Publication details
A local analysis of an apparent nonlocal allomorphy in Tamil : A perspective from Rutul
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Chapter in a book |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | One of the goals of a linguistic theory is to restrict the set of possible hypotheses that a child may entertain when acquiring a language. In morphology, one of the most prominent restrictions of this kind is the Adjacency Condition on allomorphy (Siegel 1978; Embick 2010; Bobaljik 2012). The Adjacency Condition says that in a string of morphemes, only adjacent morphemes may influence each other’s shape. A particularly challenging example for this condition has been brought up in Moskal and Smith (2016). The example comes from Tamil pronominal paradigm, where case morphemes seem to influence the phonological realization of a pronominal root across an intervening plural marker. Using the Nanosyntax framework, the chapter argues that this long-distance interaction is only apparent, and it can be understood as the result of an interaction between two processes, namely strictly local allomorphy and syncretism. |
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