[Lingtyp] Terminology for grammatical morphemes that have to co-occur with other grammatical morphemes

[Sims, Andrea]

Such dependencies are talked about in morphological theory (and to some degree, in morphological typology). The tradition is to distinguish between inward dependencies (outer affix is restricted to attach -- or has a higher productivity when attaching -- to a base already containing a particular affix) and outward dependencies (inner affix has higher productivity/is restricted to occurring in the context of a particular outer affix). The former is garden-variety morphological conditioning. The latter has historically created more headaches for formal theories due to assumptions about sequential affix attachment/insertion domains, and is often discussed as “potentiation”, going back to Aronoff (1976, Word formation in generative grammar).

Stump has recently argued for a unified theoretical approach to both inward and outward dependencies in terms of rule combination. See, for example, the following paper:

Stump, Gregory T. 2022. Rule combination, potentiation, affix telescoping. In Andrea D. Sims, Adam Ussishkin, Jeff Parker, and Samantha Wray (eds.), Morphological typology and linguistic cognition, 282-306. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

See also Stump’s 2022 book Morphotactics (CUP). He certainly isn’t the only scholar dealing with the topic, but these works are reasonable places to start for understanding the history of discussion of affix dependencies (and associated terminology) in the theoretical and typological morphology literature.

Best wishes,
Andrea

[The Ohio State University]

Andrea Sims [‘ɔndɹijə sɪmz]
Professor
Department of Linguistics
1712 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43202 USA
sims.120 at osu.edu<mailto:sims.120 at osu.edu>

Co-editor, Word Structure<https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/word>
Member of Section Z Steering Committee, American Association for the Advancement of Science<https://www.aaas.org/>

From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Cat Butz via Lingtyp <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Date: Thursday, March 6, 2025 at 9:47 AM
To: Lingtyp <Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
Subject: [Lingtyp] Terminology for grammatical morphemes that have to co-occur with other grammatical morphemes
Dear community,

I hope you're all doing well.

Let's say we have three grammatical morphemes: A, B, and C. Let's say
they all modify verbs.

A occurs as the only modifier of a verb, but it also co-occurs with B.
B doesn't occur on its own, but always co-occurs with A or C.
C doesn't occur on its own, but always co-occurs with B.

So we have the following combos:

A-verb
B-A-verb
B-C-verb

Do you know any kind of terminology for describing this sort of
interdependence of morphemes, where we have e.g. "independent" ones like
A, "kind of dependent" ones like B, and "fully dependent" ones like C?
Is there any literature on this?

Warmest,
--
Cat Butz (she)
HHU Düsseldorf
General Linguistics
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