Nominal ellipsis reveals concord in Moksha Mordvin
Mariia Privizentseva
April 2021 

On the basis of original data from Moksha Mordvin (Finno-Ugric), I argue that some languages have nominal concord even though modifiers of the noun generally do not show inflection. Evidence for the presence of concord comes from nominal ellipsis, under which inflection is phonologically realized and restricted in the same way as regular nominal concord. To account for the distribution of concord exponents, I develop a model that allows features to be present in syntax but avoid realization. In particular, I propose that (i) Spell-Out applies to a node as soon as its Merge and Agree features are satisfied; (ii) Agree features are by default ineligible at PF and need to undergo Probe Conversion in order to get accessible to PF processes. The distribution of features then follows from the respective timing of Spell-Out and Probe Conversion.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/004998 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Syntax. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/synt.12258 (Open access)
keywords:	concord, nominal ellipsis, moksha mordvin, spell-out, agree, order of operations, interpretability, pf, probe conversion, finno-ugric, agreement, dp, noun phrase, morphology, syntax
previous versions:	v3 [July 2020] v2 [July 2020] v1 [January 2020]
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