacy we get somewhere between 100 and 200 paradigmatic cells, depending on different choices of detail in presentation. The number of endings is a small fraction of this value. 3 Cf. Wiese (1991/1999); for some background discussion, see Wiese (1996). Compare also the conceptions of (underspecified) paradigms put forward in Williams (1981; 1994) and Blevins (1995; 2003). For relevant treatments of syncretism with special reference to Russian, see Comrie (1986; 1991) and Corbett & Fraser (1993). For a balanced overview of feature-

Categories and Paradigms

323

for exemplification; with minor emendations, the analysis to be proposed applies also to adjectives. In section 3, the conception developed is extended to nouns; special properties of noun declension are taken care of by a limited set of additions to a core system instantiated most transparently by pronouns. 4 Section 4 adds a short discussion of types of syncretisms, focusing on the Russian genitive-accusative. Section 5 offers some concluding remarks. 2. 2.1.

Pronouns and Adjectives Preliminaries: Terms and Notions

The following analysis will be framed in a traditional word-and-paradigm approach, which will be modified, however, so as to integrate the notion of underspecification and the principle of specificity (“P a¯ n.ini’s rule”).5 Generally speaking, paradigms must provide categorizations for word forms, meaning that they serve to specify morphosyntactic properties of forms by locating these forms in a complex system of classifications. As for Russian declension, relevant classifications include case and number, which are classifications of word forms, and gender, which is a classification of lexemes (for nouns) and a classification of word forms (for pronouns and adjectives). 6 For example, the Russian pronominal form ètomu is a dative singular masculine or neuter form of the lexeme ÈTOT, which is a demonstrative pronoun. Categories may be regarded as sets as illustrated in (1) using dative forms – both singular and plural – of two pronouns and one adjective (viz., ÈTOT (‘this’), TOT (‘that’), NOVIJ (‘new’)); very informally, dat is the set of dative forms. based treatments of case, see Blake (1994) and for an innovative analysis of Russian noun declension, Müller (this volume). For an overview of a “geometric” approach to paradigms and syncretism, including application to Russian, see Johnston (1997), based on McCreight & Chvany (1991). 4 The following analysis is restricted to the major nominal, pronominal, and adjectival paradigms of the standard language as given in reference grammars (cf. note 6, infra). Not included are treatments of word stress and stem alternations, particularities of numerals and proper names as well as minor subregularities and irregular paradigms. 5 Also called the “Elsewhere-principle” (Kiparsky (1973)), here applied to paradigms; cf. Andrews (1982; 1990). Cf. also Wunderlich (1996) and references in note 3. 6 Useful surveys of Russian morphology include Isaˇcenko (1962), Garde (1980), and Mulisch (1988); cf. also Unbegaun (1957), Wade (1992), Timberlake (2004), and other reference grammars, as well as Cubberley (2002). For noun declension in particular, see Trager (1953), Stankiewicz (1968), Kortlandt (1974), and Halle (1994).

324

Bernd Wiese

(1) dat = {ètomu, ètoj, ètim, tomu, toj, tem, novomu, novoj, novim, ...} Actually, case classification (in Russian) may be taken to constitute not a single classification but a (hierarchical) system of classifications, which must provide at least six cases (classes of word-forms), dative being one of them. In a preliminary manner, subject to revision below, this system may be presented by means of a classification tree as in (2); abbreviations used are nom (nominative), acc (accusative), pre (prepositional), dat (dative), gen (genitive), and ins (instrumental). case

(2) non-obl nom

obl acc

pre

dat

gen

ins

A first case classification provides a division of the set of case forms into two major categories: non-oblique (or direct) and oblique. 7 Both of these categories are subcategorized as shown in (2). The end-points or terminal categories of the system are the traditional case categories. 8 As categories are taken to be sets, subordinate categories are subsets of superordinate categories; e.g., dative is a subset of oblique (dat ⊂ obl), while oblique is the union of prepositional, dative, genitive, and instrumental (obl = pre ∪ dat ∪ gen ∪ ins). Cases that are subsets of oblique and non-oblique will be referred to as oblique cases and non-oblique cases, respectively; e.g., dative is an oblique case. 7 The primary division into non-oblique (direct) vs. oblique is taken from Trubetzkoy (1934). This division is orthogonal to Jakobson’s feature system of 1936, but has been added up to (though not integrated into) that system in Jakobson (1958), undoubtedly because of its immense descriptive value. It has been kept in subsequent studies, including Stankiewicz (1968, 22, passim), which provides a detailed analysis of Russian noun declension, and Schenker (1964), on Polish; it has been widely adopted in different frameworks (e.g., in Greenberg (1966), Bierwisch (1967)). (Terminology differs, of course; Blake (1994) adopts core cases vs. peripheral cases.) This use of the term “oblique” must not be confused with the more traditional one that contrasts nominative and oblique. 8 Traditional linguistics applies the term “category” to entities like case – in terms of the present approach, (systems of) classifications – and to entities like nominative – in terms of the present approach, sets of forms or lexemes. In the following, “category” will be used in the second sense only.

Categories and Paradigms

325

Given the hierarchical systems in (2) and in (3), below, we may avail ourselves of non-terminal categories such as oblique as means for grammatical categorization. It is this use made of non-terminal categories that crucially distinguishes the present approach from those of traditional grammar. As will be seen, a major impact of making available superordinate (non-terminal) categories is to allow a natural treatment of syncretisms. For instance, a form like ètoj (of ÈTOT ), which serves in the prepositional, the instrumental, the genitive, and the dative, may best be categorized as a plain oblique form (i.e., ètoj ∈ obl). Classification trees for gender and number are given in (3); abbreviations to be used below are masc (masculine), fem (feminine), neut (neuter), sg (singular), pl (plural). (3)

(i) non-pl

number

gender

(ii) pl

non-fem non-neut

fem neut

There is a first gender classification non-fem vs. fem; non-fem splits into neut and non-neut (which is but an alternative name for masc; i.e., non-neut = masc).9 The category names used in (2) and (3) are chosen so as to reflect relations of markedness, but alternative names such as direct (for non-oblique) or masc may be used freely for convenience. There is only one number classification (without subclassifications); non-pl = sg, of course. Given these classification systems, word forms may be assigned to bundles of categories; e.g., the form ètoju (of ÈTOT) is related to the categories instrumental, singular, and feminine. Such a bundle of categories – that is, a set of categories – will be called a categorization, as indicated in (4ii). (4)

(i) a word form: (ii) a categorization: (iii) a grammatical word:

ètoju {ins, sg, fem} hètoju, {ins, sg, fem}i

Combining a form and its categorization, we get a “grammatical word”, where the word form is contained in every category in the categorization; applied to the example at hand, ètoju ∈ ∩{ins, sg, fem}. Paradigms can, then, 9 Trubetzkoy (1934), cf. also Jakobson (1960); for (dissenting) discussion, Stankiewicz (1968, 19).

326

Bernd Wiese

be regarded as sets of grammatical words. For example, the grammatical word given in (4iii) is assumed to be an element of the paradigm of ÈTOT; more formally, hètoju, {ins, sg, fem}i ∈ ÈTOT P (with superscript “P” for “paradigm”).10 As will be shown, some progress towards a better understanding of formfunction relations may be made if non-terminal categories (e.g., obl or nonfem) are allowed in paradigmatic categorizations. The plain oblique form ètoj referred to above provides an example given its categorization as {obl, sg, fem}. Paradigms that contain grammatical words whose categorizations include non-terminal categories will be called underspecified paradigms. A further classification of Russian pronominal and adjectival forms, traditionally known as subgender, pertains to animacy (animation) and provides two categories: animate and inanimate (anim and inanim, for short). In addition, a corresponding syntactic classification of noun lexemes has to be assumed even if the semantic foundation of this classification is still transparent to a large degree.11 Categories provided by the classification systems discussed so far are termed functional categories – as opposed to form categories, which are determined in terms of formal (morphological, expression-related) properties (cf. 2.5).12 2.2.

Gender Syncretisms

Table 1 presents the forms of the most frequent Russian demonstrative pronoun ÈTOT (‘this’). The arrangement of the table is fairly traditional, but some moves have been made to throw into relief the structure of gender syncretisms.13 Names of superordinate categories have been inserted into the headers of 10 This conception of paradigms is taken from Lieb (1980); for Lieb’s explication of the traditional notion of paradigm, see further Lieb (1980; 1992; 2003). Cf. also Zwicky (1990), Stump (2001; 2002), and Blevins (2003). Non-simple word forms may be allowed as forms of paradigms (Williams (1994, 23)). 11 For discussion, see Corbett (1980). 12 On functional categories and form categories, see Comrie (1991), Lieb (2003, sec. 2); cf. also Wiese (1996). 13 Cf. Halle (1994, 44). The order of cases follows Chvany (1982). As usual, word-forms are given in transliterated standard orthography throughout; names of lexemes or paradigms are written in small capitals. However, morphophonemic transcription will be used in representations of endings below.

Categories and Paradigms

Table 1: Forms of pronoun

327

ÈTOT

non-fem

non- nom oblique acc (direct) sg gen oblique pre dat ins non- nom oblique acc (direct) pl gen oblique pre dat ins

non-neut fem neut (masc) ètot èto èta ètot èto ètu anim → gen ètogo ètoj ètom ètoj ètomu ètoj ètim ètoj/ètoju èti èti anim → gen ètix ètix ètim ètimi

columns and rows. Reference to superordinate categories helps to identify domains of syncretism: There is no gender distinction in the plural, oblique cases of the singular show the superordinate gender distinction only (i.e., fem vs. non-fem), and it is only non-oblique cases of the singular that add the neuter vs. non-neuter distinction. Inspection of Table 1 supports the assumption that there is a major dividing line within the case system between nonoblique cases (nominative and accusative) on the one hand and the remaining cases on the other hand. The notation “anim → gen” refers to a rule familiar in Russian reference grammars, which has it that – under defined conditions – genitive forms are substituted for accusative forms in the presence of the category animate. These alternative accusative forms are known as “genitive-accusatives”; discussion will be deferred to section 2.8. Maximal gender differentiation only in the non-oblique singular; fewer distinctions in the oblique singular; no gender distinction in the plural, that is, in the marked number – such patterns are familiar from related languages and certainly not random; our analyses of paradigms should take into account

328

Bernd Wiese

such systematic asymmetries in paradigms, and this can be done by allowing recourse to superordinate categories. 2.3.

Case Syncretisms

Turning to case syncretisms, we note that feminine oblique forms of ÈTOT coincide, with the possible exception of the instrumental. The instrumental can be distinguished by a special form of its own (ètoju), but this form counts as literary or obsolete, and whenever it is not used, the plain oblique form (ètoj) takes over. This is an instance of a kind of opposition well known from discussions of markedness. The unmarked form – more precisely, the less marked form (ètoj) – may stand in for the more marked or more “specific” form (ètoju) if the latter is not available or is avoided for some reason. In the present approach this distribution is accounted for by categorizing ètoj as a plain oblique form – an oblique form without any more specific case categorization – in contrast to the case-specific form ètoju, which is categorized as an instrumental form. As a limiting case of decreasing specificity, a form may be completely unspecific with respect to one or more classifications, say, with respect to case. If so, it will not be assigned a category of the type in question. Generalizing this approach, we get the underspecified paradigm ÈTOT UP identified (as a set) in (5). The superscript “UP” stands for “underspecified paradigm”; “genitive-accusative” forms are not included: 14 (5)

ÈTOT UP

= {hètot, {}i, hèto, {non-obl, sg, neut}i, hèta, {nom, sg, fem}i, hètu, {acc, sg, fem}i, hètom, {obl, sg, non-fem}i, hètim, {ins, sg, non-fem}i, hètomu, {dat, sg, non-fem}i, hètogo, {gen, sg, non-fem}i, hètoj, {obl, sg, fem}i, hètoju, {ins, sg, fem}i, hèti, {pl}i, hètix, {obl, pl}i, hètimi, {ins, pl}i, hètim, {dat, pl}i}

14 The form hètoju, {ins, sg, fem}i is included for completeness (cf. Wade (1992, 134/154)) but will, of course, be missing from most registers; similarly for forms in -oju in other paradigms to be discussed below. Nothing of consequence hinges on this decision. On special instrumental singular feminine forms of personal pronouns, see Garde (1980, 254, § 394) and Isaˇcenko (1962, 480).

Categories and Paradigms

329

An equivalent graphic representation is given in Table 2, which will be preferred for practical purposes. 15 Table 2: Underspecified paradigm ÈTOT UP case

number gender

form

number gender form

— non-obl nom acc

— sg sg sg

— neut fem fem

ètot èto èta ètu

pl

—

èti

obl ins dat gen obl ins

sg sg sg sg sg sg

non-fem non-fem non-fem non-fem fem fem

ètom ètim ètomu ètogo ètoj ètoju

pl pl pl

— — —

ètix ètimi ètim

What is, traditionally speaking, the nominative singular masculine form is categorized as unmarked for case, number, and gender and hence is assigned the empty categorization ({}). In paradigmatic tables (such as Table 2) the long dash (—) indicates absence of a pertinent category from the categorization; e.g., the categorizations of plural forms listed in Table 2 do not include gender categories, as seen in (5). Of course, some of the decisions taken in positing this paradigm can find their full justification only within the system of Russian declension taken as a whole. For instance, ètom is categorized as a plain oblique form (of the nonfem sg); it could have been assigned the case category pre (prepositional). This is not done because (i) in other paradigms the ending -om is found in other cases as well; (ii) it turns out that in the complete system of declension the prepositional never exhibits forms that are exclusively its own – the prepositional is always covered by comparatively unspecific forms, hence the category prepositional never occurs in categorizations – and (iii) the corre15 In

Table 2, read from left to right, for instance, in the row headed by “dat”: The dative singular non-feminine form of ÈTOT is ètomu. The case column applies to singular and plural forms. Hence, from the same row, the dative plural form (which is not specified for gender) of ÈTOT is ètim.

330

Bernd Wiese

spondence between case categorizations of singular and plural forms would be broken.16 If syncretisms are ignored, we get a fully specified paradigm, which in the case of ÈTOT has 36 cells, by cross-classification of all forms for case, number, and gender in terms of terminal categories. 17 On the other hand, if we allow (i) the absence of categories of a given “dimension” and (ii) nonterminal categories in categorizations, the number of positions is reduced to ten in the singular and five in the plural. Moreover, the look of the system changes: Most forms do have a unique functional characterization (that is, they are related to one and only one categorization). One pair of homonyms is left; the non-feminine instrumental singular form and the dative plural form share their ending (-im). 2.4.

Compatibility and Specificity

Paradigms must indicate how forms are made up that satisfy a given categorization: Given some categorization as “input”, the paradigm should supply the fitting form as “output”. We have to make sure that underspecified paradigms as conceived here will still do their job. That this is so may be seen by considering the following examples; no formal treatment is needed for the purposes of the present essay. First, assume we seek an instrumental singular feminine form of ÈTOT as indicated in (6): (6)

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

form sought: found in paradigm: condition of fit (equality): target identified:

{ins, sg, fem} of ÈTOT hètoju, {ins, sg, fem}i {ins, sg, fem} = {ins, sg, fem} ètoju

As it happens, the underspecified paradigm 16 Note

ÈTOT UP

does contain a form –

also that the form ètot, which is assigned the empty categorization, is an irregular one, as it exhibits a “formative suffix” -ot (Kortlandt (1974, 64)), or a “Stammerweiterung” (‘stem extension’; Mulisch (1988, 260)), which is restricted to the non-oblique singular masculine. While the categorization of ètot may seem debatable, its make-up conforms to the generalization that declensional forms which are assigned the empty categorization do not have endings; it is another matter that forms without endings may require non-empty categorizations (cf. sec. 3.6, infra, on the genitive plural of nouns). 17 I.e., ÈTOT P = {hètot, {nom, sg, masc}i, ... , hètom, {pre, sg, masc}i, ... , hètix, {gen, pl, fem}i}. The number of cells of the fully specified paradigm is further increased if “secondary” cases (cf. sec. 3.3, infra) and animacy are taken into account.

Categories and Paradigms

331

given in (6ii) – that has exactly this specification, as confirmed in (6iii). So this is the fitting form, identified as output in (6iv). Of course, searches in a fully specified paradigm would work this way for every form. Hence, equality of categorizations searched for and found would be the proper condition of fit to be satisfied in identifying the correct target form if we were concerned with fully specified paradigms only. Second, assume we are looking for the dative singular feminine form of ÈTOT, as in (7i). There is no such form in ÈTOT UP , whereas the fitting target form is characterized as a plain oblique form, brought to light in (7ii). (7)

(i) form sought: {dat, sg, fem} of ÈTOT (ii) found in paradigm: hètoj, {obl, sg, fem}i (iii) condition of fit (compatibility): ∩{dat, sg, fem} ⊆ ∩{obl, sg, fem} (iv) target identified: ètoj

Consequently, we have to relax the condition of fit: Compatibility instead of equality must do. This is to say, a form that has a less specific categorization may stand in when a more specific one is wanting; hence, the categorization found should be equally or less specific than the categorization starting the search. In an approach that construes categories as sets, specificity can be captured in terms of a subset relation between intersections of categorizations as indicated in (7iii). Assume that is less specific than has been defined (for categorizations, i.e., sets of categories) such that the following holds: (8) For any non-empty categorizations C 1 and C2 , C2 is less specific than C1 iff ∩C1 ⊂ ∩C2 (i.e., if and only if the intersection of C 1 is a proper subset of the intersection of C2 ). Then, since dat ⊂ obl (by (2)), it holds that ∩{dat, sg, fem} ⊂ ∩{obl, sg, fem}, which means that the categorization found ({obl, sg, fem}) is less specific than the categorization searched for, namely, {dat, sg, fem}. Further, it is assumed that two categorizations are equally specific if and only if their intersections are equal and that the empty categorization is less specific than any non-empty categorization.18 Third, given some categorization to be searched for, there may be more than one compatible form in an underspecified paradigm, as illustrated in (9). 18 This special case may be assimilated to the general intersection-subset-based case of specificity. Given a suitable version of set theory, we may derive that, for any categorization C, ∩C ⊆ ∩{} (cf. Suppes (1972, 41), theorem (1)).

332 (9)

Bernd Wiese

(i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi)

form sought: found in paradigm: found in paradigm: found in paradigm: priority (by specificity): target identified:

{ins, sg, fem} of ÈTOT hètot, {}i hètoj, {obl, sg, fem}i hètoju, {ins, sg, fem}i ∩{ins, sg, fem} ⊂ ∩{obl, sg, fem} ètoju

Looking for the instrumental singular feminine form of ÈTOT, we find three compatible forms in ÈTOT UP . First, ètot (9ii) is assigned the empty categorization. In addition, there are two forms with non-empty categorizations, (9iii) and (9iv), which differ in terms of specificity; cf. (9v). In this situation, forms with less specific categorizations have to be ruled out; the most specific one is given priority. This is effected by the principle of specificity, namely: Among a number of compatible categorizations, the most specific one (if any) is the target categorization.19 Thus we identify ètoju as the correct target form in ÈTOTUP , as shown in (9vi). (Of course, in registers that do not allow for the form ètoju the target identified would be ètoj.) 2.5.

Form Categories

Paradigms as conceived above are relations between word forms and categorizations. As compared to fully specified paradigms, underspecified paradigms help to make transparent how form and function are interrelated in inflection, as illustrated by ÈTOT UP . However, since we are interested in form-function correspondences not in a single paradigm but in the declensional system as a whole, the next step is to abstract away from the particularities of the example. Hence, we turn to an inspection of relations between form categories (not forms) and categorizations. A form category (as opposed to a functional category) is a category of forms that share certain formal, namely, expression-related, properties. Rus19 Generally,

existence of a such a form cannot be taken for granted. Given a categorization to be searched for, there may be two (or more) forms in an underspecified paradigm that exhibit compatible categorizations which are not ordered in terms of specificity. In such circumstances, identification of target forms would have to rely on additional criteria such as relative position in a hierarchy of categories; cf. Kiparsky (1972), Lumsden (1992), among others, and, for a recent discussion, Bobaljik (2002). Additional possibilities for target identification arise when supplementary theorems on relations between categories are taken into account; cf. sec. 2.9, infra, on genitive-accusative equations.

