Download V-X or what is it to be a suffix?

V-X or what is it to be a suffix?
İsa Kerem Bayırlı, Boğaziçi University
Suffixal status of a morpheme is generally taken to be morphological information that is specified in
the lexicon. Functional morphemes are argued to have lexical specifications that determine whether
they show affixal character or not (Lieber, 1980, Baker, 1988, i. a.). In this talk, I would like to raise
the question of whether “suffix” is a primitive lexical object (as the claims above make it to be) or a
derivative object (derivative of a configurational pattern). Is suffixal status of a morpheme
idiosyncratic or is it predictable (from its syntactic positioning)? I will try to answer this question
based on data from Turkish. Consider the tables below:
Table 1.
Existent Structures Non-existent Structures
Glosses
Suffixation
Free Morphemes
Verb-PAST
gel-di
*gel di
Verb-COND
gel-se
*gel se
Verb-PROG
gel-iyor
*gel iyor
Verb-FUT
gel-ecek
*gel ecek
Verb-PERF
gel-miş
*gel miş
Verb-AOR
gel-ir
*gel ir
Verb-NEG-PAST gel-me-di
*gel me-di
In the table above, we see that the functional morpheme above the verb is always a suffix on the verb
and it is never a head-final free morpheme. Now consider also the case with the verbal negation.
Table 2.
Existent Structures Non-existent Structures
Glosses
Suffixation
Free Morphemes
Verb-Verb.NEG-PAST
gel-me-di
*gel-me di
Verb-Verb.NEG-COND
gel-me-se
*gel-me se
Verb-Verb.NEG-PROG
gel-mi-yor
*gel-mi yor
Verb-Verb.NEG-FUT
gel-me-yecek
*gel-me yecek
Verb-Verb.NEG-PERF
gel-me-miş
*gel-me miş
Verb-Verb.NEG-AOR.AGR gel-me-z
*gel-me z
The negation morpheme is verbal in the sense that it shares the same environment with the verb.
Table 2 shows that when there is a morpheme above the verbal negation, it is also a suffix and never a
free morpheme. The examples in the tables seem to suggest a constraint that I will call “V-X”. This
constraint says that the functional morpheme immediately above a verbal root or verbal stem has to be
a suffix on this verbal item. For head-final languages, it predicts that the functional morpheme above
the verbal item can never be a free morpheme following it. Assuming that the constraint above is
right, the question is which model can capture it without auxiliary assumptions (other than those
imposed by phrase structure itself). Head-directionality approach is weak in the sense that without any
auxiliary assumptions, it does not make any prediction about bound versus free status of functional
morphemes. There is no principled reason why there should not be a functional morpheme which is
right above the verb and which is free. Following Ulutaş (2006), it may be argued that there is
(always) overt movement of the verb to the next head up because this higher head always have
“uninterpretable V feature”. And head-to-head adjunction (as a result of this movement) is a structure
that is interpreted as suffixation (for the latter claim, Julien, 2002, i. a.). Here suffixation is again a
reflex of syntax. However, this position has two problems. 1) If having “uninterpretable feature” is an
aspect of the functional heads, one would in principle expect some variation among functional heads
in having this feature or not. That all of the functional heads in Turkish have “uninterpretable V
feature” is surprising. 2) What determines the category of the “uninterpretable feature”? Why is it the
case that “uninterpretable feature” is V but not N? This seems to have something to do with the fact
that these functional morphemes always c-selects for a VP. This direct relation between the category
of the “uninterpretable feature” and c-selectional facts of the functional head is obscured in the
explanation above. In this sense, this explanation misses some generalization.
I will instead adopt Brody’s Mirror Theory (1997, 2003 i. a.) with an antilexicalist reading. Brody
argues for Telescope Hypothesis, which indicates that “a single copy of a lexical item can serve both
as a head and as a phrase” (Brody: 2003 : 216), which gives us the structure below:
As a consequence of Telescope
Hypothesis, in this tree “I” replaces I-I’IP, “v” replaces v-v’-vP and “V” replaces
V-V’-VP projection lines. Phrasal
relations are captured in the specifier
position (here object and subject ( and its
trace)). As for head-chains, Brody (2003:
218) argues for Mirror (Hypothesis),
which is “the syntactic relation ‘X
complement of Y’ is identical to an
inverse-order morphological relation ‘X
specifier of Y’”. More informally, in a
complementation relation (say, between I
v and V), the morphological order of
heads is the inverse of their syntactic
order (that is, V-v-I as in “love-s”). For Brody, Mirror is a licensing relation between lexicon and
syntax. My position is antilexicalist in the sense that I take Mirror to be a spell-out mechanism from
syntax to PF. This position makes it possible to capture suffixation as a reflex of syntax without
resorting morphological information in the lexicon.
Turkish verbs (and verbal suffixes) seem to form head-relations rather than phrasal relations.
A. They cannot move to the specifier of question head (unlike phrases)
(1.a) *gel mi di-n?
(1.b) *gel-me
mi di-n?
come Q PAST-2SG
come-Verb.NEG Q PAST-2SG
B. As noted in Kornfilt (1996), they cannot be coordinated (unlike phrases)
(2.a) *gel ve
git-ti-n
(2.b.) *gel-me
ve
git-me-di-n
come and go-PAST-2
come-Verb.NEG and go-Verb.NEG-PAST-2SG
If verbs and verbal stems do not form phrasal chains, they cannot be specifiers. They must occupy
head-positions. Then, their representation is as in (3) and not as in (4):
√(3)
*(4)
X
X
V
V
(where X is any functional morpheme syntactically right above the verb).
Via Mirror, (3) has to be “realized” as V-X where X is suffixed to V (Note that V can be a verb or a
verbal suffix). This captures V-X generalization by making reference only to phrase structure. The
observation V-X is a consequence of the fact that verbal items cannot behave as a phrase. This means
that it is something about the verb that causes suffixation and this explains why functional heads do
not show variation in having uninterpretable feature. Note that in this explanation, c-selection is the
only assumption required to understand the interaction of the verb with the functional morpheme
above it. Questions about uninterpretable features do not even arise. The conclusion: A subclass of the
object called suffix is a reflex of configuration and not a lexical primitive. It is, therefore, probably not
part of language knowledge.
References
Brody, M. (2003). Towards An Elegant Syntax. London: Routledge. Baker, M. (1988). Incorporation:
A Theory of Grammatical Function Changing. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London.
Julien, M. (2002). Syntactic Heads and Word Formation. Oxford University Press. New York.
Kornfilt, J. (1996). On some copular clitics in Turkish. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 6. Lieber, R. (1980).
On the Organization of the Lexicon. Doctoral thesis, MIT. Ulutaş, S. (2006) Verb Movement and
Feature Percolation: Evidence from Turkish Relative Clauses. MA Thesis. Bogazici University.