[lingtalks] Monday: Mary Paster (Linguistics Colloquium)

[Klinton Bicknell]

On Monday 6 October at 2pm, Mary Paster (Pomona College; http://pages.pomona.edu/~mp034747/) 
  will give a colloquium in the UCSD Linguistics Department, in AP&M  
4301.

:: Abstract ::

Phonologically Conditioned Affix Order as a Post-Morphological  
Phenomenon

Mary Paster
Pomona College

There are a number of claims in the literature of 'phonologically  
conditioned afix order' (PCAO), where a phonological property of an  
affix and/or stem determines the position and ordering of the affix with
respect to the stem and other affixes (e.g., Hargus & Tuttle's 1997  
analysis of Witsuwit'en) -- including some cases of 'mobile  
affixation' (see Fulmer 1991 on Afar; Noyer 1994 and Kim to appear on  
Huave).
However, a cross-linguistic search for cases of PCAO revealed very  
few, and not very convincing, examples of the phenomenon (Paster  
2006). One of the best potential examples of PCAO, in Pulaar, was  
shown not to be a case of PCAO at all -- the order of affixes in  
Pulaar largely reduces to semantic scope (Paster 2005). The (non-)  
existence of PCAO is crucial to understanding the phonology-morphology  
interface, since theories in which phonology and morphology operate in  
tandem (e.g., a version of Optimality Theory in which phonological  
constraints can outrank morphological constaints in a single 'P >> M'  
ranking schema (McCarthy & Prince 1993a,b)) predict that PCAO should  
be attested in the world's languages, while theories in which  
morphology precedes phonology (as a whole, as in Distributed  
Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), or at each individual level in a  
derivation, as in Lexical Phonology and Morphology (Kiparsky 1982))  
disallow PCAO. In this talk, I claim that there is no such thing as  
'true' PCAO, and I show how several cases of 'fake' PCAO may be  
explained by regular phonological mechanisms such as metathesis and  
autosegmental association conventions (as in Witsuwit'en and Huave,  
respectively) or by external mechanisms (as in Pulaar). On this basis,  
I argue that the 'P >> M' / OT approach to phonology/morphology  
overgenerates and should be abandoned in favor of a more restrictive  
model.

-- 

For further information about the Linguistics department colloquia
series, including the schedule of future events, please visit http://ling.ucsd.edu/events/colloquia.html 
  .