synthetic/periphrastic alternation

[John Frampton]

Dear all,

I read the Ackerman and Stump paper that was mentioned here in
the course of the paradigm discussion.  Their criticisms of
"syntactic approaches" to morphology are rather wide of the mark
because they have some incorrect ideas about what theories like
Distribute Morphology are all about.  Nevertheless, the verb
forms from Mari (a Uralic language) which they discuss do seem to
pose a problem for DM, at least superficially.  Not the
(purported) problem that they focus on, but a problem
nevertheless.

In what is called the first-past tense, for example, negated
verbs are much like "didn't forms" in English, with an auxiliary
verb bearing inflection and negation and the verb root standing
apart.  The problem is that there are two forms of the root, one
of which is used in the 3pl and the other elsewhere.  The problem
is to account for the dependence of root allomorphy (or
readjustment, or suffixation, or whatever) on agreement, which is
attached to a different word.

I had some thoughts on the matter which I wrote up and posted at
http://www.math.neu.edu/ling/friends/mari.pdf . Since some others
of you may also have taken a look at the Ackerman and Stump
paper, I thought there might be some interest.

- John Frampton