How to Derive Allomorphy : A Case Study from Czech

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Authors

ZIKOVÁ Markéta FALTÝNKOVÁ Michaela

Year of publication 2021
Type Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source The Linguistic Review
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Web https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/tlr-2021-2074/html
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2021-2074
Keywords ABA; age projection; Czech; gender; Nanosyntax; number; phrasal spellout; three-stem pattern
Description The paper discusses a three-way allomorphic pattern of neuter-gender stems in Czech. We argue that there are two surface alternations involved in the three-stem pattern, i.e. a-e and t-zero, and that the two alternations are driven by two distinct mechanisms, i.e. suppletion and regular phonological computation respectively. We postulate two suppletive stem-building suffixes that are lexically connected via the Nanosyntactic tool of pointers. We argue that the default a-initial suffix spells out the neuter gender and its suppletive e-initial variant is a portmanteau morpheme of the (neuter) gender and (singular) number. We further propose that the suppletive suffix is stored with a floating consonant that does not surface word-finally due to regular phonological computation.
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