Two paths to polysynthesis: The view from West Circassian nominalizations
Ksenia Ershova
May 2019
 

West Circassian displays prominent polysynthetic morphology both in the verbal and nominal domains and both syntactic categories are subject to the same morphological ordering constraints. I argue that despite these similarities, nominal and verbal wordforms in West Circassian are in fact constructed via two distinct word formation processes: while the verbal root and any accompanying functional morphology are pronounced as a single phonological word by virtue of forming a single complex syntactic head via head movement, the nominal head and its modifiers are pronounced as a single word due to rules of syntax-to-prosody mapping. Such a division of labor provides an account for why only nouns, and not verbs, exhibit productive noun incorporation in the language: West Circassian noun incorporation is prosodic, rather than syntactic. The evidence for the existence of these two avenues of word formation comes from a systematic violation of morpheme ordering observed in verbal nominalizations. In terms of broader theoretical impact, the proposed analysis provides insight into what factors shape a polysynthetic language: while it is tempting to reduce polysynthetic morphology to either simple head movement or just a consequence of mapping complex syntactic structure to a single phonological word without any head movement, the West Circassian data show that neither of these mechanisms can be dispensed of.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/004118
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: to appear in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
keywords: generative syntax, minimalism, noun incorporation, head movement, morphology, syntax
previous versions: v3 [December 2018]
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