Categories and Paradigms

333

sian declensional word forms such as èta of ÈTOT divide into stem and ending (et-a).20 Forms that share certain endings may be collected into form categories. For example, a form category -a may be posited, which is identified as the set of forms that share the same ending with èta, i.e., -a = {èta, ta, nova, ...}; names of such categories start with a hyphen. Using form categories, we may abstract away from differences between related endings in order to bring out what is common to related declensions. In Russian pronominal declension, two subtypes may be distinguished depending on the initial vowel (namely, i or e) of some of their endings; as a case in point, depending on their endings, dative plural forms of pronouns may fall into either of two form categories, -im or -em. However, choosing to disregard differences between the ending-initial vowels, we may assume a category -V*m defined to cover forms that share endings consisting of one of the vowels i or e, followed by m.21 Thus, form categories are allowed that are defined by reference to certain types of endings in addition to those defined by reference to particular endings. All form categories referred to below are defined by reference to endings or types of endings, but of course, there are other formal properties of word forms (e.g., properties relating to stem formation) that would have to be taken into account in a more complete treatment of Russian declension (and thus in a more complete system of form categories). As these are beyond the scope of the present analysis, we may speak informally of, say, “the ending -a” or, even more loosely, “the ending -V*m” when we refer to some form category (such as -a or -V*m). Generalizing the paradigm represented in Table 2, we arrive at the paradigm scheme represented in Table 3, which represents a relation between form categories (endings or ending types) and categorizations. 22 For convenience, reference numbers – prefixed “S” or “P” for “singular” or “plural” – 20 Endings

and their morphophonemic analyses are assumed as in Jakobson (1958); for a possible minor deviation, cf. note 50, infra. For listings and discussion of noun endings in particular, see Stankiewicz (1968) and Corbett (1982). 21 Hence, both -im and -em are subsets of -V*m. Very informally, a category like -V*m is “more abstract” than -em since determination of the latter involves a comparatively “more specific” set of properties. However, use of superordinate form categories does not involve in any way the introduction of “abstract” or “deep” entities (say, an “abstract vowel” V*). 22 In a paradigm, forms (say, ètomu) are related to categorizations (sets of functional categories); in paradigm schemes, it is form categories (e.g., -Vmu) that are related to categorizations. Cf. Lieb (2003) for a developed approach to relations between form categories and functional categories (see op. cit., sec. 4.6, in particular, on the notion of system link).

334

Bernd Wiese

have been added that refer to the categorizations indicated; “0” refers to the empty categorization. This is only for ease of discussion; reference numbers are not part of paradigms or paradigm schemes, of course. As paradigms and paradigm schemes are sets, their elements are unordered; no extrinsic ordering is assumed. Expressions such as “the S6-ending” will be used to refer to the ending related to the categorization so numbered. 23 Table 3: Pronominal declension: general endings case

number gender ending #

— non-obl nom acc

— sg sg sg

obl ins dat gen obl ins

sg sg sg sg sg sg

— neut fem fem

-V -a -u

number gender ending #

0 S1 S2 S3

pl

—

non-fem -Vm S4 non-fem -V*m S5 non-fem -Vmu S6 non-fem -Vvo S7 fem -Vj S8 fem -Vju S9

pl pl pl

— — —

-V*

P1

-V*x P3 -V*m0 i P4 -V*m P5

Ending-initial vowels: o in V-endings, i or e in V*-endings The two subtypes of pronominal declension mentioned differ in the initial vowels (namely, i or e) of plural endings and of the non-feminine instrumental singular ending. In Table 3, I have abstracted away from this subtype differentiation by positing the form categories -V*, -V*m, -V*x, and -V*m 0 i, subsuming forms that show i or e as their ending-initial vowels. The remaining oblique forms of the singular have o as their initial vowel, which is also found in the S1-ending. This vowel may be regarded as the “default vowel” in Russian declensional endings; names of pertinent categories (e.g., -Vm) are formed using the symbol “V” unmodified. (For the endings in question I shall use the term V-endings; and similarly, V*-endings). 24 23 “P2”

is left for use with noun endings (cf. sec. 3.6). Halle (1994) on theme vowels in Russian; o also serves as a linking vowel in compounds (Unbegaun (1957, 90)). According to Garde (1980, 251, § 388) it is the type of stemfinal consonant (obstruent vs. sonorant) which conditions the choice of the initial vowel of the V*-endings. As a minor complication, neglected in the text for simplicity of presentation, note 24 Cf.

Categories and Paradigms

335

All of the endings (or ending types) listed and related to categorizations in Table 3 appear with more than one of the three word classes of declinables – pronoun, adjective, and noun – and will be referred to, therefore, as general endings (in contradistinction to endings that are specific to only one of these word classes).25 2.6.

Correspondences of Form and Function

Morphological marking of inflectional categories has often been noticed to be patently iconic, and underspecification helps to throw into relief the constructional “diagrammaticity” of the make-up of inflectional word forms in Russian declension in particular. As may be read off Table 3, complexity of formal marking (here, complexity of endings) corresponds to complexity of function (here, complexity of categorization); as a limiting case, absence of formal marking (absence of ending) corresponds to lack of functional specification, hence relates to the empty categorization. Even more generally, similarity of form (similarity of endings) corresponds to similarity of function (similarity of categorization).26 A detailed analysis of form-function iconicity is not among the goals of the present discussion. May it suffice to note that iconicity is observable when oblique cases exhibit long ending, i.e., endings involving at least one vowel and one consonant, while the remaining forms exhibit short endings, i.e., endings made up of a single vowel, or no ending at all. Among oblique forms, it is the singular plain oblique forms where least-marked (two-phoneme) endings are found (-Vm, non-fem, and -Vj, fem). More specific oblique singular non-feminine forms exhibit three types of complex markers that involve vowel change (in the instrumental, V to V*, also employed for plural marking) or formation of extra long (three-phoneme) forms where the additional final vowel is the default ending vowel (in the genitive, -ovo) or is the ending vowel u (in the dative, -omu). All of these non-fem endings are related by including labial consonants. that the ending-initial vowel in V-endings may be e (instead of o) in the oblique cases of the fem forms of pronouns (namely, if the vowel is preceded by a soft consonant, op. cit. p. 251, § 388; cf. also Unbegaun (1957, 132/134)). 25 For endings specific to adjectives and to nouns, see sec. 2.7 and sec. 3, infra, respectively. For a pronoun-only ending see note 27, infra. 26 On iconicity in Russian inflection, see Jakobson (1958) and references given in note 56, infra; in a more general vein, Jakobson (1965). Cf. also Matthews (1991, 234).

336

Bernd Wiese

On the other hand, the feminine employs only the third technique mentioned, addition of u (-oj vs. -oju), exhibiting as it does a drastically reduced differentiation of oblique cases – plain vs. (optionally) instrumental – being the marked member of the superordinate gender classification. 27 Conspicuously, feminine endings do not include labial consonants. 2.7.

Adjectival Endings

The standard declension of adjectives differs from that of pronouns by showing long forms – forms that exhibit long endings – in non-oblique cases. As compared to pronominal forms, in these adjectival forms the stem is followed by an extra vowel+yod, followed in its turn by what would be the expected vowel, if any, in the case of a pronoun ending. Where endings from the general inventory (as given in Table 3) are long anyway (viz., in oblique cases), such extension does not apply; hence, in the oblique cases, formation of adjective forms conforms to the general pattern. The vowel of the extension element is the same as the vowel of the corresponding general ending, if any; otherwise, the default ending vowel o is used. 28 Special long endings of adjectives are listed in Table 4.29 Case-number-gender categorizations are the same as for short counterparts (as indicated by the reference numbers). Depending on subclass, adjectives possess both short and long variants of 27 Actually, a feminine counterpart of the non-feminine genitive singular endings -ovo does exist, viz., -ojo (Kortlandt (1974, 66)) or -ejo (Garde (1980, 254)), to be categorized as {gen, sg, fem} (which, not being a general ending, is not included in Table 3). This ending does not occur in regular paradigms but is found with the genitive(-accusative) form of the third person personal pronoun ON where it competes with the general ending. The remaining endings of the forms of ON are from the standard inventory; for details, see Garde op. cit., pp. 253f., § 394, on e in V-endings, cf. note 24, supra, and see also op. cit. pp. 273f., §§ 431, 433, on -ojo used with fem-forms of VES 0 and SAM. For forms of non-gendered personal pronouns, see sec. 3.8, infra. 28 If unaccented, the long 0-ending appears as -ij instead of -oj; see Unbegaun (1957, 97), on “recent” vs. “traditional pronunciation”, and cf. Garde (1980, 208, § 309), Cubberley (2002, 131). 29 Endings are given in morphophonemic transcription, again following Jakobson (1958); cf. also Halle & Matushansky (2003, Table 1). The degree of correspondence between short and long forms that can be claimed varies between different (morphophonological, and indeed phonetic) analyses. The long P1-ending is more usually rendered as -ije (e.g., in Garde (1980, 208), § 308). Note, however, that the pronunciation of the final vowel of this ending is “normally [ ]” (Timberlake (2004, 51)); cf. op. cit. pp. 48-51 for a discussion of the pronunciation of vowels in inflectional endings. 

Categories and Paradigms

337

Table 4: Adjectival declension: general and long endings (non-oblique cases) short general endings long adjectival endings # -v -vj(v) -o

-oj -ojo

0 S1

-a -u

-aja -uju

S2 S3

-i

-iji

P1

Construction of long adjectival endings: -vjv, where v is as in standard endings (if present, otherwise -ój∼ij). non-oblique singular endings, only long variants, or only short variants. 30 The make-up of special adjectival endings is transparent. They are but lengthened versions of their general counterparts (as found with pronouns). In oblique cases, general endings apply throughout. Thus, the differentiation of general endings and special adjectival endings is made only in non-oblique cases, hence in what is the less-marked domain in terms of case marking. Not unexpectedly, the more marked domain lacks a subdivision that is present in the less marked domain. The non-oblique/oblique distinction shows up again as reflecting a basic division in Russian paradigms. 2.8.

Differential Object Marking

Singular vs. plural and non-oblique vs. oblique have been identified as major divisions splitting up Russian paradigms into four quarters or subparadigms; accordingly, in Table 3 case endings have been collected into four boxes. The subparadigms so specified provide the domains of syncretism of case treated above in terms of underspecification. Syncretism of the two core cases, namely – characterized in terms of their primary functions – nominative as the subject case and accusative as 30 See

Wade (1992, 153-192) and other reference grammars for conditions of use and classification of adjectives, in particular Unbegaun (1957, 100-102) on possessive and relative adjectives that do not employ the lengthened forms but follow the general pattern. The standard adjective declension also includes various groups of words that are usually classified as pronouns; for a short survey, see Cubberley (2002, 131f.). Adjectival declension is also found with participles.

338

Bernd Wiese

the (direct) object case, is a cross-linguistically widespread phenomenon and is widespread in Russian declension. However, it is an equally widespread phenomenon that, in spite of general syncretism, some, but not all, objects do require morphological marking depending on factors that include, most prominently, definiteness and animacy. Given definiteness and animacy as scalar dimensions, nominals that are high on the definiteness scale and/or high on the animacy scale are “unexpected” as objects, being typical subjects, and tend to call for overt marking when figuring as objects, while otherwise objects may be left without explicit distinction. This is referred to as differential object marking (DOM).31 Often, and perhaps typically, DOM appears as syncretism between marked object forms (accusative forms) and forms of some oblique case: In declensional systems (or subsystems thereof) that lack special accusative forms, functional demands may force, as it were, oblique case forms into the service of (direct) object marking. As for case marking in Russian, the animacy scale reduces to a dichotomy between animate and inanimate; similarly, the definiteness scale provides the basis for opposing personal pronouns, which are at the top of this scale, to the remainder of nominals. This means that the domain of application for DOM in Russian is restricted to the categories animate and personal pronoun. Morphologically, the oblique case forms that serve for DOM in Russian are forms that appear in the genitive otherwise – whence the name genitive-accusative. These are either special genitive forms (e.g., the non-feminine genitive singular form ètogo of ÈTOT) or plain oblique forms where such forms cover the genitive (e.g., the plain oblique plural form ètix of ÈTOT). Personal pronouns show genitive-accusatives throughout, irrespective of animacy; thus, genitive forms of the personal pronoun of the third person ON (ego, non-feminine singular; eë, feminine singular; ix, plural) are also used as accusatives in referring to inanimates. Outside the category of personal pronouns, there is another factor that partly controls DOM in Russian in addition to animacy and definiteness – namely, gender. As may be gathered from Table 1, in pronominal declension, DOM does not apply in the marked genders feminine and neuter. Of 31 Bossong

(1998, with references); cf. also Thomson (1909/1912), Lyons (1968, sec. 7.4.3f.), Comrie (1978; 1981, sec. 6.2.2), and Aissen (2003, with further references). Following Aissen, op. cit., p. 437, the animacy scale and the definiteness scale may be set up as in (i) and (ii), respectively: (i) Human > Animate > Inanimate, (ii) Personal pronoun > Proper name > Definite NP > Indefinite specific NP > Non-specific NP. Comrie (1978, 39) uses the term “scale of referent identifiability”.

Categories and Paradigms

339

course, this restriction is operative in the singular only, since there is no differentiation of gender forms in the plural in Russian; agreeing items such as pronouns and adjectives never exhibit gender distinctions in the plural. 32 From a functional point of view, not much is lost due to the lack of DOM in the feminine and neuter singular, for opposite reasons. In the feminine, there is non-differential object marking; i.e., pronouns like ÈTOT (and adjectives as well) possess special accusative feminine forms that apply regardless of animacy (cf. S3 in Table 3). Because in such (sub)paradigms the accusative singular feminine has a form of its own even for inanimates, no DOM is called for: Non-differential object marking “blocks” differential object marking. Neuters on the other hand are – with rare exceptions – inanimate and would not call for DOM either. Thus, it is only natural that DOM does not apply either in the feminine singular or in the neuter singular. 33 At the same time, gender-related restriction of DOM may be regarded as a manifestation of Brøndal’s “principe de compensation”, which disfavors clustering of categorial markers, a standard example being the (partial or total) suppression of gender differentiation in the plural: Where number and gender marking collide, marked number may oust gender marking. Similarly, in the singular, which does exhibit gender differentiation, marked genders (feminine and neuter) do not countenance differentiation into animate and inanimate forms; gender thus proves to be dominant over subgender. 34 2.9.

Genitive-Accusative Equations

It remains to make sure that searching for animate accusative forms in underspecified paradigms such as ÈTOT UP , as given in (5) or, equivalently, in Table 2, returns the correct targets.35 On the basis of the preceding discussion the equations in (10) and (11) may be established. 32 For the exceptional paradigms of OBA (‘both’) and DVA (‘two’), see Garde (1980, 235, § 364). It is another matter that there are gender-specific differences in the formation of plural noun forms, cf. sec. 3.6. 33 Cf. Comrie (1978). On declension class as a factor that restricts applicability of DOM (with nouns), see sec. 2.9. 34 Cf. Brøndal (1940). The term “dominant” is Hjelmslev’s (see Hjelmslev (1956) for extensive discussion of animacy and case syncretism in Russian and other Slavonic languages). 35 Cf. Blevins (this volume). I take it that genitive-accusative syncretism should not be treated as a case of neutralization to be handled by underspecification; cf. sec. 4 for arguments to this effect.

340

Bernd Wiese

(10) For personal pronouns: acc = gen (11) For other declinable non-nouns: (i) ∩{acc, sg, masc, anim} = ∩{gen, sg, masc, anim} (ii) ∩{acc, pl, anim} = ∩{gen, pl, anim} The equation in (10) says that the set of accusative forms of personal pronouns equals the set of genitive forms of personal pronouns. The equations in (11) say that, for other pronouns and adjectives, (i) the set of accusative singular masculine animate forms equals the set of genitive singular animate masculine forms, and (ii) the set of accusative plural animate forms equals the set of genitive plural animate forms. Presumably, these equations represent true statements about Russian declension that have to be integrated in one way or another into any reasonable treatment of the subject. Hence, we assume that (10) and (11) are given and may be made use of in the identification of declensional forms. On this assumption, no further extra mechanisms or special theoretical constructs are needed to deal with accusative-genitive forms of adjectives and pronouns, as may be gathered from inspection of the example search in (12). (12) (i) form sought:

{acc, sg, masc, anim} of ÈTOT found in paradigm: hètot, {}i [= (11i)] ∩{acc, sg, masc, anim} = ∩{gen, sg, masc, anim} found in paradigm: hètogo, {gen, sg, non-fem}i by (3i): masc ⊆ non-fem by (v): ∩{gen, sg, masc, anim} ⊆ ∩{gen, sg, non-fem} condition of fit: ∩{acc, sg, masc, anim} ⊆ {gen, sg, non-fem} (compatibility) (viii) target identified: ètogo (ii) (iii) (iv) (v) (vi) (vii)

Assume we are looking for the accusative singular masculine animate form of ÈTOT (12i), or rather the most specific compatible form in ÈTOT UP . The form ètot satisfies the compatibility requirement, its categorization being empty, as shown in (12ii), taken from (5); prima facie ètot seems to be the only form that exhibits a compatible categorization. However, crucially, we may avail ourselves of assumption (11i), repeated as (12iii). Now, consider ètogo with its categorization in (12iv), again taken from (5). Given the classification system for gender assumed in (3i), we have (12v), whence (12vi). Step (12vii) follows from (12iii) and (12vi). It turns out that the form ètogo is a compatible target given the categorization in the “form sought” line: As

Categories and Paradigms

341

shown in (12), using (11) it can be proven that ∩C 1 ⊆ ∩C2 (cf. 12vii), where C1 =def {acc, sg, masc, anim} as in (12i) and C 2 =def {gen, sg, non-fem} as in (12iv); hence, a compatibility relation exists. Since the only other compatible categorization in ÈTOT UP is the empty categorization, the correct target form is identified as in (12viii), using the principle of specificity, following (8). Similarly, we identify ètix as the accusative plural animate form (for all genders).36 Mutatis mutandis, the equations in (11) apply to nouns, too. Because nouns have inherent, thus invariable, gender, reference to the category of masculine forms as in (11i) must be removed; it is replaced by reference to the masculine declension type.37 Similarly, for animacy. The following equation will be assumed to be given: ∩{acc, sg} = ∩{gen, sg}, for forms of animate nouns of the masculine declension type. Equation (11ii), which includes no reference to gender, applies to nouns with analogous modification: It is assumed that ∩{acc, pl} = ∩{gen, pl}, for forms of animate nouns. 38 3.

Nouns

3.1.

General vs. Noun-Specific Endings

Most endings discussed in section 2 apply not only to pronouns and adjectives but (partly modified) also to nouns. Hence, the inventory listed in Table 3 appropriately serves as a point of departure for the analysis of the declension 36 By

(2), gen ⊆ obl, whence ∩{gen, pl} ⊆ ∩{obl, pl}; from the preceding and (11ii), viz., ∩{acc, pl, anim} = ∩{gen, pl, anim}, it follows that ∩{acc, pl, anim} ⊆ ∩{obl, pl}. Hence the form ètix, which is categorized as {obl, pl} in ÈTOT UP, has a categorization that is compatible with the categorization starting the search, viz., {acc, pl, anim} for any gender; this is also true of the forms èti (P1) and ètot (0), the categorizations of which are, however, less specific. 37 I.e., declension I A ; cf. sec. 3.2, infra, for noun declensions. This treatment implies (as it should) that those animate feminine nouns (like MAT 0 (‘mother’)) that have nominativeˇ ˇ (‘monster’) still do accusative syncretism as well as neuter animate nouns like CUDOVIŠ CE not show DOM in the singular (although neuters may exhibit some fluctuation, Corbett (1991, 43)). Both types of animates are rare, anyway, obviously so for neuters; cf. Garde (1980, § 264), on animate nouns of declension III. Nouns of declension II show non-differential object marking in the singular, hence no DOM, irrespective of gender. Note that the genitive II (cf. sec. 3.3., infra) is restricted to inanimates (Stankiewicz (1968, 31)). 38 The fact that Russian animate nouns of all genders show genitive-accusatives in the plural may be taken to “reflect the tendency for gender and declensional class distinctions to be lost completely in the plural” (Comrie 1978, 39).

342

Bernd Wiese

of nouns to be given in the present section. There are also a few additions to be made, that is, endings with categorizations that are found with nouns only will have to be incorporated. This leads to a refined version of the case system given in (2), above. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the overall picture of form-function correlations is not changed very much by extending the analysis to nouns. I shall take as a basis the fourfold division of the inventory according to the two major divisions singular/plural and non-oblique/oblique; peculiarities of noun inflection that pertain to the four subdomains will be taken up in their turn. In addition, section 3.2 serves to present the structure of the system of declension types, while section 3.4 develops in full the structure of the case system. Genitive-accusatives of nouns have already been dealt with in section 2.9 and require no further treatment. 39 3.2.

Non-Oblique Singular Noun Endings and Declension Types

The analysis of Russian pronominal and adjectival inflection in the preceding section did not necessitate a division into declension classes. Russian declension is simpler than the declension of some related languages, such as Classical Latin. Consider Latin adjectives like bonus/bona/bonum (‘good’). Such adjectives combine the gender-related patterns of the Latin first and second declensions of nouns, which, as a rule, comprise feminine and nonfeminine nouns, respectively. With adjectives, the endings of gender-related declensions are used to derive gender-specific forms, viz., feminine and nonfeminine (masculine and neuter) forms. However, differently from Russian, other adjectives like brevis (‘short’) follow another declension, the third declension, and these adjectives differentiate genders using gender-related sets of endings, too. Thus, for adjectives in Latin, the first and second declensions combine into what may be called a “macrodeclension”; put differently (and perhaps more appropriately), declensions come in groups. Although noun declensions are often listed individually in traditional grammars, the grouping of declensional patterns that is operative in adjective declension is also relevant for noun inflection.40 A similar correspondence between gender-related noun declensions and 39 For

further general discussion of genitive-accusatives, see sec. 4, infra. the pros and cons of “macrodeclensions” and “macroparadigms”, see Blevins (this volume). 40 For

Categories and Paradigms

343

adjectival genders is found in Russian, as may be seen from an inspection of non-oblique singular endings displayed in Table 5. Table 5: Noun declensions: endings in non-oblique singular cases class A }|

z

acc sg

non-fem

non-neut (masc)

neut

-

-o

nom sg

{

class B }|

fem

(all genders)

-a

-

-o -u anim → gen | {z } | {z } | {z } dec. IA dec. IB dec. II

Examples:

z

{

|

{z dec. III

}

STUDENT (‘student’), masc, anim, IA; ZAKON (‘law’), masc, inanim, IA; VINO (‘wine’), neut, IB; GORA (‘mountain’), fem, II; PUT0 (‘way’), masc, III; VREMJA (‘time’), neut, III; KOST 0 (‘bone’), fem, III

Most Russian reference grammars distinguish three noun declensions. There is a straightforward correlation between gender and declension, dec. I being restricted to non-feminines, while dec. II nouns are, as a rule, feminines. As usual, the non-feminine declension splits into a masculine (nonneuter) and a neuter subtype (declensions IA and IB) that differ in non-oblique cases; for example nouns, see Table 5. 41 As in comparable systems, the correlation between gender and declension is not one-to-one but deviations are severely constrained in Russian. In particular, there is a limited group of nouns in dec. II that denote male persons. 41 Cf.

