2018/07/06 by Karlos Arregi, Andrew Nevins
Arts and Humanities · Computer Science · Psychology · #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · doi:10.1162/ling_a_00286
openalex publication_date 2018/07/06 · crossref created 2018/07/06 · crossref issued 2018/10/01 · crossref published 2018/10/01 · crossref published-print 2018/10/01 · crossref deposited 2024/07/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Harris and Halle (2005) present a framework (Generalized Reduplication) that unites the treatment of phonological reduplication and metathesis with similar phenomena in morphology, thereby accounting for the apparently spurious placement of the imperative plural - n in mesoclitic Spanish forms such as hága-lo-n ‘Do it!’, in which clitic lo is sandwiched between the verbal stem and the plural suffix. Kayne (2010) has challenged their analysis, arguing that such cases should be treated purely within the syntax. We reassess some of Kayne’s arguments, agreeing with his conclusion that the most important desideratum of any general analysis of such phenomena is restrictiveness. However, we contend that greater restrictiveness can be achieved through morphotactic constraints and repairs in the Generalized Reduplication formalism, triggered by a Noninitiality constraint on the positioning of the plural affix, and we develop constraints on these operations that situate interspeaker variation within the postsyntactic component.