double inflection

Koontz John E John.Koontz at colorado.edu
Sun Aug 3 17:59:21 UTC 2003


On Sun, 3 Aug 2003, Pamela Munro wrote:
> What reminds me of the Ibláble case is what happens with a verb like
> isso 'to hit':
>
> ihÍsso 'he hits him a lot'
> sahÁsso 'he hits me a lot'
>
> Grade formation generally operates on the penultimate vowel of the verb
> stem. But with a verb like sa-sso 'he hists me', that penultimate vowel
> is an inflectional prefix, so grade formation operates on it. Thus what
> seems to me to be the parallel to the reduplication of person-marked ya:
> normally these morphological rules want to operate on stems, but if they
> are dealing with a short stem they may target an inflectional marker.

What interests me about this case is that it shows grade formation
operating in some sense, anyway) after (perosnal) inflection.  That's like
the way that dative formation operates after (personal) inflection in
Omaha-Ponca.  Theorists generally hold that inflection follows derivation.

JEK



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