Realizing morphemes in the Icelandic noun phrase / Ingason, Anton Karl.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Ingason, Anton Karl, author.

Contributor:

Embick, David, 1970- degree supervisor.

Schwarz, Florian, degree committee member.

Legate, Julie A., degree committee member.

University of Pennsylvania. Linguistics, degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Linguistics.

Linguistics--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Linguistics.

Local Subjects:

Linguistics.

Linguistics--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Linguistics.

Genre:

Academic theses.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (269 pages)

Contained In:

Dissertation Abstracts International 77-12A(E).

Place of Publication:

[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] : University of Pennsylvania ; Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2016.

Language Note:

English

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

text file

Summary:

This dissertation defends a strong version of the view that linguistic surface complexity is the product of interactions between deep syntactic mechanisms and shallow interface-specific mechanisms. I argue that current developments in the theory of locality in Distributed Morphology (Embick 2010, Marantz 2013) impose boundaries on syntactic analysis and that morphemes cannot be identified and analyzed without studying their realization at the interfaces of syntax with both phonology and interpretation. The empirical focus is on a series of phenomena which are attested in Icelandic noun phrases and involve the realization of roots, category-defining heads, inflection morphemes, and definite articles, all of which may appear in the same noun as shown below.

(1) leik-end-ur-nir 'play'-nmlz-m.nom.pl-def.

Three main components of the dissertation involve applicative structures, definite articles and morphophonology. I argue for the existence of applicatives in noun phrases which do not include a verbal substructure based on the realization of morphemes in an Icelandic Caused Experience construction. A study which compares definite articles in German and Icelandic supports the findings in Schwarz (2009) that there are two definite articles in natural language and the realization of the Icelandic articles has implications for the theory of suffixation under adjacency (Embick and Noyer 2001).

These case studies, in addition to a series of smaller case studies, support the view that an analysis of one linguistic component may only be well-informed if it considers other interacting components as well. My method, to approach a well-defined empirical case, Icelandic nouns, with a precise theoretical framework like Distributed Morphology, yields valuable results. I show how many types of locality constraints interact in the same word and this is pleasing because it shows that the theory is not based on convenient but cross-linguistically isolated data sets. Rather, aspects of language like syntax, morphology and semantics are constantly interacting and they are best understood in the context of each other.

Notes:

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 77-12(E), Section: A.

Advisors: David Embick; Committee members: Julie A. Legate; Florian Schwarz.

Department: Linguistics.

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2016.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9781339929057

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.