[SynSem] David Erschler (Ben-Gurion U.)

retour Séminaire Syntaxe et Sémantique

David Erschler (Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev)

Number-Sensitive Nominal Circumfixes in Svan and the Timing of Fission

Fission is a postsyntactic operation in Distributed Morphology that splits a node X (with a feature bundle [φ1,…,φn]) into 2 nodes, X1 and X2, redistributing the feature bundle across the two nodes. The majority of the literature assumes late Fission – it occurs at the stage of Vocabulary Insertion and is driven by incomplete discharge of the features of a node by an available Vocabulary Item (Noyer 1992; Halle & Marantz 1993; Harbour 2007, 2008, 2016). On another approach, Fission is early – it precedes Vocabulary Insertion (Calabrese 2003; Arregi & Nevins 2012; Hewett 2022; 2023). Early Fission is independent of specific Vocabulary Items to be inserted in a given head. I use data from the Upper Bal dialect of Svan (South Caucasian) to argue that Fission must precede Vocabulary Insertion.

The argument runs as follows. Overt nominalizing morphology in Svan is consistently circumfixal, which by itself constitutes evidence in favor of early Fission of n0. This evidence is strengthened by the existence of number-sensitive circumfixes, which can be independently shown to correspond to a single head in the narrow syntax, and to instantiate flavors of n0. Moreover, I show that it is logically necessary to posit Fission in order to analyze these morphemes.

This talk is part of CauLaGeNet talk series organised by SFL SynSem group and LLING, (CNRS & U. Nantes).