morphosyntactic feature geometries

[Martha McGinnis]

Hi Dan,

>This is an interesting issue. In their new book on agreement, Wechsler
>& Zlatic (2003, The many faces of agreement, CSLI) address some
>correspondences between semantics and morphology.

Thanks for the reference.  I'll try to get hold of it.

>As for the syntax-morphology connection, wouldn't 'unification' predict
>that the morphology would either (i) fill in missing values or that
>(ii) the syntax nodes unspecified for certain features could allow some
>features to play a morphological role, but no syntactic one (i.e. that
>feature-matching between syntax and morphology would not be forced if
>there is no incompatibility)? Or is (ii) ruled out in DM?

I'm not sure I understand (ii).  Is the idea that some features could
be present only in the morphology, not in the syntax?  Dave Embick
has argued (within a DM framework) that this is indeed the case. He
calls such features "dissociated".  His argument for such features
are based on Greek NonActive morphology (in a MITWPL paper), and I
believe also the Latin perfect (in an LI article).  Dave, feel free
to chime in here if my references are out of date.

>Besides compositional analysis of morphosyntactic nodes, is anyone
>looking at agreement from this Harley-Ritter perspective? This would
>seem an ideal area to look for answers to Martha's queries.

I am, but not in detail.  It would be an interesting topic to cover
systematically.  Anyone looking for a thesis project?

-Martha
--
mcginnis at ucalgary.ca