Timberlake (2004). Numbering (I vs. II) is as in various recent treatments (but the reverse of traditional declension numbers and the designations for Latin declensions); see also Cubberley (2002, 111), with references. Corbett (1982, with references) provides a comprehensive discussion of alternative proposals for grouping declensions; see esp. sec. 3.3 on the “two-paradigm solution (Zaliznjak version)”. For a seeming split of the non-fem type in an oblique case, namely, in the genitive plural, see sec. 3.6, infra.

344

Bernd Wiese

These are masculine due to an overriding semantically based rule, namely: Sex-differentiable nouns denoting male and female persons or higher animals are masculine and feminine, respectively. 42 This said, masculine nouns of the second declension may be safely ignored in an analysis of declensional paradigms and endings; they are declined exactly as are feminine ones. These nouns may be added on without any complications if the morphological analysis is completed. In what follows, I exclude from consideration nouns where declension type and gender do not fit, replacing somewhat cumbersome references to, say, “nouns of the feminine declension type” by more simple references to “feminine nouns”.43 The endings of the non-oblique singular cases of declensions IA, IB, and II are taken from the general inventory, with categorizations undergoing obvious modifications: As nouns have inherent (invariable) gender, reference to genders of forms has to be replaced by reference to corresponding genders of lexemes.44 Apart from this, endings -o, -a, and -u reappear with their standard values; also, use of forms without endings and use of genitive-accusatives in the masculine does not deviate from the general pattern. In essence, the formfunction correlation is the same as found with non-nouns. “Marker sharing” between nouns and non-nouns, familiar from older Indo-European languages, continues on in Russian. Declensions IA, IB, and II form a natural group, since they participate in the ubiquitous pattern of gender differentiation in the nominative singular that is also found with pronouns, adjectives, and participles (and with past forms of verbs), where feminine forms terminate in a, neuter forms terminate in o, and masculine forms terminate in non-vowels. Declensions IA, IB and II are the most important, the most productive, and in fact, the unmarked types of noun inflection.45 As a group, these declensions stand in opposition to dec. III, a declension that has, in Russian, no counterpart among non-nouns. In this declension, non-oblique singular forms always come without endings, regardless of gender and subgender. The overwhelming majority of dec. III nouns are feminines; there are a handful of neuters, and there is only one 42 Corbett

(1991, 34, for discussion: 34-43), based on Corbett (1982); cf. Comrie (1978). also excludes discussion of special features of the declension of augmentatives and other expressive derivatives, for which see Stankiewicz (1968, 107-8). On nouns of “common gender” see op. cit., p. 18. Cf. also Corbett (1982, 220-3; 1991, 183f. and passim). 44 Alternatively, it may be assumed that inflectional forms of, say, masculine lexemes are masculine forms in their turn; i.e., forms may “inherit” the gender of their lexemes. 45 Cf. Corbett (1982, 208). 43 This

Categories and Paradigms

345

masculine noun in dec. III (viz., PUT 0 (‘way’)).46 Since in oblique cases inflection differs according to gender, the so-called third declension of Russian may actually be regarded as forming a group of (three) gender-related declensions, however deficient this group appears with regard to the number of non-feminine items as well as its overall elaboration. 47 It seems natural, then, to posit a major division between nouns of declension I and II on the one hand, henceforth class A nouns, and nouns of declension III on the other hand, henceforth class B nouns. These labels are suggested because it seems that, unfortunately, there are no received, wellestablished terms for such groups of related declensions, at least as applied to Russian.48 In sum, declensions do not exist in isolation but fit into a crossclassification which is based on the major class division (class A vs. class B nouns) and on the division of genders (or, to be precise, gender-related declension types).49 Endings occurring in non-oblique singular forms of nouns are categorized in Table 6. As compared to Table 3, no new endings or categorizations are needed. Note, however, that class B nouns do not show formal distinctions in the direct singular cases; i.e., these nouns do not accept S1-, S2-, and S3endings; as a result, forms without endings appear instead. To take note of this fact, columns have been introduced into Table 6 where plus and minus signs indicate whether form-categorization pairs are applicable with class A nouns, class B nouns, and/or other regularly declined items. 50 46 Feminines

are mostly derived abstracts in -ost0 like starost0 (‘old age’), but a number of familiar simplex nouns are included (Unbegaun (1957, 64)). Neuters of the VREMJA-type are sometimes included in dec. III, sometimes treated as irregulars; cf. Isaˇcenko (1962), Garde (1980, on “Les hétéroclites”, §§ 279-281). 47 Timberlake (2004, 143); cf. also Stankiewicz (1968, 25). 48 For Old Church Slavonic, the terms “twofold nominal declension” (dec. I+II, o- and astems) and “simple nominal declension” (dec. III, i-stems) have been used; see Lunt (2001). Cf. also Jakobson (1958) on “secondary” paradigms (dec. III) in contrast to the standard ones. 49 A comparable cross-classificatory approach to Latin declensions has been proposed in Wiese (2002). For a (substantially rather different) cross-classificatory approach to Russian declensions embedded in a feature-based framework, see Müller (this volume). 50 According to the analysis of Jakobson (1958, sec. 3.6), adopted in Stankiewicz (1968), also assumed in Garde (1980), the non-oblique singular forms of neuter class B nouns (as vremja of VREMJA) do not lack an ending (as assumed here, following, among others, Corbett (1982)), but show, in a morphophonological analysis, the ending -o. If this assumption is adopted, all that has to be done is to change minus to plus in the B-column of the S1-row.

346

Bernd Wiese

Table 6: Categorizations of noun endings: non-oblique singular cases case — non-obl nom acc

number gender ending # O A B — sg sg sg

— neut fem fem

-o -a -u

0 S1 S2 S3

+ + + +

+ + + +

+ – – –

Class A nouns (A), class B nouns (B), other standard declinables (O), –,+: (non-)applicable 3.3.

Oblique Singular Noun Endings

Oblique singular endings and their distribution over noun declensions are shown in Table 7. It is in the oblique singular cases that noun declension shows its most striking peculiarities. First, a subclass of masculine class A nouns distinguish two types of prepositional case forms and/or two types of genitive case forms. Thus two extra cases (“secondary” or “accessory” cases) have to be assumed, known as prepositional II and genitive II; using more informative names, these cases may also be referred to as locative and partitive, respectively (abbreviated pre II or loc, and gen II or par). Some specialists in Russian grammar hesitate to accept these cases, since these rather restricted phenomena would appear to lead to significant complications in the overall system. No such problem arises in an approach that takes advantage of underspecification; in particular, integration of loc and par does not demand any changes in the analysis of non-noun declension given in section 2.51 An example noun showing both special locative and partitive forms is SNEG (‘snow’); the oblique singular endings are as given in Table 7 in the column headed “non-neut”; the majority of class A masculines (and class A neuters in general) show the set of endings given in the adjacent column headed “non-fem” (for example nouns, see Table 5). Second, a detailed examination of the formal divisions found in the oblique singular domain, as laid out in Table 7, leads to the conclusion that 51 Another terminology has “locative I/II” for “prepositional I/II”; cf., e.g., Garde (1980). The prepositional II is, as Stankiewicz (1968, 35) puts it, “conspicuously a localistic case”, hence may be referred to as locative. For a concise discussion of the conditions of use for par and loc, see Comrie, Stone & Polinsky (1996, 124-127). For restrictions of applicability of the partitive, see Stankiewicz (1968, 31ff.). Underspecification as an approach to secondary cases is proposed in Comrie (1986).

347

Categories and Paradigms

Table 7: Noun declensions: endings in oblique singular cases z

non-neut

class A }|

non-fem

fem

class B }|

{ z

non-fem

fem

pre I

-e

-e

-e

-i

-i

pre II (loc)

-ú

-e

-e

-i

(-í)

dat

-u

-u

-e

-i

-i

gen I

-a

-a

-i

-i

-i

gen II (par)

-u

-a

-i

-i

-i

ins

-om

-om

-oj/-oju

-om

-ju

|

{z } | {z } | {z } | dec. IA dec. IA/IB dec. II

{z dec. III

{

}

the system of case classifications involves, so to speak, “more hierarchy” than had been apparent before. Within the domain of oblique cases a major division stands out: Only instrumental forms use general endings, whereas the remaining oblique singular case forms of nouns show endings that are (in this function) specific to nouns. They differ formally, too: The former are long, the latter are short.52 Moreover, the major factor controlling choice of instrumental endings is gender (non-fem vs. fem), while the distribution of the remaining endings is more complex, class A vs. class B membership intervening more strongly. Instrumental case endings are taken from the general inventory without changes in categorizations (cf. Table 3). Instrumental forms of class A feminines show the alternation between -oj and -oju known from the corresponding forms of pronouns and adjectives, i.e., between S8- and S9-endings (categorized as {obl, sg, fem} and {ins, sg, fem}, respectively). Instrumental forms of non-feminine nouns, of class A as well as of class B, show the plain oblique 52 For discussion, see Jakobson (1958, sections 4.4, 4.8), Stankiewicz (1968, 26), Franks (1995, 51f.). The terms “short” and “long” as used here (cf. sec. 2.6, supra) correspond to Jakobson’s “monophonemic” and “polyphonemic”, respectively.

348

Bernd Wiese

ending -om, categorized as {obl, sg, non-fem}, thus the non-feminine counterpart of feminine -oj. Interestingly, with pronouns and adjectives, the S4ending (-om) does not occur in the instrumental case (but in the prepositional case). Competition in underspecified paradigms (controlled by the principle of specificity) results in giving this plain oblique form its seeming ambiguity, functioning as it does as a prepositional ending with non-nouns and as an instrumental ending with nouns. Using underspecification the present approach reveals the functional unity of the ending -om, which could not be captured in traditional accounts; similarly for the S8-ending (-oj). A slight variation is found in the feminine of class B. First, the S8-ending is not used in class B. Second, in Russian declensional endings the first segment is, as a rule, a vowel. However, when applied to class B nouns, in extra long (three-phoneme) endings the initial vowel may drop, infrequently in the plural but always in the singular.53 Consequently, the S9-ending comes in two variants, a three-phoneme variant in class A and a two-phoneme variant in class B, and thus may be given as -[V]ju. 54 The rest of the oblique singular noun endings, which are not taken from the general inventory, remain to be categorized. In Table 7, boxes illustrate differences in specificity to be captured. The ending -i occurs in all of the cases under consideration – prepositional (I/II), dative, and genitive (I/II); within this domain, it occurs in both the feminine and in the non-feminine, and moreover, it applies to class A nouns as well as to class B nouns. Thus, -i is to be characterized simply as an unspecific marker for oblique cases, excepting, of course, the instrumental. From the domain potentially covered by -i, subdomains are cut out, as it were, and are filled by endings that are more specific. The ending -e in particular is restricted to class A and is not allowed in the genitive (I/II); -a on the other hand is straightforwardly characterized as a genitive (I/II) ending that is restricted to non-feminine class A nouns. Both of these endings give way to -u in forms of nouns that allow special dative and partitive (genitive II) forms. Finally, some nouns (mostly inanimate masculines of class A) exhibit special locative (prepositional II) forms, whose endings differ from the corresponding dative endings by always being stressed.55 53 A few class B nouns show -m0 i (instead of -am0 i) in the dative plural; see Comrie, Stone & Polinsky (1996, 132). 54 Cf. also Stankiewicz (1968, 25), who writes “-#ju” for the shorter variant, with “#” for a “zero unit”; similarly Kortlandt (1974, 58). 55 Generally, endings may be stressed or unstressed depending on the noun’s stress pattern.

Categories and Paradigms

349

Combinatorial configurations of endings from the set under discussion appear to maintain a non-random pattern. Within the oblique singular domain there are four ways of selecting from the set of more specific endings (-e, -a, -u) that contrast with the rather unspecific ending -i, as illustrated in (13); for the sake of clarity, secondary cases have been omitted. (13) Selection from the set of oblique singular endings -i, -e, -a, -u (i) -i (type KOST 0 , dec. III) (ii) -i -e (type GORA, dec. II) (iii) — -e -a (personal pronouns; cf. sec. 3.8) (iv) — -e -a -u (type ZAKON, dec. I) Starting from the minimal inventory, which includes only the least specific of these endings, the scale from (13i) to (13iv) shows an increase in the number and specificity of markers. In the last two combinations, (iii) and (iv), application of -i is suppressed, since its entire domain is occupied by more specific endings. In this subsystem, all of the Russian vowels find use as morphological markers, leaving out only the default ending vowel o. A hierarchy i > e > a > u emerges that is adhered to as the system expands (or shrinks). As this order, corresponding as it does to increasing specificity of case marking, mirrors an ordering of vowels along the front-back dimension of the vowel space, diagrammatic iconicity may again be involved. 56 3.4.

Revised System of Case Classifications

Among noun declensions, class A non-feminine nouns show the most elaborated paradigms. In the unmarked gender, the non-neuter, one subclass even adds extra differentiations (“secondary cases”) that are foreign to the rest of Fixed stress is indicated by an acute on the vowel of loc endings. Locatives in -í, found with a restricted group of lexically marked dec. III feminines, will be neglected in the following for simplicity of presentation. Cf. Garde (1980, 187, § 267), Stankiewicz (1968, 38), Comrie, Stone & Polinsky (1996, 125). 56 “Strength” of vowels (defined as increasing with distance from the point vowel i in the vowel space) has been repeatedly alluded to as a possible basis for iconic patterns, especially with reference to Indo-European ablaut and to the vocalism of deictics; cf. Plank (1979, sec. 5). A correlation between vowel strength and functional markedness of inflectional endings, in particular, is assumed for Greek, a language where vowel strength is an independently established factor in sandhi rules, in Warburton (1973). However, Shapiro (1969), Plank (1979, sec. 4), and Müller (this volume) suggest that in Russian, increasing sonority (of vowels) may correspond to decreasing functional markedness.

350

Bernd Wiese

the system. Feminines show less differentiation and hence less specific markers. Finally, in unexceptional class B nouns all distinctions within the oblique singular are wanting (apart from the instrumental). It appears that the degree of syncretism (put differently, the degree of formal differentiation) is not distributed at random but instead reflects differences in the status of declensions, namely, differences to be specified in terms of declension class markedness. 57 I suggest that such non-random patterns of syncretism should be reflected in a proper analysis of the case system, and the means to do this is to put more structure into the system of case classifications. As has been observed above, the data suggest a major division between instrumental case and non-instrumental cases, while the major dividing line within non-instrumental cases is between genitive (I/II) and non-genitive; the latter domain may split up into dative and prepositional, and, as a further extension, forms of secondary cases may be distinguished. This series of divisions may be regarded as constituting a hierarchical system of classifications as established by the classification tree in (14), which represents the complete system of case classifications of Russian. case

(14) non-obl nom

obl

acc

non-ins non-gen non-dat

dat

ins gen

non-par

par

(pre)

non-loc

loc

(pre I)

(pre II)

The tree is to be understood as indicated for (2) and (3). Terminal categories are subsets of superordinate categories, i.e., of categories higher up in the tree; 57 On declension class markedness, see Wurzel (1989). Note that it is only the unmarked declension type (IA) that allows DOM in the singular.

Categories and Paradigms

351

any superordinate category equals the union of the categories it dominates (e.g., obl = non-ins ∪ ins; likewise, non-gen = non-dat ∪ dat). 58 Alternative case names have been given in parentheses, for convenience. As compared to (2), the subdivision of non-obl has been left unmodified in (14). However, in colloquial style personal names following dec. II may allow vocative singular forms (without endings), distinct from nominative forms (in -a), whereas the nominative covers the vocative function elsewhere. Hence, a further subdivision of the non-oblique domain may be called for. The possibility may be considered that non-obl splits into non-acc and acc, and non-acc in its turn into non-nom and nom, where non-nom = voc (vocative). 59 3.5.

Categorizations of Oblique Singular Noun Endings

Categorizations of long endings, which appear in the instrumental singular of nouns, have been given above. In addition, categorizations for short oblique singular noun endings may now be specified, given the system of case classifications presented in (14). For two class A noun endings suitable categorizations are already available, namely, S6 for the dative ending -u and S7 for the genitive ending -a (cf. Table 3); these are restricted to the non-fem as are their long non-noun counterparts, -Vmu and -Vvo. Categorizations for -i and -e are added as S10 and S11 in Table 8. In keeping with the above discussion, -i is categorized as a non-instrumental singular ending (S10). Thus, -i may occur in any oblique case, excepting the instrumental, provided no more specific oblique case ending takes priority. The S10-ending is the only ending in this group that applies to both class A and class B nouns; the remaining, more specific ones are restricted to class A nouns. Ending -e is categorized as non-genitive singular (S11). Since, by (14), non-gen = non-loc ∪ loc ∪ dat, the S11-ending may occur in the prepositional 58 Categories of the type non-X are sister categories to categories of the type X; hence, a category like non-dat does not cover all those case forms that happen not to be dative forms (say, nominative or accusative forms). Rather, non-dat (= pre) covers all and only non-loc forms (prepositional I forms) and loc forms (prepositional II forms), as indicated in (14); i.e., non-dat = non-loc ∪ loc. Recall that non-loc = pre I, loc = pre II; moreover, non-par = gen I, par = gen II, and pre = pre I ∪ pre II. 59 The vocative case in Russian, if assumed at all, surely has a peripheral status (cf. Garde (1980, 136/148f.), §§ 181, 203). Nonetheless, if only for reasons of comparability, one would want to indicate the place in the system of cases that the vocative should occupy if present (as is done in the text).

352

Bernd Wiese

I (non-locative), the prepositional II (locative) and the dative, provided no more specific oblique case ending takes priority. S12 and S13 provide endings for the partitive (genitive II) and the locative (prepositional II), respectively; S12- and S13-endings are restricted to lexically marked subclasses of the masculine. As noted above (cf. section 2.3), there are no special pre (non-dat) forms though there are special pre II (loc) forms. Table 8: Additional categorizations of noun endings: oblique singular case

number

gender

ending

#

A B

non-ins non-gen

sg sg

— —

-i -e

S10 + + S11 + –

par loc

sg sg

non-neut non-neut

-u -ú

S12 ± – S13 ± –

Class A nouns (A), class B nouns (B), –,+: (non-)applicable, ±: applicable, lex. marked subclass only

3.6.

Plural Noun Endings

All of the general plural endings (listed in Table 3) are applicable equally to nouns of both class A and class B. (This implies, of course, that the distinction of declension classes is largely eliminated in the plural.) The only modification concerns the initial vowel of oblique plural endings, which is a for nouns.60 However, there are two noun-specific additions to the declensional system in the plural. First, noun declension adds special non-oblique neuter forms in -a, thus transferring from the singular, as it were, the option of having a special neuter non-oblique form – a plural counterpart of the S1-ending, listed under P2 in Table 9. This ending, too, applies to both major noun classes. 61 Second, the general inventory does not countenance special genitive plu60 The

initial vowel is missing in a few items in the instrumental plural, cf. note 53, supra. In lexically marked subclasses of nouns the unspecific plural ending (P1) also shows, optionally or obligatorily, the vowel a; cf. Stankiewicz (1968, 41-46; 49-60) and Comrie, Stone & Polinsky (1996, 127-129) for details. 61 P2 cuts into the domain of P1, but a subclass of neuters do not accept the P2-form; cf.

