The role of gender suffixes in number suppletion
Exponent shapes and left branches
Abstract
A well-known empirical generalization is that suppletion is sensitive to the presence of intervening morphemes: for suppletion to take place, the trigger and the target must be adjacent. In this article, we focus on one manifestation of this generalization in Romance pronouns: number-triggered suppletion (NTS) is blocked by the presence of overt gender markers. We show how the Nanosyntactic Lexicalization Algorithm can derive the generalization without having to postulate any type of post-syntactic operation by focusing on the analysis of the three situations compatible with the generalization, and by showing how the fourth, unattested logical possibility cannot be generated by the Lexicalization Algorithm. This will also serve as an argument that the generalization on suppletion should be stated in terms of syntactic constituency, not locality.
Keywords
gender, number, suppletion, pronouns, NanosyntaxReferences
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