Iterated D-layers and Multiple Case Exponence: The structure and significance of a morphological rarissimum
David Erschler
November 2022 

The paper addresses a typologically unusual instance of Multiple Exponence – some wh-based items in Digor Ossetic, an agglutinative Eastern Iranian language spoken in the Caucasus, exhibit double case marking in the plural. For example, the allative plural of the indefinite ka-dɐr who-INDEFINITE ‘someone’ is kɐ-mɐ-dɐr-tɐ-mɐ who-ALLATIVE-INDEFINITE-PLURAL-ALLATIVE. I propose an analysis of this phenomenon in the framework of Distributed Morphology. The key ingredients of the analysis are the presence of two D heads on the spine of such a nominal; and the possibility of last-resort sharing of a case value between these heads. Furthermore, under appropriate conditions, the case exponents associated with the two D heads undergo haplological dissimilation. The rarity of double case exponence of this kind is due to the fact that a number of independent conditions need to be met simultaneously in order for it to obtain.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/006934 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	prepublication version, to appear in Glossa
keywords:	case marking; number marking; multiple exponence; distributed morphology; morphological haplology; digor ossetic, morphology
previous versions:	v3 [November 2022] v2 [November 2022] v1 [November 2022]
Downloaded:	240 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]