Categories and Paradigms

353

ral forms (hence with non-nouns the plain oblique plural form takes over). Within noun declension, this gap is filled (see P6 in Table 9). Genitive plurals show two different endings (or two versions of one ending), viz., -ej or -ov, the distribution of which is conditioned by phonological properties of stems.62 As a third possibility, genitive plural noun forms may fail to show an ending. However, as a rule, genitive plural forms are kept distinct even with nouns that do not command special genitive plural endings. Table 9: Categorizations of noun endings: plural case

number gender

ending

# A B P1 + + P2 + +

— non-obl

pl pl

— neut

-i -a

obl ins dat gen

pl pl pl pl

— — — —

-ax -am0 i -am -(ej∼ov)

P3 P4 P5 P6

+ + + +

+ + + +

“()”: drops, subject to the No-Homonymy Condition Appearance or non-appearance of genitive plural endings does not relate in a simple way to noun declensions as established above, although it is true that nouns of the neuter declension types (such as VINO and VREMJA) usually do not show endings in the genitive plural. The principle that determines the presence or absence of endings in the genitive plural is orthogonal to divisions of declension and gender. Generally speaking, genitive plural forms show an ending only if absence of the ending would regularly result in a homonymy with some other form of the same noun. This pertains to nominative or accusative singular forms, since these may also lack endings (cf. Table 5). Apart from endings on nominative/accusative singular forms, a range of factors are active in rendering genitive plural endings “superfluous”, including stress shift and stem alternations. 63 Stankiewicz (1968, 47). In this case, the unspecific plural form (P1) takes over once more. Clearly, -i is the “default ending” in the nominative plural (Stump 1993, 474). 62 The ending -ej appears after soft and “hushing” consonants, -ov after other consonants and /j/ (Jakobson (1958, sec. 4.5)); in consequence, due to their stem forms, class B nouns allow only -ej, not -ov. 63 This regularity has been pointed out by Jakobson (1939, 1957, 1958); for discussion, see also Johnston (1997, sec. 2.4.2), who notes that the interplay of forms with and without

354

Bernd Wiese

As for the standard declensions, nouns in declension IA (e.g., ZAKON) do not exhibit endings in the nominative singular but do show genitive plural endings; the remaining types of class A nouns (from declensions IB and II), which do have endings in the nominative singular (cf. VINO , GORA), with few exceptions do not accept genitive plural endings. 64 On the other hand, class B nouns do not exhibit endings in the non-oblique singular. Accordingly, they employ genitive plural endings (cf. putej of PUT 0 , kostej of KOST 0 ), excepting the small group of neuters (such as VREMJA). Furthermore, nouns of the latter type show a stem alternation that prevents homonymy anyway, and here again genitive plural forms do not adopt the ending (cf. vremja, non-oblique singular, vs. vremën, genitive plural). 65 From a synchronic point of view, this harmonization of morphological marking within paradigms can be considered remarkable, since it is not derivable from competition and specificity. In short, the notation -(ej∼ov) in the P6-entry in Table 9 indicates that genitive plural forms of nouns may show one of two endings, -ej or -ov, selected according to the phonological form of the stem. Parentheses indicate that genitive plural forms may regularly lack endings, application of endings being, in this case, conditional on the described strategy of homonymy avoidance (the “No-Homonymy Condition”). 66

endings may provide “some evidence for the reality of paradigms” (op. cit., p. 107). There are nouns like RAZ (‘time’) that do not show endings either in the nominative singular or in the genitive plural, but these are usually restricted to constructions (in French, “syntagmes”) that dissolve the homonymy (Jakobson (1939, sec. I)); this is a property of nouns “belonging to certain lexical fields that are commonly used in quantitative constructions” (Timberlake (2004, 138)). 64 Some neuter and feminine class A soft stem nouns adopt the -ej ending (but no feminine shows the -ov ending, Jakobson (1958)); for further details, see Stankiewicz (1968, 50-56) and Garde (1980, §§ 202, 215, 239), and cf. Shapiro (1971). For recent developments, see Comrie, Stone & Polinsky (1996, 129-131). 65 By other analyses, these neuters do have the ending -o in the non-oblique singular; cf. note 50, supra. On stem alternations, see Stankiewicz (1968, esp. on the VREMJA-type, p. 60f.). 66 Further analysis and interpretation of this obvious example (of the more general phenomenon) of homonymy avoidance is beyond the scope of the present study (but see Hentschel & Menzel (2002)); its theoretical implications remain to be investigated. We may note, however, that it is not without parallels outside Russian; consider, e.g., the strong tendency to avoid genitives “die als solche nicht erkennbar sind” (‘which are not recognizable as such’; Paul (1919, 328), note 1), which is well known from German.

number — sg sg sg sg sg sg sg sg sg sg sg sg sg

gender ending # O A B — 0 + + + neut -V S1 + + – fem -a S2 + + – fem -u S3 + + – non-fem -Vm S4 + + + non-fem -V*m S5 + – – non-fem -u/-Vmu S6 + + – non-fem -a/-Vvo S7 + + – fem -Vj S8 + + + fem -[V]ju S9 ∓ ∓ + — -i S10 – + + — -e S11 – + – non-neut -u S12 – ± – non-neut -ú S13 – ± – pl pl pl pl

— — — —

number gender pl — pl neut

-V*x -V*m0 i -V*m -(ej∼ov)

ending -V* -a

P3 P4 P5 P6

+ + + –

+ + + +

+ + + +

# O A B P1 + + + P2 – + +

Notes: (i) Distribution of ending-initial vowels: in V*-endings, a (nouns, oblique plural forms), i (otherwise); in V-endings, o; in both types of endings (under restricted conditions), e. (ii) Distribution of S6- and S7-variants: short (nouns), long (otherwise). (iii) Distribution of S9-variants: -ju (class B nouns), -Vju (otherwise). (iv) Adjectives, long endings (in non-oblique cases): -vjv, where v is as in standard endings (if present), (-ój∼ij otherwise). (v) “()”: drops, subject to the No-Homonymy Condition.

Class A nouns (A), class B nouns (B), other standard declinables (O), –,+: (non-)applicable, ±: applicable, lex. marked subclass only; ∓: obsolete/literary/restricted use

case — non-obl nom acc obl ins dat gen obl ins non-ins non-gen par loc

Table 10: Synopsis of Russian standard declensional endings

Categories and Paradigms

355

356 3.7.

Bernd Wiese

Underspecified Noun Paradigms

In the above, endings of nouns have been discussed and assigned categorizations. Overall, the set of endings that had been established for the pronoun ÈTOT in section 2 has been extended only moderately. Nouns add a neuter plural, fill the empty slot for the genitive plural, and, most importantly, add a special subsystem of non-instrumental singular endings. Combining the analyses of pronominal, adjectival, and nominal declensions, which have been proposed above (and which have been presented in Tables 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9), we may now identify an integrated assemblage of endings (or form categories) and categorizations that answers for the totality of regular declension. Table 10 provides a synopsis. Notational conventions are as before but are specified in the legend where appropriate; names of V*-endings have to be reinterpreted as indicated in order to account for ending-initial vowels of nouns. Thus, an overall inventory of form-function pairs is established that make up the basis of regular declensions, providing the building blocks for the various declensional paradigms found in Russian. Differences between paradigms are due to different selections possible from the overall set, which are also specified in Table 10. Categorizations assigned to endings are invariant across paradigms, but of course, the actual range of application (as determined in terms of specific case-number-gender combinations) allowed by some given ending depends on which competing endings qualify for inclusion in the same paradigm. Table 10 may be read as a recipe for deriving declensions, hence, for deriving paradigms. The declension of class A masculine nouns serves to illustrate: All ending-categorization pairs are selected that are marked by a plus in the A column and that are not restricted to feminines or to neuters according to the gender column. Other declensions are derived analogously. In this manner, we arrive at the paradigm schemes in Table 11 and Table 12, below. (Actual ending-initial vowels have been specified. Endings of secondary cases have not been included; similarly, for class A feminines, the obsolete S9-ending has been ignored. Genitive-accusatives of animate nouns would have to be derived as explained in section 2.9.) In Table 11, blocks of singular endings of different declensions have been put side by side for better comparability; likewise for the plural. Rows in blocks specify case. There is no extrinsic ordering of endings, but for perspicuity, the vertical order has been arranged so as to correlate, first, with the

357

Categories and Paradigms

Table 11: Paradigm schemes: class A nouns class A masc

—

— -

obl non-gen dat gen

sg -om -e -u -a

— obl ins dat gen

pl -i -ax -am0 i -am -ej∼ov

class A neut

class A fem

0

S4 S11 S6 S7

sg non-obl -o S1 obl -om S4 non-gen -e S11 dat -u S6 gen -a S7

P1 P3 P4 P5 P6

pl non-obl -a obl -ax ins -am0 i dat -am gen -

P2 P3 P4 P5 P6

nom acc obl non-ins non-gen

sg -a -u -oj -i -e

S2 S3 S8 S10 S11

— obl ins dat gen

pl -i -ax -am0 i -am -

P1 P3 P4 P5 P6

non-obl/obl distinction and, second, with increasing specificity where possible. Forms without endings appear in the genitive plural where specified and whenever no ending is applicable, for instance, in non-oblique singular cases of masculine class A nouns. In the latter case, the respective forms are assigned the empty categorization. Endings that are applicable in principle may get no chance to apply, their domain being “bled” by endings that are more specific. For example, the noninstrumental S10-ending (-i) applies to both class A and class B nouns, and to both non-feminine and feminine nouns. Nevertheless, it does not appear with class A non-feminines, since for these nouns the domain of non-instrumental cases is fully covered by more specific endings (S6, S7, S11). Similarly, class A neuter and feminine nouns do not show forms that are assigned the empty categorization. Table 12 provides paradigm schemes for class B nouns. As has been pointed out, feminines (like KOST 0 ) constitute the major type of class B nouns; neuters declined like VREMJA, a small group of nouns which are here subsumed under class B, show stem alternation between non-oblique singu-

358

Bernd Wiese

lar forms and the rest of the paradigm and are, presumably mainly for this reason, often not included in dec. III. Note, however, that no changes whatsoever in the overall analysis would be called for if we decided to ignore class B neuters. Indeed, given the overall analysis, the points where their declension deviates from the declension of class B feminines are predictable. Relevant observations are the following: (i) The S9-ending cannot appear, since it is restricted to the feminine (the plain oblique non-feminine ending, S4, takes over). (ii) Regularly declined neuters show -a (P2) in non-oblique plurals. (iii) By the general regularity for the genitive plural (P6), forms without endings are expected. It is exactly at these positions that the inventories of class B neuter and feminine endings differ. (Similarly, nothing would be gained by neglecting the only masculine class B noun, PUT 0 ; again, the structure of its paradigm follows from the overall analysis without added stipulations.) Table 12: Paradigm schemes: class B nouns class B masc

—

— -

class B neut

0

sg obl -om S4 non-ins -i S10

— obl ins dat gen

pl -i -ax -am0 i -am -ej

P1 P3 P4 P5 P6

—

— -

class B fem

0

sg obl -om S4 non-ins -i S10 pl non-obl -a obl -ax ins -am0 i dat -am gen -

P2 P3 P4 P5 P6

—

— -

0

non-ins ins

sg -i -ju

S10 S9

— obl ins dat gen

pl -i -ax -am0 i -am -ej

P1 P3 P4 P5 P6

It can be read off Table 12 that, say, class B feminine nouns exhibit two different singular endings (categorized for case as non-instrumental and instrumental, respectively), which cover oblique cases, while singular forms of non-oblique cases lack endings. On this basis, underspecified paradigms for particular noun lexemes are easily derived. From these, in turn, fully specified paradigms may be derived by filling the cells of a full array of case-number

Categories and Paradigms

359

combinations with forms from underspecified paradigms abiding by the principle of specificity. This is illustrated for the singular subparadigm of KOST 0 (‘bone’), a class B feminine noun, in Table 13. 67 Table 13: Singular subparadigm of

KOST 0

underspecified case number form — non-ins ins

3.8.

— sg sg

kost0 kosti kost0 ju

(‘bone’)

fully specified case number form nom acc gen pre dat ins

sg sg sg sg sg sg

kost0 kost0 kosti kosti kosti kost0 ju

Additional Paradigms

Irregular formations and minor subregularities, as described in reference grammars, are well beyond the scope of this essay. However, it is worthwhile noting that paradigms which do not conform to standard patterns may still take their endings from the overall inventory of form-function pairs. Surnames like Tolstoj follow the standard adjectival declension. Another ˇ type of surnames (like Cexov or Puškin) follows the pronominal declension (cf. Table 3), and as regards feminine and plural forms, there are no aberrations. However, in the masculine singular, this type employs in addition, and gives priority to, the extra set of short oblique case endings known from regular masculine nouns, as given in (13iv) – viz., -e (S11), -a (S7), -u (S6). In conformance with their categorizations and the principle of specificity, these endings cover the prepositional, genitive, and dative, respectively; only the instrumental is left to take on the expected pronominal ending (-im, S5). It may be remarked that, while the selection made from the inventory of endings is not as in standard declensions, categorizations apply as usual. 68 67 As a set, the underspecified paradigm of KOST 0 is identified as KOST 0UP = {hkost’, {}i, hkosti, {non-ins, sg}i, hkost0 ju, {ins, sg}i, hkosti, {pl}i, hkostjax, {obl, pl}i, hkostjami, {ins, pl}i, hkostjam, {dat, pl}i, hkostej, {gen, pl}i}. 68 For further details, see Garde (1980, 200-203, §§ 291-295), Timberlake (2004, 153-158) .

360

Bernd Wiese

Non-gendered personal pronouns, viz., JA/MY (first person singular/plural) and TY/VY (second person singular/plural), present another case in point.69 In the singular, these pronouns, being genderless, mix endings that are, as a rule, restricted to either non-feminines or feminines. However, the endings that are employed are familiar ones, having their usual case and number values: -a in the genitive ({gen, sg}; cf. S7), -e in the prepositional and in the dative ({non-gen, sg}; cf. S11), and -oj (or, alternatively, -oju) in the instrumental ({obl, sg} or {ins, sg}; cf. S8 and S9, respectively). Nominative singular forms (ja, ty) have no endings, and accusative forms equal genitive forms (both in the singular and in the plural). Selection of endings from the overall inventory is once more idiosyncratic; but apart from irrelevance of gender specifications, categorizations are as given above. As for the plural, the paradigmatic pattern follows the pronominal model (which does not include P2- and P6-endings; cf. Table 3) whereas the composition of plural forms follows the nominal model (cf. Table 10), the endings being -i (P1), -as (P3), -am0 i (P4), -am (P5); it is only the consonant of the P3-ending that deviates. Finally, indeclinable nouns provide a limiting case. Indeclinable nouns are, of course, nouns that do not accept any endings, hence nouns that have one and only one form for all case-number combinations. Even if underspecification were to be avoided in general, here at least non-differentiation of forms must be acknowledged. Presumably, no respectable grammar includes full paradigmatic tables for indeclinables. No problems arise for the present approach. For an indeclinable noun like PONI (‘pony’) an underspecified paradigm is assumed that contains exactly one form, viz., poni, which is assigned the empty categorization. Because the categorization is empty, the make-up of the form, which has no ending, is as expected. 70 As for possessive adjectives, short S6- and S7-forms, sometimes listed in reference grammars, are judged to be no longer normal (Comrie, Stone & Polinsky (1996, 134)). 69 Endings are assumed as in Jakobson (1958); cf. also Garde (1980, 252f., §§ 389, 393). The reflexive SEBJA takes its endings from the same set. 70 Hence, PONI UP = {hponi, {}i}. For various groups of indeclinables (loanwords, placenames, acronyms, etc.), see Garde (1980, 197-200, §§ 285-290).

Categories and Paradigms

4.

361

Types of Syncretisms

Whereas the overall picture of Russian declension that has emerged in the above differs from that in standard reference grammars, the means for dealing with syncretisms are quite traditional. First, most grammars recognize, and account for, underdifferentiation of forms (or “neutralization”) in the arrangement of paradigmatic tables to some degree. In particular, it is a matter of course that paradigmatic tables for pronouns and adjectives, which show three gender-specific columns in the singular block, lack such differentiation in the plural. While traditional grammar takes advantage of what in recent terminology would be called underspecification in its treatment of nondifferentiation of gender, it does so only sporadically in dealing with case syncretisms. A number of modern approaches, including the present one, deviate by consistent application of underspecification. Second, many reference grammars of Russian account for accusativegenitives not by filling the accusative slot in paradigmatic tables by inflectional forms, but by directing the reader to the nominative and/or genitive case whenever appropriate.71 This technique of referral, too, has been adopted above, using genitive-accusative equations. However, it has been restricted to genitive-accusative homonymies, as non-differentiation between nominative and accusative forms (caused by absence of special accusative forms) requires no extra handling in an approach that makes thoroughgoing use of underspecification. The distinction of two types of syncretism, implicit in traditional descriptions of Russian, is justified by notable differences between the respective phenomena. Moreover, it fits perfectly well into a general typology of syncretisms.72 However, it has been proposed repeatedly in the literature (i) to 71 See, e.g., “N. or G.” in Unbegaun (1957); similarly in most reference grammars. In more formally oriented, rule-based treatments this technique has been taken over under the name of prediction rules in Perlmutter & Orešnik (1973) and Corbett (1980; 1981) or rules of referral (Stump (1993), following Zwicky (1985)); it is subsumed under readjustment rules in Halle (1994). Corbett (1980) combines rules of referral (feature-change rules, prediction rules) with what would be in more recent terminology rules of impoverishment (copying restriction for the feature [+animate]); cf. Halle & Marantz (1993). 72 Cf. Baerman, Brown & Corbett (2002), who distinguish three types of syncretisms that are “common enough cross-linguistically” (op. cit., p. 24) to call for inclusion in a typology of syncretisms: (i) syncretism of core cases (viz., nominative and accusative in an accusative language, i.e., non-oblique cases), (ii) syncretism of the marked core case and an oblique case, (iii) (total) syncretism of oblique cases. All of these types are instantiated in Russian, plus a

362

Bernd Wiese

treat genitive-accusatives in terms of underspecification, not by referral and (ii) to extend referral to a much wider range of phenomena. Questions regarding a general taxonomy of syncretisms are outside the scope of this paper. Yet, it may be in order to end with a brief comparison of the two types of syncretisms found, based on instances that have been analyzed above. To establish a categorization that is underspecified with respect to case means to delimit a domain of application for some ending that covers more than a single terminal case category. Nevertheless, the total domain thus determined will be covered by the ending in question only if there are no applicable competing endings with more specific categorizations. Typically, competition may cut into the domain limited by the underspecified categorization; as a result, unspecific endings may be distributed over seemingly disparate ranges of cells of paradigms. It is a virtue of underspecification that it helps us to detect what constitutes the functional unity of endings under such circumstances. Various cases of this type have come to the fore in the above, among them the intriguing interplay of endings (presented in Table 7) that is found in the domain of oblique singular noun endings. An unmarked (or rather relatively unmarked) ending (here -i) gives way to more specific ones (like -e and -a), while the latter’s domains may in turn be perforated, as it were, by competing endings that are assigned even more specific categorizations. If an unspecific ending is not given an underspecified categorization, we are often left with a dismembered field of application that, if it were to be covered directly, might well require a multiplicity of statements (or rules) of exponence and referral. It would appear that attempts at analyzing distributions of cascading “overrides” between endings in terms of referrals must lead to unnecessarily complicated and presumably unrevealing descriptions. 73 The pattern of syncretisms found with animate genitive-accusatives is of another kind. While underspecification as applied above reduces the numfourth type, also recognized by Baerman, Brown, and Corbett, viz., syncretism of some, but not all, non-core cases (= oblique cases), which is, they note, rare outside Indo-European. 73 Cf. Fraser & Corbett (1995), who deal with the distribution of -i in the domain under discussion by introducing -i as the genitive singular ending of dec. II, adding to this “rule of exponence” three equations, which in their (DATR) framework function as analogues of rules of referral, informally to be rephrased as follows: (i) In dec. III, the gen sg ending is the same as in dec. II. (ii) In dec. III, the dat sg ending is the same as the gen sg ending. (iii) In dec. III, the pre sg ending is the same as the dat sg ending. For a conception of rules of exponence as defaults that may be overridden, see Zwicky (1985).

Categories and Paradigms

363

ber of ending-categorization pairs and uncovers functional unity underlying seemingly disorganized distributions of endings, any treatment of genitiveaccusative syncretism with animates in terms of underspecification would result in an increase in the number of ending-categorization pairs. 74 Table 14: Animate and inanimate accusatives. (i) masculine pronoun forms, (ii) forms of masculine nouns (i)

ÈTOT

(ii)

inanim anim nom sg acc sg gen sg

ètot ètot ètot ètogo ètogo ètogo

STOL

SLON

inanim anim nom sg acc sg gen sg

stol | slon stol slon-a stol-a | slon-a

Consider the distribution of the forms ètot and ètogo over the cells of the partial paradigmatic table for ÈTOT given in Table 14 (i). We find, again, that a form (here, ètogo) may cover a smaller or a larger domain (genitive and accusative vs. genitive only) in different subdomains (animate vs. inanimate). Assume, for the sake of the argument, that we had available a reasonable characterization of “genitive-plus-accusative” in terms of underspecification, that is, a uniform categorial specification that covers both genitive and accusative.75 We still could not subsume the genitive-accusative reading and the genitive-only reading of ètogo under one uniform categorization. What is different here is that this time the more restricted reading (genitive) is not brought about by intervention of some other ending that carries a more specific categorization (which would have to make its appearance in the inanimate accusative). It would not help to assume that ètot is the more specific form: We could not get a uniform characterization of this form, since no form that is more specific would be available to oust ètot from the animate accusative. Unless some extra mechanism (like referral) is invoked, no uniform categorizations for both ètot and ètogo can be given, provided the constella74 See Baerman (2003, sec. 2) for an analysis of this constellation as found with Russian nouns of dec. IA and for general discussion. 75 Disregarding questions of adequacy, a number of technical complications would have to be overcome; note, for instance, that forms figuring as genitive-accusatives may occur in the prepositional as well (since forms covering the genitive plural are, in non-noun paradigms, in fact plain oblique forms); cf. sec. 2.8, supra.

