In support of an OT-DM model: Evidence from a morphological conspiracy in Degema
Nicholas Rolle
September 2018 

This paper provides support for a modified DM model which I call Optimality Theoretic Distributed Morphology (OT-DM). The strongest form of this model is that all morphological operations take place in parallel, which I call the Morphology-in-Parallel Hypothesis (MPH). Although combining OT and DM is unorthodox in practice, I show that a growing body of data warrants his modification (Trommer 2001a, 2001b, 2002; Dawson in press; Foley to appear; a.o.), and provide evidence for OT-DM from a morphological conspiracy involving verbal clitics in Degema (Nigeria). To account for this conspiracy, I argue that agreement clitics are inserted post-syntactically via the DM operation Dissociated Node Insertion (DNI), and further that verb complexes are formed post-syntactically via the operation Local Dislocation (LD). I argue that both these operations are triggered by a well-formedness markedness constraint which requires verbs to appear in properly inflected words on the surface. These DM operations are decomposed into a series of constraints which are crucially ranked. Candidates are freely generated from GEN and are subject to all DM operations, and are evaluated via EVAL against the ranked constraint set. I illustrate that under standard views of DM in which DNI proceeds VI, a serial model results in an ordering paradox, and that even after parameterizing DM operation ordering in response, this model does not adequately account for the morphological conspiracy. [Appendices are found on my website, under 'output'.]

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/003746 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	accepted, NLLT
keywords:	distributed morphology, optimality theory, morphological conspiracy, clitics, serial verb constructions, african linguistics, morphology, syntax, phonology
previous versions:	v1 [November 2017]
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