Carson Schutze: Noun Compounding Question (reply to David Fertig)

[Martha McGinnis]

David Fertig said,

>    It's certainly true that German nouns with -s plurals never take linking
>-s, but I think the correct generalization is that nouns with -s plurals
>never take _ANY_ linking element.

So, in addition to -s, they also never occur with -n, and is there something
else you would consider a linking element that's covered by this
generalization?

>If this is true, then I think Carson may
>have answered his own question ("what would prevent the *linking* -s from
>combining with these nouns?") in his last message when he refered to the
>Pinker/Clahsen idea that non-canonical nouns (or verbs, etc.) cannot have
>stem allomorphy (or cannot be "irregular" in Pinker/Clahsen terminology).

I'm not sure I follow my answer to my question :-)
It seems to presuppose that linking segments would also be analyzed as part of
a stem allomorph, rather than as a separate chunk of stuff. This would be on
top of the Noyer/Lieber proposal to treat plural affixes (other than -s) as
part of stem allomorphs. I see that that could be done, but it makes me
nervous somehow, and I wonder if it breaks the analogy Rolf suggested to
Indoeuropean theme vowels. I may be misremembering, but I don't recall them
being inserted by readjustment rules in existing DM analyses. I thought they
came in with vocabulary insertion--someone correct me! And then someone tell
me what according to DM would be predicted to be different between
the two kinds
of elements, viz. theme vowels and linking consonants.