364

Bernd Wiese

tion of forms and categories is as displayed in Table 14; at least one of these forms would have to be construed as ambiguous. A completely analogous situation is found with noun endings; see Table 14 (ii) for forms of the masculine nouns STOL (‘table’), inanimate, and SLON (‘elephant’), animate. Of course, one might adopt an analysis that resolves syncretisms inside noun paradigms by assigning unique categorizations to the forms in question.76 But then for each case of animate genitive-accusative syncretism that is resolved intra-paradigmatically we would get in return an additional pair of “homonymous endings” (as -a in stola, genitive, vs. -a in slona, genitive-accusative). This is true of the genitive singular endings -a and -ovo, of plain oblique plural endings (-ix and -ax), and of genitive plural endings (-ov and -ej); similarly, for genitive plural forms without endings. Plainly, genitive-accusative-syncretism is not bound to certain endings at all; any material that shows up in genitive forms may be subjected to accusativegenitive referral if triggered by animacy. 77 This situation contrasts starkly with cases of syncretisms that are appropriately accounted for in terms of underspecification. Consequently, the inventory of ending-categorization pairs should not be extended in order to account for animate genitive-accusatives on an itemby-item basis. After all, there are no endings exclusively for the animate accusative or any other one-of-a-kind animate endings. At the same time, there is no obstacle to amending underspecified paradigms by adding animate accusative forms. In fact, such an emendation may be called for if it is required 76 Cf. Comrie (1986), who proposes a feature [direct] that covers nominative and accusative, and a feature [objective] that covers accusative and genitive, in addition to [genitive] and [nominative] that cover the cases that lend them their names. Non-oblique singular forms of the nouns STOL and SLON are characterized as follows:

stol [direct] slon [nominative] stola [genitive] slona [objective] Accepting this analysis as it stands, we would even lose the unified treatment of unmarked base forms. Treatments of genitive-accusative syncretism in Russian using underspecification have also been suggested by Franks (1995, sec. 2.2.2, with some reservations, p. 59, note 44) and Wunderlich (1996, 107), among others; cf. also Gunkel (2003) on Polish. 77 Fraser & Corbett (1995, sec. 4). As Corbett has emphasized in various publications, “the type of syncretism found with the animacy features is always the same in Russian (it is always accusative-genitive syncretism)” (Corbett (1991, 167)) which precludes accepting any approach that “would allow agreements for animate masculines to be completely different from other animates, whereas in all examples it is syncretism of accusative and genitive agreeing forms which is involved.” (loc. cit.)

Categories and Paradigms

365

that underspecified paradigms output full arrays of categorized forms as they stand (without recourse to some extra mechanism, such as categorial equations). Since it is derivable that the animate accusative forms of ÈTOT are ètogo (singular) and ètix (plural), we may very well add the following elements to ÈTOT UP : hètogo, {acc, sg, masc, anim}i, hètix, {acc, pl, anim}i. Similarly, we may take it that SLON UP contains the derived elements hslona, {acc, sg}i, hslonov, {acc, pl}i besides hslona, {gen, sg}i, hslonov, {gen, pl}i, in which case SLON UP has two more elements than STOL UP . In conclusion, the following points should be kept in mind when assessing approaches to the animate accusative-genitive in Russian: First, Russian animate genitive-accusatives are but one instance of the widely spread phenomenon of differential object marking, intertwined as it often is with syncretism between a marked core case (accusative in an “accusative language” like Russian) and an oblique case, which need not be the genitive. Second, the non-oblique/oblique dividing line (which is crossed by genitive-accusatives) represents a major factor in determining the structure of Russian case paradigms – and these are not exceptional from a typological point of view – which should have repercussions in the overall structure to be assumed for the Russian case system. 78 Third, syncretism between genitives and animate accusatives is a uniform phenomenon encompassing singular and plural subparadigms, encompassing different declensions (in the plural), and encompassing different wordclasses, applying as it does to nouns and non-nouns in the presence of the category animate. 5.

Conclusion

In the preceding analysis of Russian declension, focus has been on aspects of morphological form, especially questions of homonymy and synonymy of morphological markers. In many earlier approaches, syncretisms are dealt 78 The

non-obl/obl distinction is also reflected in alternations of word stress and in stem alternations which in most cases support the fourfold division of paradigms generated by this divison as it combines with the sg/pl distinction; cf. Stankiewicz (1968, 66, passim), Johnston (1997). Moreover, there are paradigms with a minimal differentiation of cases, and these show the non-obl/obl distinction, thus the topmost case classification, only; paradigms of this type are found with numerals like SOROK (‘forty’) (not discussed in this paper); see Garde (1980, 239, § 370).

366

Bernd Wiese

with in terms of a combinatorial system of syntactic or semantic features; in contrast, the present investigation has been based on a detailed inspection of formal markers, endings in particular, as they are made use of in order to distinguish word forms of paradigms. As a result, a limited inventory of pairs of inflectional endings (or rather form categories determined by reference to endings) and categorizations has been established (Table 10), including specifications of applicability in terms of declension classes. Complemented by a treatment of animate accusatives, this inventory provides a sufficient basis for deriving the standard declensional paradigms of Russian, while its cardinality is small as compared to the number of cells in fully specified paradigms. In a considerable number of instances, seeming ambiguities, often multiple, of endings have given way to the recognition of functional unity, because syncretisms have been taken into account systematically. Our view on Russian declension has now changed a little. The relation between form and function has become more transparent. Iconicity seems to be involved, and many endings turn out to have unique functions. The contrast between flexive and agglutinative strategies of morphological marking, with which we started, seems to have been mitigated to some degree. Still, Russian has not turned into an agglutinative language: The actual domains of application of declensional markers in Russian are not determined on a stand-alone basis but are controlled by the interplay between forms in paradigms. Some homonymies remain, and their status would have to be examined; only one case in point can be mentioned here. Disregarding the genitive II, which has often been said to be dying out, there are two endings that are used twice in the singular, namely, the nominative and accusative endings, -a and -u, respectively, which also distinguish genitive and dative. True, these endings are employed for two purposes; however, in the non-oblique cases they are restricted to feminine nouns, whereas in the oblique cases they are restricted to non-feminine nouns. What matters is that the system as a whole is organized in a way that avoids too much homonymy between word forms, on this point at least. The regulation of genitive plural marking (by the No-Homonymy Condition) as well as the phenomenon of differential object marking would seem to point in the same direction. 79 While there is no need to accept long series of remaining “homonymous endings”, unambiguous markers are not 79 Cf. Comrie (1978, sec. 3); and, for a general discussion of the rôle of morphological exponents in paradigms, see Blevins (this volume).

Categories and Paradigms

367

required either. In a system such as Russian declension, discrimination of forms is what morphological markers are for. References Aissen, Judith 2003 Differential Object Marking. Iconicity vs. Economy. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 21, 435-483. Andrews, Avery 1982 The Representation of Case in Modern Icelandic. In Joan Bresnan (ed.), The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations, 427-503. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press. 1990 Unification and Morphological Blocking. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 8, 507-558. Baerman, Matthew 2003 Directionality in Syncretism. Ms., University of Surrey. Baerman, Matthew, Dunstan Brown & Greville Corbett 2002 Case Syncretism in and out of Indo-European. In Mary Andronis et al. (eds.), CLS 37. The Main Session 2001. Proceedings from the Main Session of the Thirty-seventh Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, vol. 37.1, 15-28. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Bierwisch, Manfred 1967 Syntactic Features in Morphology: General Problems of So-Called Pronominal Inflection in German. In: To Honor Roman Jakobson. Essays on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday. 11 October 1966. Vol. I, 239-270. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Blake, Barry 1994 Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blevins, James 1995 Syncretism and Paradigmatic Opposition. Linguistics and Philosophy 18, 113152. 2003 Stems and Paradigms. Language 79, 737-767. this volume Inflectional Classes and Economy. Bobaljik, Jonathan 2002 Syncretism Without Paradigms: Remarks on Williams 1981, 1984. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2001, 53-85. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer. Bossong, Georg 1998 Le marquage différentiel de l’objet dans les langues d’Europe. In Jack Feuillet (ed.), Actance et Valence dans les Langues de l’Europe, 193-258. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Brøndal [Bröndal], Viggo 1940 Compensation et variation, deux principes de linguistique générale. Scientia 9-10, 101-109.

368

Bernd Wiese

Chvany, Catherine 1982 Hierarchies in the Russian Case System: For N-A-G-P-D-I, against N-G-DA-I-P. Russian Language Journal 36, No. 125, 133-147. Comrie, Bernard 1978 Genitive-Accusatives in Slavic: The Rules and Their Motivation. In: Bernard Comrie (ed.), Classification of Grammatical Categories, 27-42. Urbana/Edmonton: Linguistic Research. 1981 Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Blackwell. 1986 On Delimiting Cases. In Richard Brecht & James Levine (eds.), Case in Slavic, 86-106. Columbus, OH: Slavica. 1991 Form and Function in Identifying Cases. In Frans Plank (ed.), Paradigms. The Economy of Inflection, 41-55. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Comrie, Bernard, Gerald Stone & Maria Polinsky 1996 The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century. 2nd, rev. & exp. ed. Oxford: Clarendon. Corbett, Greville 1980 Animacy in Russian and Other Slavonic Languages: Where Syntax and Semantics Fail to Match. In Catherine Chvany & Richard Brecht (eds.), Morphosyntax in Slavic, 43-61. Columbus, OH: Slavica. 1981 Syntactic Features. Journal of Linguistics 17, 55-76. 1982 Gender in Russian: An Account of Gender Specification and Its Relationship to Declension. Russian Linguistics 6, 196-232. 1991 Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corbett, Greville & Norman Fraser 1993 Network Morphology: A DATR Account of Russian Nominal Inflection. Journal of Linguistics 29, 113-142. Cubberley, Paul 2002 Russian. A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Franks, Steven 1995 Parameters of Slavic Morphosyntax. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fraser, Norman & Greville Corbett 1995 Gender, Animacy, and Declensional Class Assignment: A Unified Account for Russsian. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1994, 123-150. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer. Garde, Paul 1980 Grammaire russe. Tome premier: Phonologie – Morphologie. Paris: Institut d’Études Slaves. Greenberg, Joseph 1966 Language Universals. In Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), Current Trends in Linguistics. Vol. 3, Theoretical Foundations, 61-112. The Hague: Mouton. Gunkel, Lutz 2003 Syncretisms and Case Underspecification in Polish Noun Paradigms. In Piotr Ba´nski & Adam Przepiórkowski (eds.), Generative Linguistics in Poland: Morphosyntactic Investigations (Proceedings of the GLiP-5 Conference held

Categories and Paradigms

369

in Warsaw, Poland, 30 November – 1 December 2002), 47-62. Warsaw: Inst. Podstaw Informatyki PAN. Halle, Morris 1994 The Russian Declension. In Jennifer Cole & Charles Kisseberth (eds.), Perspectives in Phonology, 321-353. Stanford: CSLI. Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz 1993 Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The View from Building 20. Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 111-176. Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT Press. Halle, Morris & Ora Matushansky 2003 The Morpho-Phonology of Adjectival Inflection in Russian. [Handout]. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, October 9, 2003. Hentschel, Gerd & Thomas Menzel 2002 Marker Productivity, Structural Preferences and Frequency: Observations about Morphological Change in Slavonic Languages. Indogermanische Forschungen 107, 1-46. Hjelmslev, Louis 1956 Animé et inanimé, personnel et non-personnel. Travaux de l’Institut de Linguistique 1, 155-199. Isaˇcenko, Aleksandr 1962 Die russische Sprache der Gegenwart. Teil I: Formenlehre. Halle/Saale: Niemeyer. Jakobson, Roman 1936 Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre. Gesamtbedeutungen der russischen Kasus. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 6, 240-288. [Repr. in Jakobson (1971), engl. trans. in Jakobson (1984)] 1939 Signe Zéro. In: Mélanges de linguistique offerts à Charles Bally, 143-152. Génève: Georg. [Repr. in Jakobson (1971), engl. trans. in Jakobson (1984)] 1957 The Relationship between Genitive and Plural in the Declension of Russian Nouns. Scando-Slavica 3, 181-186. [Repr. in Jakobson (1971) and (1984)] 1958 Morfologiˇceskie nabljudenija nad slavjanskim skloneniem (Sostav russkix padežnyx form) [Morphological observations on Slavic declension (The structure of Russian case forms)]. In: American Contributions to the Fourth International Congress of Slavicists, Moscow, September 1958, 127-156. ’sGravenhage: Mouton. (= Slavistic Printings and Reprintings. 21) [Repr. in Jakobson (1971), engl. trans. in Jakobson (1984).] 1960 The Gender Pattern of Russian. Studii s¸i cercetari ˘ lingvistice 11, 3, 541-543. [Repr. in Jakobson (1971) and (1984)] 1965 Quest for the Essence of Language. Diogenes 51, 21-37. [Repr. in Jakobson (1971)] 1971 Selected Writings. Vol. II: Word and Language. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. 1984 Russian and Slavic Grammar. Studies 1931-1981. Ed. by Linda R. Waugh and Morris Halle. Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton. Johnston, Jason 1997 Systematic Homonymy and the Structure of Morphological Categories: Some

370

Bernd Wiese Lessons from Paradigm Geometry. Doctoral dissertation, University of Sydney.

Kiparsky, Paul 1972 Explanation in Phonology. In Stanley Peters (ed.), Goals of Linguistic Theory, 189-227. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 1973 “Elsewhere” in Phonology. In Stephen R. Anderson and Paul Kiparsky (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 93-106. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Kortlandt, Frederik 1974 Russian Nominal Flexion. Linguistics 130, 55-70. Lieb, Hans-Heinrich 1980 Words as Syntactic Paradigms. In Gunter Brettschneider & Christian Lehmann (eds.), Wege zur Universalienforschung. Sprachwissenschaftliche Beiträge zum 60. Geburtstag von Hansjakob Seiler, 115-123. Tübingen: Narr. 1992 Paradigma und Klassifikation: Explikation des Paradigmenbegriffs. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 11, 3-46. 2003 Notions of Paradigm in Grammar. Ms., FU Berlin. To appear in D. Alan Cruse et al. (eds.), Lexikologie/Lexicology. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Natur und Struktur von Wörtern und Wortschätzen/An International Handbook on the Nature and Structure of Words and Vocabularies. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lumsden, John 1992 Underspecification in Grammatical and Natural Gender. Linguistic Inquiry 23, 469-486. Lunt, Horace 2001 Old Church Slavonic Grammar. 7., rev. ed. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Lyons, John 1968 Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matthews, Peter 1991 Morphology. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCreight, Katherine & Catherine Chvany 1991 Geometric Representation of Paradigms in a Modular Theory of Grammar. In Frans Plank (ed.), Paradigms. The Economy of Inflection, 91-112. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Mulisch, Herbert et al. 1988 Russische Sprache der Gegenwart. Vol. 2, Morphologie. Rev. ed. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie. Müller, Gereon this volume On Decomposing Inflection Class Features: Syncretism in Russian Noun Inflection. Paul, Hermann 1919 Deutsche Grammatik. Vol. III, Teil IV: Syntax (Erste Hälfte). Halle: Niemeyer.

Categories and Paradigms

371

Perlmutter, David & Janez Orešnik 1973 Language-Particular Rules and Explanation in Syntax. In Stephen R. Anderson and Paul Kiparsky (eds.), A Festschrift for Morris Halle, 419-459. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Plank, Frans 1979 Ikonisierung und De-Ikonisierung als Prinzipien des Sprachwandels. Sprachwissenschaft 4, 121-158. 1991 Of Abundance and Scantiness in Inflection: A Typological Prelude. In Frans Plank (ed.), Paradigms. The Economy of Inflection, 1-39. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1999 Split Morphology: How Agglutination and Flexion Mix. Linguistic Typology 3, 279-340. Schenker, Alexander 1964 Polish Declension. A Descriptive Analysis. The Hague/London/Paris: Mouton. Shapiro, Michael 1969 Aspects of Russian Morphology. A Semiotic Investigation. Cambridge, Mass.: Slavica. 1971 The Genitive Plural Desinences of the Russian Substantive. The Slavic and East European Journal 15, 190-198. Stankiewicz, Edward 1968 Declension and Gradation of Russian Substantives in Contemporary Standard Russian. The Hague/Paris: Mouton. Stump, Gregory T. 1993 On Rules of Referral. Language 69, 449-479. 2001 Inflectional Morphology. A Theory of Paradigm Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2002 Morphological and Syntactic Paradigms. Arguments for a Theory of Paradigm Linkage. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2001, 147-180. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer. Suppes, Patrick 1972 Axiomatic Set Theory. Corr. ed. New York: Dover. Thomson, Alexander 1909/1912 Beiträge zur Kasuslehre. I. Über den Genitiv-Akkusativ im Slavischen. IV. Über die Neubildungen des Akkusativs. Indogermanische Forschungen 24, 293-307; 30, 65-79. Timberlake, Alan 2004 A Reference Grammar of Russian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trager, George 1953 Russian Declensional Morphemes. Language 29, 326-338. Trubetzkoy, Nikolaj S. 1934 Das morphonologische System der russischen Sprache. Prague/Leipzig: Jedn. ceskosl. mat. a fys./Harrassowitz. (= Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague. 5, 2) Unbegaun, Boris 1957 Russian Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

372

Bernd Wiese

Wade, Terence 1992 A Comprehensive Russian Grammar. Oxford/Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. Warburton, Irene P. 1973 Modern Greek Verb Conjugation: Inflectional Morphology in a Transformational Grammar. Lingua 32, 193-226. Wiese, Bernd 1991/1999 Unterspezifizierte Paradigmen. Form und Funktion in der pronominalen Deklination. Paper read at the Symposium “Funktionale Untersuchungen zur deutschen Nominal- und Verbalmorphologie”. FAS, Berlin. May 22, 1991. Available via Internet from Linguistik online 3/1999 (http://www.linguistikonline.de/3_99/wiese.html). 1996 Iconicity and Syncretism. On Pronominal Inflection in Modern German. In Robin Sackmann (ed.), Theoretical Linguistics and Grammatical Description. Papers in Honour of Hans-Heinrich Lieb. On the occasion of his 60th birthday, 323-344. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. 2002 Zur lateinischen Nominalflexion. Die Form-Funktions-Beziehung. Paper read at the 26th annual meeting of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Spachwissenschaft, Mannheim, February 2002. Ms., IDS Mannheim. Williams, Edwin 1981 On the Notions “Lexically related” and “Head of a Word”. Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245-274. 1994 Remarks on Lexical Knowledge. Lingua 92, 7-34. Wunderlich, Dieter 1996 Minimalist Morphology: The Role of Paradigms. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1995, 93-114. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer. Wurzel, Wolfgang U. 1989 Inflectional Class Markedness. In Olga Tomi´c (ed.), Markedness in Synchrony and Diachrony, 227-247. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Zwicky, Arnold 1985 How to Describe Inflection. In Mary Niepokuj et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 16-18, 1985, 372-386. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. 1990 Inflectional Morphology as a (Sub)Component of Grammar. In Wolfgang Dressler et al. (eds.). Contemporary Morphology, 217-236. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Is There Any Need for the Concept of Directional Syncretism? Dieter Wunderlich* 1.

Introduction: The Typology of Syncretism by Stump (2001)

Stump (2001) distinguishes four types of syncretism, according to how they should be analyzed best. – unidirectional syncretism, – bidirectional syncretism, – unstipulated syncretism, – symmetrical syncretism. Stump favors the concept of directional syncretism because it can be formalized by a grammatical rule that operates on paradigms, a so-called rule of referral. This syncretism is termed “directional” because the rule maps the entry of one cell of the paradigm to another. Which cell is the target of the rule is motivated by independent reasons. In most Indo-European languages, the nominative and accusative forms of neuter nouns are identical (Greek to: do:ron (‘the gift’), Latin do:num (‘gift’), Russian slovo (‘word’), German das Schiff (‘the ship’)). It is reasonable to assume that accusative is the marked context in these pairs, so that the rule of referral can be expressed as in (1). (1) N → A, for neuter nouns Neuter nouns with this property thus exhibit the unidirectional type. In section 4, I will discuss a syncretism between genitive singular and nominative plural in Russian nouns, which Stump analyzes by the rule G.sg → N.pl in * The research for this paper was supported by SFB 282, Theorie des Lexikons, sponsored by the DFG. Parts of the paper were presented at a conference dedicated to the memory of Wolfgang Ullrich Wurzel at ZAS Berlin (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft). I am grateful for the comments by Albert Ortmann and Gereon Müller.

