Bracketing paradoxes: A dependency grammar analysis in terms of morph catenae

This manuscript examines various types of bracketing paradoxes: classical “personal noun” constructions, parasynthetic compounds, agentive deverbal nouns, compound denominal adjectives, plural nouns with lexicalized modifiers, multiple auxiliary constructions, and German particle verb constructions. We argue that given a dependency-based view of both sentence and word structure, these bracketing puzzles become non-paradoxical. The morph catena is taken to be the fundamental unit of morphosyntax. A morph catena is A MORPH OR A COMBINATION OF MORPHS THAT ARE CONTINUOUS WITH RESPECT TO DOMINANCE. This notion is derived from its syntactic equivalent, the catena, which is defined as a word or a combination of words that are continuous with respect to dominance. Given an understanding of morphosyntax that acknowledges morph catenae, bracketing paradoxes are resolved by the ability of morph catenae to reach across words to include parts of words.

Bracketing Paradoxes resolved

Bracketing Paradoxes (BPs) have been the subject of many different analyses since the 1970s. Each of these analyses have included BP-specific machinery to account for the apparent mismatch between the syntactico-semantic and morpho-phonological structures argued to be necessary for a complete analysis of this phenomenon. This article proposes that independently necessary operations and structures in the morpho-syntactic and phonological modules allow for an analysis of BPs that avoids postulating ad-hoc tools. Specifically, a system that includes cyclic (phasal) interpretation of the morpho-syntax in combination with a flat (CVCV) phonological framework avoids the emergence of paradoxical structures altogether. The discussion therefore includes both current morpho-syntactic and phonological analyses of each construction proposed to give rise to a BP; comparatives (unhappier), Level-ordering BPs (ungrammaticality), Phrasal BPs (modular grammarian), Compound BPs (particle physicist), Particle-verbs (podžëg ‘set fire’ [Russian]), and Reduplicated BPs (kwíita-kwíita ‘to pour a bit’ [Kihehe]). The proposal that a flat phonological framework is key in avoiding the paradoxical nature of BPs has implications for the correct structure of phonological representations generally.

Classical Generative Morphology

The scope of classical generative morphology is not clearly determined. All three components need clarification. The boundaries of what counts as generative linguistics are not unambiguously set, but it can be assumed that all generative work in linguistics is inspired by the work of Noam Chomsky. Morphology was a much more prominent component of linguistic theory in earlier approaches, but of course the subject field had to be accounted for also in generative linguistics. The label classical can be seen as restricting the scope both to the more mainstream approaches and to a period that ends before the present. Here, the early 1990s will be taken as the time when classical theorizing gave way to contemporary generative morphology. In the earliest presentations of generative linguistics, there was no lexicon. The introduction of the lexicon made many of the ideas formulated before obsolete. Chomsky’s Lexicalist Hypothesis provided the basis for a new start of research in morphology. Two contrasting elaborations appeared in the early 1970s. Halle proposed a model based on the combination of morphemes, Jackendoff one based on the representation and analysis of full words. Against this background, a number of characteristic issues were discussed in the 1970s and 1980s. One such issue was the form of rules. Here there was a shift from transformations to rewrite rules. This shift can be seen particularly well in the discussion of verbal compounds, e.g., truck driver. The question whether and how morphology should be distinguished from syntax generated a lot of discussion. Another broad question was the degree to which rules of morphology should be thought of as operating in separate components. This can be observed in the issue of the distinction of inflection and derivation and in level ordering. The latter was a proposal to divide affixes into classes with different phonological and other effects on the base they attach to. A side effect of level ordering was the appearance of bracketing paradoxes, where, for instance, generative grammarian has a phonological constituent grammarian but a semantic constituent generative grammar. Another aspect of rule application which can be constructed as a difference between morphology and syntax is productivity. In general, syntactic rules are more productive and morphological rules display blocking effects, where, for instance, unpossible is blocked by the existence of impossible. Being classical, much of the discussions in this period serves as a shared background for the emergence and discussion of current generative approaches in morphology. The transition to these theories started in the 1990s, although some of them appeared only in the early 2000s.

Lexical Integrity in Morphology

The Lexical Integrity Hypothesis (LIH) holds that words are syntactic atoms, implying that syntactic processes and principles do not have access to word segments. Interestingly, when this widespread “negative characterization” is turned into its positive version, a standard picture of the Morphology-Syntax borderline is obtained. The LIH is both a fundamental principle of Morphology and a test bench for morphological theories. As a matter of fact, the LIH is problematic for both lexicalist and anti-lexicalist frameworks, which radically differ in accepting or rejecting Morphology as a component of grammar different from Syntax. Lexicalist theories predict no exceptions to LIH, contrary to fact. From anti-lexicalist theories one might expect a large set of counterexamples to this hypothesis, but the truth is that attested potential exceptions are restricted, as well as confined to very specific grammatical areas. Most of the phenomena taken to be crucial for evaluating the LIH are briefly addressed in this article: argument structure, scope, prefixes, compounds, pronouns, elliptical segments, bracketing paradoxes, and coordinated structures. It is argued that both lexicalist and anti-lexicalist positions crucially depend on the specific interpretations that their proponents are willing to attribute to the very notion of Syntax: a broad one, which basically encompasses constituent structure, binary branching, scope, and compositionality, and a narrow one, which also coverts movement, recursion, deletion, coordination, and other aspects of phrase structure. The objective differences between these conceptions of Syntax are shown to be determinant in the evaluation of LIH’s predictions.

Bracketing Paradoxes in Morphology

Bracketing paradoxes—constructions whose morphosyntactic and morpho-phonological structures appear to be irreconcilably at odds (e.g., unhappier)—are unanimously taken to point to truths about the derivational system that we have not yet grasped. Consider that the prefix un- must be structurally separate in some way from happier both for its own reasons (its [n] surprisingly does not assimilate in Place to a following consonant (e.g., u[n]popular)), and for reasons external to the prefix (the suffix -er must be insensitive to the presence of un-, as the comparative cannot attach to bases of three syllables or longer (e.g., *intelligenter)). But, un- must simultaneously be present in the derivation before -er is merged, so that unhappier can have the proper semantic reading (‘more unhappy’, and not ‘not happier’). Bracketing paradoxes emerged as a problem for generative accounts of both morphosyntax and morphophonology only in the 1970s. With the rise of restrictions on and technology used to describe and represent the behavior of affixes (e.g., the Affix-Ordering Generalization, Lexical Phonology and Morphology, the Prosodic Hierarchy), morphosyntacticians and phonologists were confronted with this type of inconsistent derivation in many unrelated languages.

Theoretical Issues in Word Formation

This chapter surveys a number of frameworks and theoretical issues in the analysis of derivation and compounding that have occupied morphologists over the last six decades, and begins to assess what has been achieved over this period. Topics include the formal nature of word formation, the relevant units of analysis, the form of morphological rules and processes, the relationship of morphological theory to syntax and phonology, and the theoretical treatment of lexical semantics. The chapter also explores a variety of narrower issues such as bracketing paradoxes, headedness, the question of affix ordering, and the nature of derivational paradigms.