ABA in stem-allomorphy and the emptiness of the nominative

In this paper I examine patterns of irregular allomorphy in nominal stems sensitive to case in a number of nominative-accusative languages. I will argue that the data surveyed reveal a certain regularity in the distribution of irregularity across the cases in that they conform to what I call the Nom...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGlossa (London) Vol. 3; no. 1; pp. 1 - 35
Main Author McFadden, Thomas
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Ubiquity Press 2018
Open Library of Humanities
Subjects
ABA
allomorphy
Generalization
Grammar
Grammatical case
Linguistics
Morphology
nominative
Nouns
Phonetics
stem alternations
Suppletion
Theory
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Summary:In this paper I examine patterns of irregular allomorphy in nominal stems sensitive to case in a number of nominative-accusative languages. I will argue that the data surveyed reveal a certain regularity in the distribution of irregularity across the cases in that they conform to what I call the Nominative Stem-Allomorphy Generalization. One irregular stem form is always found in the nominative (and in other cases that may be systematically syncretic with it), with all other cases sharing a single other stem form. I will show that this subsumes a clear instance of a *ABA pattern, and in fact is even more restrictive, as it also shows *ABC and (qualified) *AAB. I will situate these findings relative to recent work on *ABA patterns and on case-sensitive irregularity in noun and pronoun suppletion, and then will build on that prior work to propose an account for the generalization in terms of a structured representation of nouns and case categories interacting with locality conditions on allomorphy.
ISSN:2397-1835
2397-1835
DOI:10.5334/gjgl.373