The locality of allomorphy: Insights from Bidhaawyeet
Andrew Murphy, Bob Offer-Westort
July 2024
 

This paper discusses a pattern of allomorphy with object-marking suffixes in the Cushitic language Bidhaawyeet (Beja). The various forms of the object suffix show a puzzling distribution. Inside relative clauses, their form is conditioned by the case and number features of the head of the relative clause. This apparent non-locality poses a problem for theories that impose a strict locality condition on allomorphic relations. Despite initial appearances, we argue that this relation is in fact local due to concord processes within the noun phrase. Further, we show that allomorphic conditioning fails in periphrastic constructions, thereby supporting the hypothesis that allomorpic conditioning is restricted to the morphosyntactic word or maximal X0. We also extend our analysis to contexts in which allomorphic relations appears to be conditioned by clause type and argue that these too can be reduced to the same kind of local case and number allomorphy we find in relative clauses.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/008292
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Draft
keywords: allomorphy, syntax, concord, relative clauses, morphology, syntax
previous versions: v1 [July 2024]
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