The Morpho-Syntactic Significance of the Unextractability of English Possessive Pronouns
Colin Davis
April 2023 

This paper examines a constraint on the extraction of possessors in English, which previous research has shown to be acceptable in the colloquial language of some speakers. While such speakers allow extraction of full DP possessors, here I investigate the further fact that such speakers reject extraction of possessive pronouns. I argue that this syntactic fact, as well as certain morphological details about English possessors, are explained by the hypothesis that English possessive pronouns are portmanteau morphemes which are immobile due to corresponding to a non-constituent/non-phrasal unit. I also argue that this result leads to the further conclusion that morpho-phonological evaluation via phase spell-out applies to entire phases at once, not only to phase complements. These results clarify English-specific puzzles about possession, provide further support for the proposal that one morpheme can correspond to multiple syntactic nodes, and deepens our understanding of how the syntax-morphology interface functions.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006212 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Submitted
keywords:	syntax, morphology, possession, extraction, portmanteau, phases
previous versions:	v4 [September 2022] v3 [October 2021] v2 [September 2021] v1 [September 2021]
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