Explorations in Nominal Inflection, 373-395 Gereon Müller, Lutz Gunkel, & Gisela Zifonun (eds.) c 2004, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin Copyright

374

Dieter Wunderlich

some instances, and by the rule N.pl → G.sg in other instances. This type of syncretism is called “bidirectional”. The third type of syncretism, unstipulated syncretism, is found where the syncretism matches with a natural class. It is the least controversial type and can be captured by lexical underspecification. For instance, the genitive and the dative forms of masculine and neuter nominal elements in German (other than the noun itself) are identical (des Affen, dem Affen (masc.) (‘of/to the ape’), des Schafes, dem Schaf (neut.) (‘of/to the sheep’)). Here, non-feminine is a natural class that subsumes both masculine and neuter (des G.sg.–fem, dem D.sg.–fem). For reasons that are unclear to me, Stump disfavors the possibility of underspecification. Many of the instances that are analyzed by Stump as directional syncretism can be given an alternative analysis in terms of underspecification.1 In my view, such an analysis is the most desirable because it reduces paradigmatic space. In German verb inflection, first person and third person forms are always alike, except in the present indicative singular (ich/sie lachte (‘I/she laughed’), wir/sie schliefen (‘we/they slept’)). These forms can be analyzed by referring to the natural class non-second person (= “not the addressee”). The last type of syncretism is symmetrical syncretism. It is subject neither to underspecification nor to any systematic relationship between categories. This type is a residual case for Stump. It includes idiosyncratic (‘accidental’) syncretism, as in the article system of German, where the forms of N.sg masc, G./D.sg fem, and G.pl are identical (der Mann (‘the man’), der Frau (‘of/to the woman’), der Männer (‘of the men’)), and no plausible relationship is recognizable.2 More interestingly, it also includes a few rather systematic homonymies. One intriguing case cited by Stump is Hua (New Guinea, Haiman (1980)), a language in which verbs inflected for 2sg and 1pl always have identical forms, regardless of how they are realized in the 1 In

Wunderlich (1996), I reanalyzed Stump’s (1993) account concerning the verbal paradigms of Macedonian. In the same spirit, I reanalyzed the referral analysis of the prenominal prefixes in Dalabon verbs by Evans et al. (2001) in Wunderlich (2001). 2 Müller (2002) presents an analysis of the nominal inflection in German in which the syncretism just mentioned follows from phono-morphological iconicity: The less marked a suffix is in terms of the Sonority Hierarchy, the less marked is the set of categories that can be expressed by this suffix. /-e/ is optimal according to the Sonority Hierarchy, and is chosen for [–masc,–obl] categories, while /-r/ is next-to-optimal and is chosen for categories other than [–masc,–obl]. Note that this proposal crucially hinges on a choice of categories that is not commonly accepted: [–masc] comprises feminines and plurals, and [–obl] comprises nominative and accusative.

Directional Syncretism

375

various moods. Stump proposes dealing with this fact by means of a metageneralization. Unlike a grammatical rule, a meta-generalization restricts the possible lexical entries, so I would like to argue. While I believe this latter type to be sufficiently justified, I have serious doubts whether directional syncretism is an adequate concept. A learner who is assumed to acquire a rule of referral would first have to acquire the exponents of quite different paradigmatic cells. Particularly problematic is the fact that the learner not only has to identify identical forms (which amounts to saying that he or she already knows the syncretism) but, moreover, would have to find out which form triggers which. Obviously, the type that is the hardest to acquire is bidirectional syncretism. Of course, a statement that a bidirectional syncretism exists is a stronger claim than a statement that a symmetric syncretism exists. Methodologically, however, the best hypothesis for a grammar is not the one that makes the strongest generalizations, but rather one that makes the most plausible generalizations. My claim is that rules of referral are undesirable for theoretical reasons. As I will show in this paper on the basis of case studies, the notion of rules of referral is equally unnecessary. All examples of supposed directional syncretism, i.e., either unidirectional or bidirectional, represent either unstipulated or symmetrical syncretism. That is, every kind of syncretism is best captured in the lexical entries for affixes, provided one assumes a set of violable (and therefore ranked) constraints that regulate the choice between inflected forms. In the next section, I will show that the above-mentioned A/N syncretism of neuter NPs in Indo-European is most naturally captured by underspecification. In section 3, I discuss another syncretism occurring in Russian nouns, which is subject to animacy. The accusative of inanimate nouns often shares its form with the nominative, while the accusative of animate nouns shares its form with the genitive. This syncretism split, again, has been described as directional. I will show that it can be captured by the interaction of lexical entries with well-motivated constraints. In section 4, I discuss an example that Stump analyzes as an instance of bidirectional syncretism, namely the G.sg/N.pl syncretism of Russian nouns, which does not involve a natural class. This syncretism is not specific to Russian, but rather is of Indo-European nature and is best captured as symmetrical. The overall aim of the paper, then, is to show that Stump’s typology at a closer look reduces to his third and fourth class, which is also desirable

376

Dieter Wunderlich

considering that we ought to establish a typology that is guided by features of the grammar rather than by features of analyzability. 2.

The A/N Syncretism of Indo-European Neuter Nouns

As noted above, many Indo-European languages identify the accusative of neuter nouns (or neuter NPs) with the nominative. This fact finds its most natural account in the assumption that the accusative is a marked case with respect to the nominative. To implement this intuition, accusative is specified by the feature [+hr] “there is a higher role”, whereas nominative bears no such feature (Wunderlich (1997)). The syncretism, then, follows from the fact that the accusative of neuters is left unspecified, i.e., a special accusative form of neuters is lacking, so that the nominative form can (and must) cover both nominative and accusative contexts. Never do we find a more marked form, e.g., dative, that is tolerated in such a context. Note that an accusative context arises, for example, from the requirement for a transitive verb to take an accusative complement, as well as from the requirement for a predicative noun to show case concord with its subject, when this is itself in an accusative context. Beekes (1995, 193f.) gives the following historical explanation for the lack of accusative in Indo-European neuter nouns. He assumes that IndoEuropean was formerly a language with an ergative split, where the ergative was restricted to masculine or feminine animate nouns, while neuter inanimate nouns exhibited “absolutive” (i.e., nominative) for both subject and object of transitive verbs.3 Indo-European subsequently shifted to an accusative pattern in which the syncretism remained. This explanation is, however, doubtful in view of universal tendencies. Universally, a gap in the ergative is more likely for animates than for inanimates, while a gap in the accusative is more likely for inanimates. This is also predicted by the framework of harmonic alignment within OT (Aissen (1999), Stiebels (2000)). If one wants to account for the situation where the realization of case is determined by values of animacy, the morphological scale in (2-a) (Stiebels (2000, 237)) and the semantic scale in (2-b) represent the relevant pieces of information to start from. (Note that ergative is specified 3A

similar hypothesis is discussed by Schmitt-Brandt (1998, 190), who states that neuter nouns failed to have ergative endings because they are only rarely used as the subject of transitive verbs. This commentary reduces the lack of ergative to a matter of statistics.

Directional Syncretism

377

by [+lr], “there is a lower role”.) Considering the semantic values as possible contexts of the morphological values, the two scales have to be aligned. By harmonic alignment, the markedness rankings in (3-a) and (3-b) arise. (2) a. [+hr] > [+lr] ‘Marking a lower argument is preferred over marking a higher one.’ b. anim > inanim (3) a. *[+lr]/anim  *[+lr]/inanim ‘Avoiding ergative for animates is better than avoiding it for inanimates.’ b. *[+hr]/inanim  *[+hr]/anim ‘Avoiding accusative for inanimates is better than avoiding it for animates.’ This suggests that the A/N syncretism of neuter nouns in Indo-European can in fact be traced to the fact that neuter nouns are most likely to express inanimate concepts. Such a semantic background can be subject to grammaticalization, so that the semantic scale in (2-b) has to be replaced by the gender scale in (4-a), and, accordingly, the markedness ranking in (3-b) by that in (4-b). For completeness, the situation in Indo-European is fully captured if in addition one assumes that the constraint M AX(+hr), ‘Realize the feature [+hr] (by accusative)’, is interpolated as in (4-c). (4) a. non-neuter > neuter b. *[+hr]/neuter  *[+hr]/non-neuter ‘Avoiding accusative for neuters is better than avoiding it for nonneuters.’ c. *[+hr]/neuter  M AX(+hr)  *[+hr]/non-neuter As regards the explanation given by Beekes, the rankings given in (3-a) and (3-b) suggest that either Indo-European never had an ergative system, or that the A/N syncretism evolved only when the system had already shifted to accusativity. It could also be the case that for some other reason a syncretism evolved within an ergative system, which then might have been one of the triggering factors for the shift into an accusative system. In any case, if a dominant constraint such as *[+hr]/neuter is derived as a grammaticalized instance of the universally motivated constraint *[+hr]/inanim, one arrives at a much better explanation for the A/N syncretism than by a stipulated rule of referral.

378

Dieter Wunderlich

Note in this connection that German feminine and plural nominal forms are subject to the A/N syncretism, too. In light of the preceding discussion, these syncretisms should also be captured by markedness constraints. The semantic scale assumed in (2-b), namely, anim > inanim, can be extended as in (5-a), which gives rise to the markedness ranking in (5-b). (5) a. male > female > group > inanim b. *[+hr]/inanim  *[+hr]/group  *[+hr]/female  *[+hr]/male The ranking male > female is motivated by the dominant role of men in certain societies, with the effect that agentivity is taken to be more prototypical of males, and individual > group is motivated by specificity. This semantic background, then, has been grammaticalized by means of gender and number. Eventually, M AX(+hr) intervenes between the third and fourth constraint, so that only masculine accusatives remain. (6) a. *[+hr]/neuter  *[+hr]/plural  *[+hr]/fem.  M AX(+hr)  *[+hr]/masc. b. *[+hr]/non-masc. ∨ plural  M AX(+hr)  *[+hr]/masc. (6-b) summarizes the three Avoid constraints of (6-a) in just one context. Again, such an account seems better motivated than (a template for) rules of referral. 3.

Syncretism and Animacy Split in the Russian Accusative

It is a well-known fact that the Russian accusative is defective; all nouns other than class 2 in the singular,4 as well as all nouns in the plural, lack 4 The terms “class 1”, “class 2”, “class 3” are used here for the sake of simplicity. Differing from authors such as Corbett (1982; 1991) and Stump (2001), I do not believe that nouns bear an uninterpretable class feature. Instead, the class they belong to can be identified by gender and phonological features. For small and unproductive classes, all specific forms of the noun are presumably listed in the lexicon. Here, then, one often finds additional syncretism, e.g., between genitive and dative singular. Traditionally, class 1 comprises masculine and neuter nouns, the former always ending in a consonant and the latter in -o or -e in N.sg; the respective stems can also end in /-j/ or a palatalized consonant, which trigger allomorphs. Here, I separate the neuter nouns as a distinct class 4. Class 2 stems always end in -a in N.sg while class 3 stems always end in a palatalized consonant; items of these two classes are mostly feminine. Note that [i] is an allophone of /-y/ after a palatal (or palatalized) consonant; likewise, [e] is an allomorph of /-o/ in such an environment.

Directional Syncretism

379

a separate accusative affix, and instead share either the nominative or the genitive form in a context that requires accusative. This split is traditionally described by two instances of rules of referral, and accordingly analyzed by authors such as Corbett (1982; 1991) and Stump (2001). One can see from (7) that there is only one genuine accusative form in Russian, namely /-u/ for class 2 nouns ending in /-a/. Note that all neuter nouns automatically pattern with the inanimates because of the general A/N syncretism found in neuters. The explanation given for this syncretism in section 2 suggests a similar account for the left side of (7), involving inanimates. (7) Russian nouns with animacy split in forms that are used in accusative contexts

N.sg. A.sg. G.sg. N.pl. A.pl. G.pl.

class 2 fem. ‘map’ kárt-a kárt-u kárt-y kárt-y kárt-y kart

inanimates class 3 class 1 fem. masc. ‘door’ ‘table’ dver’ stol dver’ stol dvér-i stol-á dvér-i stol-ý dvér-i stol-ý dver-éj stol-óv

class 4 neut. ‘word’ slov-o slov-o slov-á slov-á slov-á slov

animates class 2 class 3 class 1 fem. fem. masc. ‘squirrel’ ‘mother’ ‘student’ bélk-a mat’ studént bélk-u mat’ studént-a bélk-i máter-i studént-a bélk-i máter-i studént-y bélok máter-ej studént-ov bélok máter-ej studént-ov

The empirical generalization is the following: All class 2 nouns (ending in /-a/) have the ending /-u/ in the A.sg. Otherwise, the accusative of inanimate nouns patterns with nominative (hence N → A), and the accusative of animate nouns patterns with genitive (hence G → A), except in class 3 (nouns ending in a palatalized consonant), where A.sg always patterns with nominative, regardless of animacy. The alternative account I propose extends the solution for the A/N syncretism given in section 2 by the assumption that the A/G syncretism forms a natural class and should therefore be characterized by lexical underspecification. The choice between the two options, namely between an A/N or an A/G syncretism, is partially restricted by the lexical information itself, more specifically, by the final segment of the underlying stem (in class 2 nouns, and the singular of “animate” class 3 nouns); otherwise it is made by the constraint ranking.

380

Dieter Wunderlich

In section 2, I analyzed nominative as the unspecified case, which can enter any context, provided that more specific realizations (such as accusative) are blocked. A/N syncretism arises when only the nominative form can enter an accusative context. In contrast, in the A/G syncretism neither of the two cases can be considered to be more specific than the other. Rather, there is one feature that is shared by these two cases, and another feature that distinguishes them, here noted as a subscript: Genitive (both the case morphemes and the relevant contexts)5 is specified by the feature (+hr)N “there is a higher role” (of nouns), while accusative (both the case morphemes and the relevant contexts) is specified by the feature (+hr)V “there is a higher role” (of verbs). Therefore, the A/G syncretism can be captured by lexical entries which are simply specified as (+hr); that is, they are underspecified with respect to V or N. Disregarding neuter nouns with the plural in /-a/, there is only one unrestricted plural suffix, namely, /-y/, to be realized as [y] or [i], depending on the phonological environment. Thus, forms with this suffix can potentially enter accusative contexts as well as any singular form. As already mentioned, /-u/ is a genuine accusative suffix that is restricted to class 2 nouns, a fact that is expressed by the context “a]”. Note that the stem-final -a is a thematic or floating vowel, which appears only if no other vowel is specified. Thus, the accusative is realized by the suffix -u, while the nominative (with no suffix) receives the ending -a. Similarly, neuter nouns (class 4) have the thematic vowel -o. 6 The other genuine case suffix is genitive /-y/. It occurs with all class 2 and class 3 nouns, that is, nouns ending either with thematic -a or with the palatal feature PAL. Forms that are generated with this suffix can never be generalized to accusative. Thus, regardless of whether a PAL ending noun is animate or inanimate, a special accusative form is lacking, and it is only the nominative form that can generalize to accusative contexts, specified as (+hr)V . All other suffixes relevant here are subject to the A/G syncretism. They realize the feature [+hr], without any specification for a nominal or verbal 5A

potential genitive context is also found with verbs in the scope of negation. In this instance, the subject or object role of a verb is exceptionally marked (+hr)N . 6 Although the thematic vowel in fact appears only in the nominative, it is not considered to be a nominative affix. Because of the dominance of nominative contexts, children can easily identify the nominative form from the very beginning and thus become aware of the fact that some nouns end in -a or -o, while other nouns end in C.

Directional Syncretism

381

context. The ending /-a/ is a (singular) suffix for class 1 nouns (the default class), as well as for class 4 nouns. Thus, class 1 nouns ending in -a can enter either genitive or accusative contexts, depending on a further condition which captures the animacy split, while the inanimate neuter nouns of class 4 can enter only genitive contexts. Similarly, all the remaining plural suffixes realize the feature combination [+hr,+pl], without any specification for a nominal or verbal context: the zero ending in class 2 and class 4 nouns,7 the -ej ending in class 3 nouns, and the -ov ending in class 1 nouns. All these forms can enter both genitive and accusative contexts. The set of suffixes just discussed is given in (8). 8 (8) Suffixes a. /-y/, +pl b. /-a/, +pl/neuter c. /-u/, (+hr)V / a] d. /-y/, (+hr)N / a] ∨ PAL] e. /-a/, +hr / C] ∨ o] f. C], +pl,+hr / a] ∨ o] g. /-ej/, +pl,+hr / PAL] h. /-ov/, +pl,+hr

N.pl (class 1,2 & 3) N.pl (class 4) A.sg (class 2) G.sg (class 2 & 3) A/G.sg (class 1 & 4) A/G.pl (class 2 & 4) A/G.pl (class 3) A/G.pl (class 1)

For convenience, the interplay of the lexical entries of suffixes is illustrated by the paradigm they form in (9). Note that there is no affix that refers to animacy. 7 More specifically, I assume that the zero ending results from a condition that the respective form ends in C, which is best realized by the stem-final consonantal segment, so that the thematic (floating) vowel /-a/ or /-o/ is not realized. This can be regulated by the requirement that the addition of consonantal features is more costly than the drop of vocalic features. (If the resulting form ends with a consonant cluster, often an epenthetic vowel is inserted, as in N.sg kúkla – G.pl kúkol (‘puppet’), which is obviously less costly than the addition of consonantal features.) Thus, C] is not a true suffix but rather a condition for (A)/G.pl forms. Particularly interesting is the fact that, deviating from the general pattern, nouns with a monosyllabic palatalized stem and /-a/ or /-o/ in the N.sg take the G.pl ending /ej/ of palatalized stems rather than zero if they have to bear final stress in the plural (N.sg dól’a – G.pl doléj (‘portion’), N.sg móre – G.pl moréj (‘sea’)). In these instances, the condition of final stress can be satisfied only if a true affix is added. All these facts strongly suggest an OT-analysis of Russian G.pl forms. (See also the analysis by Brown and Hippisley (1994) in the DATR framework.) 8 It is not necessary to specify all the selectional contexts; at least one of the suffixes specified as [+hr] could function as a default, similarly to /-ov/ in the set of suffixes specified as [+pl,+hr]. See the discussion below.

382

Dieter Wunderlich

(9) Lexical entries for some Russian case affixes

N.sg. A.sg. G.sg. N.pl. A.pl. G.pl.

inanimates animates class 2 class 3 class 1 class 2 class 3 class 1 ‘map’ ‘door’ ‘table’ ‘squirrel’ ‘mother’ ‘student’ a] PAL] a] PAL] /-u/, (+hr)V /-u/, (+hr)V /-y/, (+hr)N /-a/, +hr /-y/, (+hr)N /-a/, +hr /-y/, +pl /-y/, +pl C], +pl,+hr

/ej/, /ov/, +pl,+hr +pl,+hr

C], +pl,+hr

/ej/, +pl,+hr

/ov/, +pl,+hr

The animacy split was already motivated in section 2. I have argued that the A/N syncretism observed in Indo-European neuter nouns follows from a grammaticalization of the context in a universally high-ranked constraint, namely, *(+hr)/inanim, resulting in the constraint *(+hr)/neuter. In the development of Russian, this latter constraint has obviously been retraced to its semantic source, so that the semantic constraint is reactivated. More precisely, since we are dealing with a lack of accusative rather than of genitive forms, the relevant constraint is to be read as in (10-a). As observed above, the realization of genitive is never blocked. Rather, in the plural the genitive is generalized so as to express simply [+pl,+hr], so that it can also occupy accusative contexts in cases where the realization of [+hr] is not blocked. Therefore, the intervening faithfulness constraint is simply M AX(+hr), regardless of whether [+hr] is determined in a nominal or verbal context. We thus arrive at the constraint ranking stated in (10-c). (10) Constraints a. *(+hr)/V inanim. Do not realize the feature [+hr] in accusative contexts of inanimate nouns.9 b. M AX(+hr). Realize the feature [+hr]. c. Ranking of the constraints: *(+hr)/V inanim  M AX(+hr)  *(+hr)/V anim 9 Russian has a few animate nouns in the neuter class 4 (such as cˇ udovišˇce (‘monster’)), which nevertheless show A/N syncretism. If we assume that the Indo-European constraint against neuter accusative is still valid, any A/G syncretism is blocked. Therefore, the actual constraint is *(+hr)/V inanim ∨ neuter.

Directional Syncretism

383

Note that the ranking in (10-c) determines both the minimal inventory of affixes and the actual use of affixes, with the sole exception of inanimate class 2 nouns, which end in /-a/. (10-c) implies that inanimates should never have a separate accusative form, that a genitive form is always allowed, and that genitives are as good as separate accusative forms for animate nouns. Hence, for reasons of economy, separate accusative forms for animate nouns need not, and therefore may not, be established. This explains the A/G syncretism observed for animate nouns. The analysis so far is still left with a problem. The constraint ranking in (10-c) predicts an A/N syncretism for inanimate karta (‘map’); that is, the form karta rather than kartu should be used in accusative contexts. Technically, such a prediction can be blocked by a higher-ranked constraint that requires faithfulness to [+hr] in the singular of class 2 nouns: (11) M AX(+hr)/ –pl, a] Such a constraint could be motivated by the pressure to keep the accusative form of nouns referring to females (class 2 nouns, which end in -a in the nominative) distinct from the accusative form of nouns referring to males (class 1 nouns), as well as from the genitive form of class 1 and class 4 nouns, both of which also end in -a. As a result, all class 2 nouns behave similarly because of the requirement of paradigmatic uniformity. For the sake of illustrating the selection of optimal forms, let us assume that all affixes need the selectional specifications given in (8), and that no affix is applied if such a specification is not met. However, in some instances there is a choice. Therefore, further inviolable constraints are needed because certain combinations of stem and affix should be avoided and the generated forms should fail in a context where the categorial specifications conflict with each other. In particular, the features V and N are incompatible. (12) a. S PECIFICITY Choose the affix with the more specific selectional information. 10 b. C OMPATIBILITY Do not insert a form in a context in which the categorial specifications are incompatible. The ordering of these constraints is summarized in (13). 10 This

type of specificity is called input specificity by Wunderlich & Fabri (1995).

