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Date: Thu, 11 Feb 1999 12:21:09 -0500
Reply-To: The Distributed Morphology List <DM-LIST at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU>
To: The Distributed Morphology List
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From: Martha McGinnis <marthajo at linc.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: zero affixes in DM
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I would be interested in discussion about the role of zero affixes in DM.
In _Language_ 70 (1994), 760-1, I gave reasons for unease about DM's
readiness to recognize certain zero affixes in English verbforms; but no
one active in DM has since tried to assuage my unease.  Would some one on
this list like to have a go?  Or do people think my unease is justified?

Because of the relatively close relationship in DM between syntactic
terminal nodes and morphological 'pieces' (stems and affixes), DM needs to
be generous in recognizing phonologically null, or zero, affixes.  For
example, according to DM, the past tense forms _waited_ and _sang_ in
English are both got by inserting appropriate Vocabulary items into the
structure [V [+past]].  To get _waited_, that's straightforward: we insert
/wait/ and /ed/.  But to get _sang_, it seems we have to insert /sing/ and
zero, and then posit a readjustment rule converting /sing + zero/ into
_sang_.

As I explained in _Language_, such zeros create problems for my No Blur
Principle, which I proposed there as a constraint on inflection class
organization.  How big a worry that is depends on what you think about the
No Blur Principle.  My own view is that it is empirically rich, is well
supported by the evidence, and is naturally interpretable as a special case
of the Principle of Contrast that governs vocabulary acquisition.  What's
more, a version of No Blur has (I think) further empirically rich
implications for inflectional allomorphy outside the domain of inflection
class organization -- implications which are well supported by evidence
from Latin, Hungarian and Turkish (see my 'How lexical semantics constrains
inflectional allomorphy', in _Yearbook of Morphology 1997, 1-24).

Quite apart from that, the analysis of e.g. _sang_ as /sing + zero/ (with
readjustment) leads to difficulties.  In order to support their view that
the supposed English zero affixes really are affixes, just like
uncontroversial overt affixes, DM protagonists need to show that these zero
affixes behave just like overt affixes in respect of readjustment.  In
other words, they need to show that:
(a) substantially the same readjustments that operate where zero affixes
are posited also operate where there are overt affixes, and:
(b) zero affixes can appear without any readjustment just as freely as
overt affixes do.
But there is actually strong evidence against both (a) and (b).

In respect of (a), it is easy to check that the vowel alternations that
occur in verbs with overtly suffixed pasts like _sold_, _felt_ and
_brought_ have little overlap with those that occur in verbs with
'zero-suffixed' pasts such as _sang_, _dug_ and _fell_, as Halle and
Marantz themselves admit (_View from Building 20_ page 129: 'readjustment
rules triggered by the /-n/ past participle and the zero past suffixes are
considerably more complex than those triggered by /-d/ or /-t/').

In respect of (b), it turns out that the verbs for which Halle and Marantz
posit a zero past suffix or a zero past participle suffix without any
readjustment fall into narrow classes -- classes whose narrowness is
unexplained in the DM framework.  Verbs with a zero past suffix and no
readjustment, such as _beat, cut, hit, shed_ and _spread_ all end in
coronal stops.  Verbs with a zero past participle suffix and no
readjustment include all those just mentioned, plus _run_ and _come_.  With
an overt-suffix or nonsuffixal analysis, both biases seem explicable:
perhaps one of the coronal suffixes /-t/ or /-d/ gets added to _beat_ etc.
and undergoes cluster simplification, and perhaps _run_ and _come_ already
look like 'good' past participle forms on the strength of their vocalic
resemblance to _sung, struck, dug_ etc.  But with the zero-suffix analysis
of Halle and Marantz, these biases have to be regarded as purely accidental.

It may be that an alternative to the zero-suffix analysis can be found
within DM.  If not, then the shortcomings of this analysis are an
embarrassment for DM, it seems to me.  Do people agree?

Andrew

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy
Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,
Christchurch, New Zealand
phone (work) +64-3-364 2211; (home) +64-3-355 5108
fax +64-3-364 2969
e-mail a.c-mcc at ling.canterbury.ac.nz
http://www.ling.canterbury.ac.nz/adc-m.html