Syncretism as Merge F
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| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In the talk, I summarise the research program followed in Caha (2009), whose main goal is to show how we can understand paradigms (with relations of syncretism and containment) as nothing but a surface reflex of the fundamental operation Merge F. I review some of the problems pointed out in the subsequent literature concerning the syncretism of datives (Hardarson 2016) and present a solution to these problems proposed in Starke (2017). The solution consists in enriching the original case hierarchy with a new type of a dative and a new type of an accusative case. Starting from there, I note a curious possibility made available by Starkes solution, which allows for the existence of a language with a surface case hierarchy nom—gen—acc—dat—etc. I argue that this surface hierarchy is attested in several Saami languages. |
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