384

Dieter Wunderlich

(13) Ranking of the constraints S PEC, C OMP, M AX(+hr)/–pl, a]  *(+hr)/V –anim  M AX(+hr) Put into words: “Realize both accusative and genitive, unless inanimate nouns occur in accusative contexts, excluding class 2 nouns (ending in -a, where there exists the accusative morpheme /-u/).” The following tableaux show the selection of the optimal singular form in accusative contexts, characterized by [+hr]V . Forms ending in /-y/ are blocked by C OMP because they are specified as [+hr] N ; S PEC does not have any function here, because the selectional contexts of the suffixes are fully specified; there is no default suffix assumed, in contrast to the plural. (14) Selection of optimal forms in an accusative singular context a. Inanimate class 2 nouns ( a] ) S PEC C OMP M AX(+hr)/ *(+hr)/V M AX(+hr) –pl, a] –anim karta *! * kart-y *! ☞kart-u b. Inanimate class 1 nouns (masc) S PEC C OMP M AX(+hr)/ *(+hr)/V M AX(+hr) –pl, a] –anim ☞stol * stol-a *! stol-y *! c. Animate class 1 nouns (masc) S PEC C OMP M AX(+hr)/ *(+hr)/V M AX(+hr) –pl, a] –anim student *! ☞student-a student-y *! d. Animate class 3 nouns ( PAL]) S PEC C OMP M AX(+hr)/ *(+hr)/V M AX(+hr) –pl, a] –anim ☞mat’ * mater’-i *!

Directional Syncretism

385

As already stated in the foregoing discussion, the A/N.sg syncretism of karta is blocked by the higher-ranked contextualized M AX-constraint. The A/N.sg syncretism of stol follows from the fact that stol is inanimate. The A/N.sg syncretism of mat’ follows from the fact that the only available class 3 affix /-y/ is restricted to genitive. Finally, the A/G.sg syncretism of student follows from the fact that student is animate, and /-a/ is an unrestricted (+hr)-affix. As a means of summarizing the discussion, I list the sources for the appearance or blocking of syncretisms in (15). Thus, all syncretism turns out to be an epiphenomenon. (15) A/N and A/G syncretisms in Russian nouns A/N syncretism A/G syncretism appears because is blocked because appears because is blocked because no affix is an affix is only underspec- two specific available (class 3) available (class 2) ified affixes are affixes are available (class available 1 and plural) (class 2) a higher-ranked an even higheronly one specific constraint blocks ranked constraint genitive affix is the existing affix forces the existing available (class 3) (class 1, class 4) affix to appear (class 2)

In the evaluations shown in (14), the constraint S PEC was irrelevant. That S PEC is necessary can be shown with examples from the plural. (16) Selection of optimal forms in an accusative plural context a. Inanimate class 2 nouns ( a] ) S PEC C OMP M AX(+hr)/ *(+hr)/V M AX(+hr) –pl, a] –anim ☞kart-y * kart-ov *! * kart *!

386

Dieter Wunderlich

b. Animate class 2 nouns ( a] ) S PEC C OMP M AX(+hr)/ *(+hr)/V M AX(+hr) –pl, a] –anim belk-i *! belk-ov *! ☞belok The tableau in (16-b) illustrates that the competing form belkov is ruled out because no selectional condition is associated with /-ov/, in comparison to the condition C], which has a specific selectional requirement that is met and hence is more specific. This example also demonstrates that lexical underspecification (in this case, of the selectional information associated with an affix) leads to some overgeneration of inflected forms, and therefore forces the existence of constraints such as S PEC which block the ungrammatical forms. From the perspective of lexical economy, additional selectional information is undesirable, and should therefore be reduced. This is the motivation behind the notion of a default affix. However, additional constraints that replace possible lexical information should be as general as possible, and be motivated by independent reasons. This is indeed the case for S PEC, which plays a role in all cognitive domains. Recall that Russian has three suffixes that serve to derive all accusative and genitive singular forms of nouns: /-u/ is specified for accusative, /-y/ is specified for genitive, and /-a/ is unspecified. Each is associated with different selectional conditions. Is it possible to determine a default suffix in this class? The best candidate would be /-a/, but then the question arises of how /-a/ can be blocked for the inflection classes 2 and 3. Note that /-a/ when applied to an a-ending noun is subject to the Obligatory Contour Principle, which motivates an Avoid constraint such as *(-a)/ a] (“Avoid the ending /-a/ with nouns ending in -a.”). Likewise, a C-ending noun is not a good candidate for marking a case by C], which then motivates an Avoid constraint such as *(C])/ C] (“Avoid the condition that the noun ends in C with nouns ending in C”). If both of these constraints are generalized for palatalized contexts, one arrives at constraints whose contexts are complementary to the respective selectional conditions. Therefore, (17-a) and (17-b) are quite good candidates for Avoid constraints. Less motivated are Avoid constraints such as those in (17-c) and (17-d), especially (17-d) with a negatively specified domain.

Directional Syncretism

387

(17) Complementarity of selectional conditions and the contexts of Avoid constraints Exponent a. A/G.sg b. A/G.pl c. G.sg d. A.sg

/-a/ C] /-y/ /-u/

Lexical Selectional Avoid information condition constraint +hr / C] ∨ o] *(-a)/ a] ∨ PAL] +pl,+hr / a] ∨ o] *(C]) / C] ∨ PAL] (+hr)N / a] ∨ PAL] *(-y)/ C] ∨ o] (+hr)V / a] *(-u)/ non a]

From the perspective of economy, there is no difference between a disjunctive context of an Avoid constraint and a disjunctive selectional condition associated with the lexical entry. In contrast, for the suffix /-u/ a selectional condition is more economical. From the perspective of a language learner, however, positive instances are favored; he or she will be more likely to detect affix-specific selectional conditions than language-specific Avoid constraints, beside such obvious constraints as *(-a)/ a] and *(C])/ C]. I have no definite opinion regarding the question of how much information is stored in the lexical entries and how much belongs to the constraints. In general, I would prefer a solution that relieves the constraint component of idiosyncratic languagespecific constraints. The suffix /-u/ also gives rise to the language-specific constraint M AX(+hr)/–pl, a]. In a purely generative account the -u accusative rule can easily be formulated, but in such an account the animacy split remains mysterious. Apart from a few exceptions, inanimate nouns choose the nominative form when accusative is required, while animate nouns choose the genitive form in this context. In theory, it could be just the other way around. Once one incorporates the animacy split into the analysis by means of a general markedness constraint, it is the exception that becomes problematic. The question, then, is not why syncretism arises, but why it is resolved in some instances but not others. Therefore, one has to deal with the fact that there is one accusative suffix (namely /-u/) that is possible with inanimate nouns. From the generative perspective, this affix gets preference because it is more specific. From the constraint perspective, one has to deal with the question of what makes class 2 nouns so special that they can override the general constraint. I have no ready explanation of why the suffix /-u/ exists in Russian nouns. The best suggestion I can give is that gender distinctions made in the nominative should also be visible in the accusative. The language-specific

388

Dieter Wunderlich

constraint M AX(+hr)/–pl, a] would then reflect a more general constraint of paradigmatic distinctivity (or expressiveness). In any case, the problem of the -u accusative rule is a minor problem compared with the mystery imposed by the direction of the animacy split. There may be alternative explanations of the Russian nominal forms chosen in accusative contexts. The point I have tried to make is that any sort of rules of referral are unnecessary. In my account it is the interaction of categorial information, lexical representation, and a few constraints that serves the purpose in question. This account could be extended to some minor classes of Russian nouns in which D.sg/G.sg syncretism is observed (marked by /-i/); these nouns either have /-u/ in the accusative (linija (‘line’)) or are subject to A/N syncretism (ˇcast’ (‘part’)). Note that dative [+hr,+lr] and genitive [+hr] N form a natural class characterized by [+hr], which also includes accusative; therefore, a D/G syncretism can arise only if the forms that occupy accusative contexts are determined by independent means (such as the suffix /-u/ or the constraint *(+hr)V /inanim). There are also instances of dative-locative syncretism: in class 2 nouns (kárt-e (‘to/in the map’)), as well as in the above mentioned classes with D/G syncretism. This indicates that the Russian locative is also based on the feature [+hr], with an additional semantic feature. Recall that kárt-u is specified as [+hr]V and kárt-y as [+hr]N ; this leaves space for kárt-e being specified simply as [+hr] (dative or locative). In contrast, no syncretism appears with the instrumental, which should be considered a purely semantic case in Russian. Altogether, these facts strongly indicate an underspecification analysis of syncretism. 4.

The G.Sg/N.Pl Syncretism in Indo-European

Within the Indo-European family, many instances of syncretism between G.sg and N.pl can be found. This kind of homonymy is, however, quite rare outside of Indo-European. Tables (18) to (20) illustrate the syncretism with examples from Latin, Greek, and Russian.

Directional Syncretism

389

(18) Syncretism of G.sg and N.pl in Latin o-declension a-declension u:-declension ‘wall’ masc. ‘flame’ fem. ‘fruit’ masc. N.sg mu:r-us flamma fru:ct-us G.sg mu:r-i: flamm-ae fru:ct-u:s N.pl mu:r-i: flamm-ae fru:ct-u:s (19) Syncretism of G.sg and N.pl in the Attic declension of Classical Greek ‘temple’ ‘gracious’ N.sg neó:-s íleo:-s G.sg neó: íleo: N.pl neó: íleo: (20) Syncretism of G.sg and N.pl in Russian class 1 class 4 class 2 class 3 ‘factory’ masc. ‘swamp’ neuter ‘map’ fem. ‘notebook’ fem. N.sg zavód bolót-o kárt-a tetrád’ G.sg zavód-a bolót-a kárt-y tetrád-i ↓ ↑ ↑ N.pl zavód-y bolót-a kárt-y tetrád-i For Stump (2001), all these instances exhibit directional syncretism, represented by rules of referral. In the Russian case, which he discusses in detail, he assumes bidirectional syncretism, illustrated in (20). The two directions of referral can be detected if one looks at the masculines in class 1, where G.sg and N.pl have different exponents: (21) Class 1 suffixes a. /-a/, (+hr)N b. /-y/, +pl Obviously, the first suffix can be generalized to class 4 genitives, and the second suffix can be generalized to all non-neuter plurals. More specifically, class 4 neuter nouns share the G.sg ending with the masculines, but in addition have the ending /-a/ in N.pl. Therefore, Stump argues, their N.pl should be considered as patterning after G.sg; that is, there should be a rule of referral G.sg → N.pl for class 4 neuter nouns. Likewise, class 2 and class 3 nouns share the N.pl with class 1 masculines and have the same ending in the

390

Dieter Wunderlich

G.sg. In this case, then, a rule of referral with the opposite direction should be assumed, that is, N.pl → G.sg. Consequently, the language learner who has to detect the proper generalizations about the Russian nominal paradigm not only has to find out the syncretism, but also needs evidence for the direction of referral. In other words, the Russian-learning child first has to detect the class 1 masculine suffixes in (21) in order to be able to make the respective generalizations for the neuters of class 4, as well as for class 2 and class 3 nouns. Because of such cognitively unmotivated dependencies, I doubt whether rules of referral have any psycholinguistic reality. One could think of other interpretations for those rules of referral, for instance, that they capture diachronic generalizations, but no such claim is made by Stump. Stump’s bidirectional analysis for the G.sg/N.pl syncretism in Russian is confronted with further problems. First, n-stems in Russian display a distribution of /-a/ and /-y/ which is the reverse of that of class 1 masculine nouns, as shown in (22-a). Therefore, one could also argue for another direction in the rules of referral. Moreover, the exponent of N.pl of neuter nouns is /-a/ in several Indo-European languages, which is shown in (22-b) for Greek and in (23) for Latin. Therefore, from a diachronic perspective it is highly unmotivated to consider G.sg → N.Pl to be the rule of referral for neuter nouns in Russian. In any case, neuter nouns usually do not participate in the G.sg/N.pl syncretism, unless G.sg ends in /-a/ for independent reasons. (22) G.sg and N.pl of neuter nouns in Russian and Greek a. Russian b. Greek n-stems o-declension consonantal stems ‘name’ ‘gift’ ‘body’ N.sg ímja do:r-on so:ma G.sg ímen-i do:r-ou so:mat-os N.pl imen-á do:r-a so:mat-a (23) G.sg and N.pl of neuter nouns in Latin o-declension u-declension consonantal stems ‘gift’ ‘horn’ ‘gender’ N.sg do:n-um cornu genus G.sg do:n-i cornu:-s gener-is N.pl do:n-a cornu-a gener-a

Directional Syncretism

391

A less strong view of the observed syncretism is simply to accept that both /-a/ and /-y/ are homonymous suffixes. (24) Affixes that show G.sg/N.pl syncretism a. /-a/, with neuter nouns ending in /-o/ (class 4) b. /-y/, with nouns ending in /-a/ or PAL (class 2 & class 3) c. General format: < (+hr)N ∨ +pl > We may ask why such an ambiguity in the set of affixes exists. First, these affixes mark just one dimension, either that of case or that of number, but not both. The contexts in which these forms occur are largely complementary, so that the context easily can resolve the ambiguity. Moreover, it seems to be economical for a language to employ only a small set of affixes, even at the price of ambiguity. Note that /-z/ serves several inflectional functions in English (dog-s, he play-s); similarly, /-s/, /-n/, and /-t/ are all polyfunctional in German. Second, the observed syncretism permits analogy by means of crossparadigmatic uniformity, and at the same time some variance in the distribution of affixes, that is, efficient distinction of inflectional classes. New lexical items can be patterned according to other existing and productive classes. Based on the observation that the G.sg/N.pl syncretism is found again and again in many Indo-European languages, while it is quite rarely attested in other language families, one can assume that Proto-Indo-European already had this kind of syncretism in productive nominal inflection. In fact, historical linguists consider -os/-o:s to be the exponents of G.sg/ N.pl with IndoEuropean masculine or feminine o-stems (and -s with some other classes of nouns).11 Such an accidental syncretism, caused by reasons other than underspecification, can be captured by the meta-generalization that allows affixes to have the information . More precisely, a meta-generalization of this kind should be considered to be an identity constraint on possible affix information, which, however, happens to be violated in the neuter nouns of Indo-European, as well as in the masculines of class 1 Russian nouns. 11 The o-stems also have -os in the N.sg. According

to Beekes (1995, 193f.), -s was a former ergative marker, which was not distinguished from the genitive. This affix remained after the nominal system had shifted to an accusative-based system.

392

Dieter Wunderlich

(25) I DENT((+hr)N ,+pl): Exponents of genitive and plural are identical. 12 Analogy is not restricted to the actual forms of affixes; it can also be triggered by the grammatical function of affixes. As already mentioned, all 2sg and 1pl inflected verbs of Hua have identical forms, regardless of how they are spelled out in the respective mood, a fact that can be captured by the constraint I DENT([+2], [+1,+pl]). Recall that Stump (2001), too, accepts a metageneralization in this case, which he subsumes under the type of symmetrical syncretism. My proposal, then, is to subsume many more instances that have been claimed to exhibit directional syncretism under the type of symmetrical syncretism. There is no need for the stronger device of directional syncretism; on the contrary, the required rules of referral are confronted with serious learning problems. It is therefore not necessary to investigate in detail whether in the Latin examples given above in (23) G.sg patterns after N.pl or the other way around. In Latin, the constraint I DENT((+hr) N ,+pl) is rather strong; it is violated only by neuter nouns (ending in -a in N.pl), as well as by nouns belonging to the consonantal inflection (where, however, G.sg and N.pl share the final /-s/). Without going into details, I would suggest that *I DENT((+hr)N ,+pl)/neuter ranks above I DENT((+hr) N ,+pl), so that separate suffixes can appear with neuter nouns. If, however, the inflected forms of items in a small and unproductive class are already listed in the lexicon, they are no longer subject to any of the inflectional constraints. This could have happened in the consonantal inflection of Latin. A language learner probably first acquires full inflected forms. He/she will then try to generalize by searching for affixes that are specific to a word class characterized by phonological features and/or gender (as detected through agreement patterns). It is not clear whether the language learner also detects cross-paradigmatic regularities, such as the above-mentioned ones, and whether all language learners do so. Only if a language learner performs this step, which probably will be rather late in the acquisition process, will he construct a constraint ranking that puts certain affix information before others. Thus, the constraints at work here are language-specific. On the basis of examples from Icelandic, Wurzel (1987) suggested that paradigms can be best characterized by a set of paradigm structure condi12 This identity constraint belongs to the family of Output-Output constraints. If the exponents are identical, then, of course, the inflected forms are identical, too.

Directional Syncretism

393

tions, ordered from more general ones to class-specific ones. By their very nature, most of these conditions are highly language-specific, and it is doubtful whether a language learner will ever acquire them. By contrast, the markedness constraints discussed in section 2 and 3 are based on universally given scales. What is language-specific there is whether a gender such as neuter is established and at which point the faithfulness constraint Max(+hr) intervenes. In any case, a language learner will acquire an “unstipulated” syncretism based on a natural class and harmonic alignment probably earlier than a “symmetrical” syncretism in which two independent dimensions share the same exponent accidentally. Note in this connection that German constitutes another case where two marked dimensions share the same exponents. The feminine and plural article forms die and der are identical (except for dative plural with the form den), and all strong nominal elements that agree with the noun share the same endings (ein-e klug-e Frau (‘a wise woman’), einig-e klug-e Männer (‘some wise men’)). Under the assumption that German gender is neutralized in the plural, one can consider feminine and plural to be independent dimensions, so that the syncretism at issue represents just another case of meta-generalization, namely, I DENT(+f,+pl). 5.

Summary

In this paper I have tried to do justice to the concept of directional syncretism. Treating syncretism as induced by a function on paradigm cells makes the strongest claim. However, if a child is assumed to acquire such a kind of syncretism, he or she has to know the content of the syncretism when only halfway through. Why should someone who is learning the language go any further in the process of generalization? The typology of syncretism proposed by Stump is not a real typology, because it is not guided by features of grammar but rather by features of analyzability. If one type of syncretism is characterized by a rule of grammar and another type by a meta-generalization outside grammar, the typology comprises nonparallel categories. Therefore, I reanalyze these meta-generalizations as identity conditions on inflectional elements, thereby contributing to economy. Furthermore, I have extended the class of morphological objects that give rise to syncretism via lexical underspecification. It not only includes the wellknown natural classes, such as those based on gender (e.g., non-feminine

394

Dieter Wunderlich

comprising masculine and neuter), but also classes of morphological case. In the theory outlined in Wunderlich (1997), accusative is a marked case with respect to nominative, and accusative-genitive form a natural class. Therefore, the syncretisms observed with the Russian accusative, which apparently constitute one of the most compelling pieces of evidence in favor of a directional account, can just as well be analyzed by means of lexical underspecification. Such an account is feasible if a general constraint is assumed that regulates the animacy split. As a result, all syncretism should be regarded as a matter of lexical information, supplemented by a set of constraints that determine the choice between inflected forms. Stump’s typology is reduced to his third and fourth types, so-called unstipulated and symmetrical syncretism. In the unstipulated type we find genuine lexical underspecification (no disjunctions), while in the symmetrical type we find disjunctions that may be forced only by identity constraints. The problem with these constraints (or meta-generalizations, according to Stump) is that they are language-specific. A constraint that forbids the expression of accusative in inanimate nouns, and similarly a constraint that forbids the expression of accusative in neuter nouns, is well-motivated by universal tendencies. However, a constraint that requires N.pl and G.sg to be identically realized certainly is not universal. Nevertheless, both Stump and I are convinced that there exist quite systematic syncretisms that can be handled only by such a device. The concept of lexical economy makes it at least plausible that independent grammatical features (such as plural and genitive, feminine and plural, 1sg and 2pl) may share their exponents. Needless to say, there is much more evidence for the existence of language-specific constraints, which come into being only as a result of the individual history of languages (or language families) and are transmitted to subsequent generations by the combined forces of imitation and analogy. References Aissen, Judith 1999 Markedness and subject choice in Optimality Theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17, 673-711. Beekes, Robert S.P. 1995 Comparative Indo-European Linguistics. An Introduction. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Directional Syncretism

395

Brown, Dunstan P. & Andrew R. Hippisley 1994 Conflict in Russian Genitive Plural Assignment: A Solution Represented in DATR. Journal of Slavic Linguistics 2, 48-76. Corbett, Greville G. 1982 Gender in Russian: An Account of Gender Specification and Its Relationship to Declension. Russian Linguistics 6, 197-232. 1991 Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Evans, Nicholas, Dunstan Brown, & Greville Corbett 2001 Polysemy in the Dalabon Pronominal Prefix Paradigm: A Referral-Based Treatment. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2000, 187-231. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Haiman, John 1980 Hua: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Müller, Gereon 2002 Remarks on Nominal Inflection in German. In Ingrid Kaufmann & Barbara Stiebels (eds.), More than Words. A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 113145. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Schmitt-Brandt, Robert 1998 Einführung in die Indogermanistik. Tübingen: Francke. Stiebels, Barbara 2000 Linker Inventories, Linking Splits and Lexical Economy. In Barbara Stiebels & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), Lexicon in Focus, 211-245. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 2002 Typologie des Argumentlinkings: Ökonomie und Expressivität. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Stump, Gregory 1993 On Rules of Referral. Language 69, 449-479. 2001 Inflectional Morphology. A Theory of Paradigm Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wunderlich, Dieter 1996 Minimalist Morphology: The Role of Paradigms. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 1995, 93-114. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 1997 Cause and the Structure of Verbs. Linguistic Inquiry 28, 27-68. 2001 A Correspondence-Theoretic Analysis of Dalabon Transitive Paradigms. In Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2000, 233-252. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Wunderlich, Dieter & Ray Fabri 1995 Minimalist Morphology: An Approach to Inflection. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 14, 236-294. Wurzel, Wolfgang Ullrich 1987 Paradigmenstrukturbedingungen: Aufbau und Veränderung von Flexionsparadigmen. In A. G. Ramat (ed.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 629-644. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Index ±abstract, 105, 107, 112 ±animate, 32, 41–43, 46, 210, 361 ±back, 191 ±bounded, 115, 116 ±collective, 105, 112 ±dative, 350 ±definite, 164, 168, 176 ±diminutive, 105 ±direct, 364 ±directional, 216 ±f, see ±feminine ±feminine, 124, 325, 346 ±g, see ±governed ±genitive, 350 ±governed, 125 ±human, 31–33, 36, 40–43, 46 ±instrumental, 350 ±internal structure, 115 ±locational, 216 ±locative, 350 ±marginal, 216 ±n, see ±neuter ±neuter, 124, 325 ±nonascriptive, 216 ±o, see ±oblique ±object, 200 ±objective, 364 ±oblique, 125, 200, 216, 324, 350 ±partial, 216 ±partitive, 350 ±phrasal, 216 ±plural, 325 ±quantified, 216 ±quantifying, 216 ±subject, 200 *(+hr)/v anim (constraint), 382 *(+hr)/v inanim (constraint), 382 *2 (No Feature Doublets) (constraint), 126 *2(weak) (constraint), 137 *3 (No Feature Triples) (constraint), 126 *M (constraint), 146 *M(D,ein) (constraint), 152 *PL(DP) (constraint), 235

