Speaker: Stanislao Zompì (Universität Potsdam) and Zhouyi Sun (MIT)
Title: *ABA in Multidimensional Paradigms: A Harmonic Grammar-based account
Time: Monday, April 1st, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: In piece-based and realizational models of morphology, a fundamental question concerns the assignment and conditioning of phonological content to morphemes represented as feature bundles. This talk shows the limitations of Underspecification (Halle 1997; Bobaljik 2012) and Overspecification (Caha 2009; Starke 2009) approaches (henceforth US and OS) in deriving ABA patterns of contextual allomorphy in multidimensional paradigms (Christopoulos & Zompì 2022; Caha 2023). Our proposal essentially combines US and OS (cf. Ackema & Neeleman 2005; Wolf 2008; Müller 2020) and equates exponent choice to finding the ‘shortest path’ for each feature bundle to a legitimate exponent under a Harmonic Grammar framework. We further discuss the typology of ABA patterns of root suppletion and show that the proposed model makes appropriate restrictions
on accidental homophony and derives the correct typology. Lastly, we suggest that our proposal yields output-driven maps in the sense of Tesar (2014), which boosts the learning of morphological paradigms.