*[+hr]/anim (constraint), 377 *[+hr]/fem. (constraint), 378 *[+hr]/female (constraint), 378 *[+hr]/group (constraint), 378 *[+hr]/inanim (constraint), 377 *[+hr]/male (constraint), 378 *[+hr]/masc. (constraint), 378 *[+hr]/neuter (constraint), 377 *[+hr]/non-masc. ∨ plural (constraint), 378 *[+hr]/non-neuter (constraint), 377 *[+hr]/plural (constraint), 378 *[+lr]/anim (constraint), 377 *[+lr]/inanim (constraint), 377 *g(Nm) (constraint), 146 *o(Nm) (constraint), 146 *o/g(Nm) (constraint), 146 *x (constraint), 126 abstract vowel, 204 across-the-board dependency, 9 agglutination, 133, 221, 222, 321, 366 Agree, 27, 28, 219, 220, 272 agreement rule, 270, 276, 277, 282, 292– 294 Align(PL,L/R,DP,L/R) (constraint), 236 amalgamation, 307, 308 anim, 375 animacy, 191, 192, 209, 338, 341, 364, 376, 378–388 also see ±animate, 98–117 animacy hierarchy, 98, 100, 111–113, 116, 256, 338 animacy split, 379, 381, 382, 387, 388, 394 anti-agreement, 133 apposition narrow, 162, 164, 184–186 appositive construction, 276, 293, 294, 309 back formation, 113 binomials, 211 bleeding, 357

398

Index

blocking, 385 Blocking Principle, 206 cardinality, 237, 254 case classification tree for –, 324, 350 contextual definition of, 376, 377 main percolation line for, 144 secondary, 330 semantic, 80, 198 case marking, 269, 272, 273, 276–279, 291, 292, 302, 317 absence of – with nouns, 10, 148– 152, 269, 302 in feminine nouns, 312, 317 in feminine NPs, 317 in non-feminine NPs, 317 case syncretism, 328–330, 361 category, 324 non-terminal, 325 class marker, 25–34, 36, 37, 43, 44 class marker phrase, 25, 26 clitic, 243, 249–251, 263 Compatibility, 8, 199, 205–207, 215, 330– 332 definition of, 331, 383 Compatibility (constraint), 383 competition, 12, 205 complement of a natural class, 209 constraint local, 206 transderivational, 206 translocal, 206 countability, 115–117 continuum, 116 dative prenominal, 181–184 DATR, 362 declarative approach to morphology, 322 declension Estonian, 79 German, 135–158 Latin, 345 Russian, 56, 189–217, 321–367, 378–388

declension class, see inflection class decomposition of case, 125, 190, 200–202, 322 in German, 125 in Russian, 201 of inflection class, 190, 202–206 in Russian, 203 of number, 124 default, 362 default agreement, 282 default ending, 335, 336, 349, 353 default vowel, 334 definite article, 170, 183 definite description, 182 definiteness, 277, 283, 287, 338 also see ±definite, 162, 165, 168, 170–172, 176–178 position, 168 definiteness scale, 259, 338 deMorgan’s laws, 209 Dep-x (constraint), 126 derivational morphology, 31, 99, 101, 102, 221 derivational suffixation, see derivational morphology determiner complex, 164, 167, 168, 172–176, 182, 184 Determiner Phrase (DP), 22, 23, 25, 27, 124, 179, 181–184, 269–297 diagrammaticity, 335 differential object marking (DOM), 211, 337–339, 341 non-, 339 diminutive, 105, 106, 108, 109, 113 displacement, 220 dissociation, 222 Distributed Morphology, 11, 34, 199, 200, 210, 217, 222 dominant (Hjelmslev), 339 economy, 68, 219, 222, 229–265, 383, 386, 387, 391, 393, 394 Elsewhere Condition also see Specificity Condition, 206, 323

Index empty categorization, 329–332, 334, 335, 340, 341, 357, 360 epenthetic vowel, 381 Eval, 122, 156 progressive, 156 traditional, 156 eval-based inventory of feature bundles, 140 ExpressPlurality (constraint), 235 external sandhi, 211, 349 extrinsic rule ordering, 12, 206 f-morpheme, 11, 199 factorial typology, 230, 236–243, 255, 256, 263, 264 faithfulness, 122, 235, 249, 259, 263 Dep, 122 Max, 122 feature checking, 270 within DP, 280–290 feature cooccurrence constraint, 122, 123, 126–128, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145, 146, 153, 156–158 feature deletion, 219 feature hierarchy, 207 feature interpretability, 220 feature spreading, 286, 287 feature-changing rule, 361 flexion, 321 floating vowel, see theme vowel form category, 326, 332–335 formative suffix, 330 free relative clause, 9 functional category, 34, 282, 284, 287, 291, 326, 332, 333 AgrD, 284 D, 22, 143 functional verb construction (‘Funktionsverbgefüge’), 307–308 Gen, 122 gender, 21, 23–25, 27–46, 99–102, 110– 115, 124, 125, 144, 157, 202, 231, 236, 239, 240, 302, 306– 308, 317, 322, 323, 329, 330, 339, 341, 342, 344, 360, 361, 378, 387, 392, 393

399

agreement, 25, 28, 46 and differential object marking, 338, 339, 341 and inflection class, 194, 221, 342, 343, 345, 353, 378 and personal pronouns, 360 assignment, 100 classification system for, 340 classification tree for –, 325 common, 344 definition of, 25 differentiation, 327 first – classification, 325 fixed, 35, 141 fourth, 99 fused with number, 243 inherited, 344 intrinsic, 34, 344 natural, 104 neutralization of, 327, 339, 360, 393 of form, 344 of lexeme, 344 primary, 306 scale, 377 sequence, 99 sub-, 326, 344 superordinate, 327, 336 variable, 35 Gender Phrase, 23–25 gender syncretism, see syncretism with gender general ending, 335 genitive prenominal, 162, 164, 165, 181–184 suffix -er, 316 suffix -s, 150 Genitive Condition, 315, 316, 354 definition of, 314 genitive-accusative, 338–341 GmCor (Governed Masculine Correspondence) (constraint), 155 goal, 219 harmonic alignment, 260, 263, 376, 377, 393 head movement, 22, 23, 26, 30

400

Index

hierarchy animacy, see animacy hierarchy of nominal categorizations, 100 of suffixes, 106, 110–112 homonymy, 128, 138, 139, 155, 306, 310, 316, 321, 330, 353, 354, 361, 364, 365 avoidance of, see No-Homonymy Condition memory-based, 133–137, 141–142 no- – condition, see No-Homonymy Condition true, 128, 208, 215, 366 iconicity, 125, 211–212, 322, 335–336, 349, 366 Iconicity Principle, 212 imperfection, 189, 190, 212, 219, 220, 222 impoverishment, 8, 210, 361 Inclusiveness Condition, 222 indeclinable noun, 78, 79, 193, 221, 360 indefinite article, 170, 171, 175, 180 ineffability, 278–280 inflection class, 24, 25, 30, 37–41, 44, 46, 51–93, 139, 189–222, 271, 273, 275, 280, 283, 285, 288, 297, 341–360, 378 A, B in Russian, 345 alpha, beta in Russian, 203 definition of, 24, 52 I, II, III in Russian, 345 I, II, III, IV in Russian, 191 neutralization of –es in the plural, 352 numbering of –es, 343 inflection class feature, 189, 194–222, 378 in syntax, 217–222 meta-, 202 Instantiated Basic Paradigm Requirement, 14, 191 item and arrangement model (IA), 57 Kennform, see leading form languages Abkhaz, 246, 247, 255, 264

Arabic, 229, 231, 234 Archi, 243 Basque, 244, 245, 247, 253, 255, 263, 264 Bulgarian, 212 Catalan, 202, 212 Chinese, 234 Classical Greek, 373, 388–390 Dogon, 243, 244, 252, 253, 255, 263, 264 Dutch, 134 English, 26, 27, 64, 65, 109, 116, 117, 181, 230, 231, 236, 238, 239, 254–256, 263, 264, 277 Estonian, 53, 55, 68, 69, 79–91 Finnish, 243 French, 28–30 Georgian, 232, 237, 241, 242, 260, 264 German, 45, 67, 76, 97–117, 121, 125, 133, 135–158, 161–186, 198, 200, 202, 212, 230, 231, 233, 239, 240, 242, 243, 254– 256, 263, 264, 269, 273, 275, 277, 280, 283, 285, 286, 288, 290, 297, 301–318, 354, 373, 374, 378, 391, 393 Gilyak, see languages: Nivkh Greek, 27, 29, 30, 37–42, 45, 46, 189, 211, 286, 349 Hebrew, 22, 23, 27, 29, 30, 41, 42, 45, 46 Hua, 374, 392 Hungarian, 232, 233, 236–238, 241, 242, 247–249, 255, 258, 259, 262–264 Italian, 30, 34–37, 40–42, 45, 46, 134 Lakota, 256 Latin, 37, 67, 200, 321, 342, 343, 345, 373, 388–390, 392 Latvian, 202 Laz, 237, 241, 264 Middle High German, 308 Nepali, 234 Nivkh, 234

Index Old Bulgarian, 195, 345 Old Church Slavonic, see languages: Old Bulgarian Old English, 194 Old High German, 171 Persian, 233, 234, 239, 249, 257, 259–264 Polish, 210, 216, 324, 364 Quechua, 232 Russian, 30, 37, 56, 58, 60–62, 67– 69, 71, 73–76, 78, 84, 90, 91, 189–217, 283, 287, 321–367, 373, 375, 378–391, 394 Sesotho, 239, 240 Spanish, 23, 25, 26, 28–37, 40–42, 45, 46, 189 Swabian, 175 Tagalog, 232, 233, 237, 241, 250– 255, 264 Tamil, 238, 239, 243, 248, 249, 255, 263, 265 Turkish, 232–234, 237, 248, 257– 259, 262–265, 321 Urarina, 232 Vietnamese, 232, 234 West-Flemish, 45 Yimas, 231, 233, 239, 240, 263 leading form, 52, 67–69 definition of, 52 left edge, 292 Leftmost M (constraint), 146 Legibility Condition, 218, 220 level of representation, 220 lexeme splitting, 155 lexical array, 199 lexically congruent, 53, 68 lexically economical, 53, 68 lexicon and default agreement, 282 and inflected wordforms, 66, 70, 71, 170 and inherent gender specification, 43 and OT input, 122 and underspecification, 242 and unproductive classes, 378, 392

401

as a list of exceptions, 199 mental, see mental lexicon morphological component of, 123 network-based model of, 78 lexicon optimization, 122 local ambiguity as morphological syncretism, 9 locative, 191, 192, 196, 197, 200, 201, 205, 213, 217, 248, 346, 348, 349, 352, 388 logical form (LF), 219 long ending, 347 of adjective, 337 M(Case) (Main Percolation Line for Case) (constraint), 145 macrodeclension, 342 macroparadigm, 55, 61, 62, 74–76, 342 markedness, 322, 325, 328, 329, 335–337, 344, 349, 350, 355, 361, 362, 364, 365 of gender, 338, 339, 349 of inflection class, 350, 352 of number, 327, 339 markedness constraint, 122 marker sharing, 344 matching effect, 9 Max(+hr) (constraint), 377 Max(+hr)/ –pl, a] (constraint), 383 Max(Pl) (constraint), 235 Max-f (constraint), 126 Max-fn(w/n) (constraint), 137 Max-fnog (constraint), 126 Max-g (constraint), 126 Max-Head(PL) (constraint), 235 Max-n (constraint), 126 Max-o (constraint), 126 Max-o(Prestige) (constraint), 151 Max-og (constraint), 126 Maximize Matching Effects, 221 measure construction, 308–309 mental lexicon, 78, 121, 126, 128, 133, 137, 140 Merge, 219, 221 Minimalist Morphology, 11, 14, 144 Minimalist Program, 12, 190, 219, 222

402

Index

mixed inflection of adjective, 152–156, 178, 283 morpheme case, 380 null, 12, 205, 211 morpheme status of inflection marker, 51, 54, 55, 57, 58, 63, 199, 204 morphological transformation, 70 Move, 219, 220 N-movement, 26, 30, 44 neutralization, 361 No Blur Principle (NBP), 14, 54, 65 definition of, 64 No-Homonymy Condition, 353, 354 nomen actionis, 107 nomen agentis, 102 nominalization, 98, 102, 107, 108 noun abstract, 114, 115, 117 collective, 97, 104, 112–114 count, 115–117 mass, 113, 115, 116 noun class, 231 noun ellipsis, 26, 29, 30, 44–46 Noun Phrase (NP), 124, 161–186, 198, 220, 222 topology, 161 number, 97, 100, 101, 113, 124, 125, 133, 134, 144, 157, 202, 322, 323, 327, 333, 339 classification, 325 classification tree for –, 325 value, 360 number agreement also see plural agreement, 229–231, 241, 259 number marking, 229–265 Number Phrase, 22, 26 numeral construction, 237 nur-phrase, 165–168, 179 Optimality Theory (OT), 13, 121–124, 126, 206, 210, 229, 234–265, 270–272, 275, 376, 381

stochastic, 255 optionality, 272–276 paradigm, 322 additional, 359–360 as an epiphenomenon, 190 cell, 322, 362 circular, 133–135 exemplary, 52, 53, 60, 66–69, 79, 81, 91 fully specified, 330–332, 358, 366 geometry, 8, 133, 323 inflectional, 271, 273, 276, 283, 296, 322, 364–366 irregular, 323 macro-, see macroparadigm meta-, 197 of demonstrative pronoun, 322 reality of, 13, 190, 354 sub-, 365 traditional, 322, 323, 366 underspecified, 304–306, 312, 313, 322–341, 356–359, 364 with minimal case distinction, 365 paradigm economy, 55–79 Paradigm Economy Principle (PEP), 14, 51, 54, 191 definition of, 54 paradigm scheme, 333 paradigm structure condition, 392 paradigmatic uniformity, 383, 391 Parallel (NP,A-Infl) (constraint), 146 parasitic gap, 9 partitive, 80–90, 179, 293, 309, 346, 348, 352 percolation line, 144–148, 150, 152, 153, 155–158 phonological features and inflection class, 194 plural, 333 plural agreement, 232, 238, 242, 243, 246, 260 plural marking, 97–101, 212–216, 229, 352–354 and (in)animacy, 230, 257, 259, 260, 263

Index and (in)definiteness, 233, 257, 259– 262 and (non)specificity, 230, 233, 258– 260, 262, 263 by lexical affix, 233, 235, 243–255, 263 by phrasal affix, 233, 235, 243–255, 263 obligatoriness of, 254 optionality of, 250, 254, 259 plurality, 97, 101, 102, 110–117, 231, 232, 234, 235, 243, 245, 246, 250, 254, 256–258, 260, 262, 341 agreement split, 259 coding of, 97 plurality split, 257, 263 plurality splits hierarchy, 256 portmanteau morpheme, 15, 121–123, 133, 220, 221 possessive construction, 181, 183 prediction rule, 361 Prepositional Phrase (PP), 253, 279, 284, 303, 310, 314 prestigious preposition, 151 principe de compensation, 339 Principle of Maximal Paradigmatic Contrast, 121, 128, 134, 135, 137– 139, 141 definition of, 133 probe, 219, 220 process morph, 91 pronominal inflection in German, see strong inflection of determiner pronoun as transitive determiner, 277 inflection of, 200, 334 nominally inflected, 153 personal, 340 pronunciation recent vs. traditional – in Russian, 336 Proper Inclusion Principle, 206 proper name, 152, 183, 185, 259, 286, 302–304, 318 P¯an.ini’s rule, 323

403

Q-morpheme, 11, 199, 216 quantifier (Q), 167, 168, 174, 175 floating, 166, 176 negative, 167 negative existential, 168 universal, 168 readjustment rule, 64, 361 realization pair, 59 realization rule, 70 reanalysis, 309, 310 relativized head, 218 rule of exponence, 362 rule of referral, 8, 82, 210, 211, 214–217, 361, 362, 373–375, 377–379, 388–390, 392 salience split, 256–263 Schwa-m (constraint), 156 semantic form, 236, 237 set theory, 331 short ending, 347 singular, 190, 231, 233, 234, 237, 239– 242, 250, 254, 256, 260, 333 Sonority Hierarchy, 211, 212, 349, 374 spec-head agreement, 143, 144 specificity, 349, 357, 378 input, 383 Specificity (constraint), 383 Specificity Condition, 13, 198, 205–211, 213–217, 221, 323, 330–332, 341, 348, 354, 359 definition of, 206, 331, 383 specificity of inflection markers definition of, 207 specificity split, 260, 262 spell-out, 11, 37, 199 spell-out rule, 216 Spread-g (constraint), 155 Stammerweiterung (‘stem extension’), 330 stem alternation, 65, 91, 192, 193, 323, 353, 354, 357, 365 stem and paradigm model (SP), 58 stem vowel, see theme vowel stress, 323, 365

404

Index

stress shift, 353 strong declension, see strong inflection strong inflection g-, 291, 294 of adjective, 125, 135–137, 143, 145, 169, 171, 173, 177, 178, 277, 283, 288, 294 of determiner, 125, 135–137, 145, 155, 178, 200, 202, 212, 280, 283, 289, 290 of noun, 141, 142, 302, 305, 306 structure building rule, 70 Subset Principle, 8, 206 suffix chain, 102–110 Suffix Corollary, 302 syncretism, 121, 125, 127, 137, 196–217, 306, 373–394 A/G, 191, 209, 210, 216, 362, 364, 379, 380, 382, 383, 385 A/N, 375–378, 385 and competition, 206 and maximal paradigmatic contrast, 128, 140 and underspecification, 140, 206, 210, 323, 339 bidirectional, 373–375, 389, 390 D/G, 388 due to cooccurrence constraints, 128, 138 G.sg./N.pl., 375, 390, 391 geometric approach, 8, 135, 323 intra-paradigmatic, 190, 197–199, 201, 202, 209, 211, 214, 216, 217 definition of, 190 N.sg./G.pl., 198, 353 symmetrical, 373–375, 392–394 trans-number, 198, 215 trans-paradigmatic, 190, 197–199, 201, 202, 209, 214, 216, 217 definition of, 190 types of, 361–365 unidirectional, 373, 375 unstipulated, 373–375, 393, 394 with gender, 326 with number, 198

Syncretism Principle, 198, 212 definition of, 197 synonymy of endings, 128, 321, 365 target, 219 theme vowel, 24, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37, 82, 195, 196, 334, 380, 381 topology, 161 underdifferentiation, 361 underspecification, 6, 127, 128, 133, 135, 137, 140, 201, 203, 205–210, 213, 214, 218, 230, 233, 240, 242, 304, 306, 312–314, 322, 323, 328, 330–332, 335, 337, 346, 348, 358, 360–364, 374, 375, 379, 380, 386, 388, 391, 393, 394 V* notation, 333 visibility, 287, 290–292 vocative, 200, 351 vowel strength, 349 weak declension, see weak inflection weak inflection of adjective, 137–140, 143, 145, 177, 178, 182, 277, 283, 285, 288, 289 of determiner, 290 of noun, 142, 297, 302, 305 weak masculine, 99, 142 word as the smallest meaningful unit, 51 word and paradigm model (WP), 11, 51, 217, 323 yer also see abstract vowel, 204 zero affix, 64

Contributors Artemis Alexiadou Universität Stuttgart

Jürgen Pafel Universität Stuttgart

James P. Blevins University of Cambridge

Ulrike Sayatz Universität Potsdam

Peter Eisenberg Universität Potsdam

Wolfgang Sternefeld Universität Tübingen

Peter Gallmann Universität Jena

Rolf Thieroff Universität Osnabrück

Lutz Gunkel IDS Mannheim

Bernd Wiese IDS Mannheim

Paweł Karnowski Pázmány Egyetem Piliscsaba

Dieter Wunderlich Universität Düsseldorf

Gereon Müller IDS Mannheim

Gisela Zifonun IDS Mannheim

Albert Ortmann Universität Tübingen