163débil compromiso académico y otros factores provenientes de las dimensiones

The case studies discussed at the beginning of this chapter share a number of features, in terms of the nature of the linguistic changes that occurred and the context in which they occurred. In the previous section, we discussed various factors that might influence language learners in their acquisition of a native grammar. In this section, we will examine the preconditions necessary for affixation to occur given what we have said about the nature of learner bias.

First, assuming it was originally lexical, the proto-affix must have begun to develop some sort of abstract functional or grammatical sense, regardless of its semantics.56 _These

semantic changes may be indirectly responsible for the eventual formal changes, in that as a lexeme begins to acquire grammatical functions, it is likely to become de-stressed, thus introducing a contrast between it and its still-stressed lexical cousin.57

This can be illustrated by the Amharic temporal suffix -all, which developed from a copula used as an auxiliary, as in Tigrinya. This is unlikely to be the original construction, however, since the ordinary gerund is a nominal form used in subordinate clauses; it does not even have aspect of its own, but is parasitic on that of the main verb with which it is used. It is easy to see to see how the temporal construction could have arisen, however: it is a relatively short step from ‘I am in a state of having X-ed’ to ‘I have X-ed’, with a concomitant syntactic change whereby the erstwhile subordinate verb is analysed as the main verb, and the former main verb copula reduced to a temporal auxiliary. The important point here is that the preliminary semantic and functional changes must have preceded the later reduction of -all

from an independent auxiliary to a suffix.

Linear adjacency between a proto-affix and the incorporating M-word is the second precondition. This was an omnipresent theme in 3.2: all of the syntactic terminals later reanalysed as affixes had been adjacent to their eventual hosts, on a purely surface level, prior to their eventual affixation. If at least one element always intervened between a potential affix and its potential stem, a speaker would have no motivation for analysing two units as a single word even if such a reanalysis would be semantically appropriate. Such adjacency need not be mandated by the syntax, but it must be allowed at least some of the time.

The Amharic case study is particularly illustrative of this point, thanks to its contrast between relative and main clauses. Even though the relevant M-words were next to each other in relative clauses, the presence of the relative clause prefix meant that -all- itself is not

linearly adjacent to the gerund. In principle, speakers could have analysed the entire sequence as a series of suffixes, but they did not; therefore, no affixation occurred here. In main clauses, by contrast, -all- was almost always linearly adjacent to the gerund.

55 _{It is not impossible that different people have different degrees of bias, or that cognitive differences} between individuals may result in identical inputs receiving different grammatical analyses by different children. In a sense, it would be surprising if this weren’t the case, inasmuch as different people frequently diverge in their analyses of many other varieties of data.

56 _{Most of the cases discussed in this dissertation involve what is traditionally considered “inflectional”} morphology, but the same processes are expected to hold true in with morphology of the more “derivational” type.

57 _{Lexemes do not cease to exist when they develop functional senses, but rather the lexical and} functional variants quite commonly co-exist as two homophonous Vocabulary Items. The copular forebear of Amharic -all, for example, is still very much in usage. Often the two items continue to co-exist even after they have ceased to be formally identical.

56 An unanswered question is just how much linear adjacency constitutes “enough” in the relevant sense. Suppose, for instance, that a language allows the sequence Determiner- Noun, but adjectives are prenominal, so that the sequence Det-Adj-N is frequent. At what point is the frequency of Adj such that any potential reanalysis of Det as a nominal prefix is precluded? In Persian, as we saw, -râ was reanalysed as a dative suffix, but on the phrasal level rather than the word-level, and this is likely connected to the fact that modifiers follow the head noun in a DP. Certainly there were instances of -râ attached directly to a noun, but apparently these were not sufficient evidence for innovators to reanalyse this as its default positioning. Nevertheless, the fact that -râ, being an erstwhile postposition, was always on the right edge of the DP was sufficient evidence for them to reanalyse it as a phrasal dative suffix. However, there are plenty of other cases where the two items are not always linearly adjacent and yet innovators do apparently have enough evidence to generate a new affix. Thus, the exact level of adjacency necessary to be “enough” for innovators to conclude they have an affix is unclear.

The Scandinavian languages provide an interesting illustration of this problem.58

Both Danish and Swedish mark definiteness via a nominal suffix, but the details are slightly different in each language. In Swedish, the suffix is always present, whether the noun is the only item in the DP (3.46a) or not. If the DP also contains an adjective, an overt determiner is also required, but the definiteness suffix remains (3.46b). If there are postmodifiers rather than premodifiers, the suffix still appears on the head noun, thus proving that the suffix is not simply associated with the rightmost element in the DP in the manner of Persian -râ.

(3.46a) mus- en mouse-DEF

‘the mouse’

(3.46b) den gamla mus- en

DEF old mouse-DEF

‘the old mouse’

(3.46c) gris-en med lång svans pig- DEF with long tail

‘the pig with a long tail’

A slightly different pattern is found in Danish. Here again, solitary nouns take the definiteness suffix (3.47a), and nouns with premodifiers require an overt determiner; but when the overt determiner is present, the noun is unsuffixed (3.47b). This complementary distribution of definiteness markers is obligatory (3.47c)

(3.47a) mand-en man- DEF

‘the man’ (3.47b) den unge mand

DEF young man

‘the young man’ (3.47c) * den unge mand-en

DEF young man- DEF

Embick and Noyer (2001) suggest that the underlying syntactic structure of the Scandinavian DP is much the same: N moves to D if it is not dominated by a modifier, thus gaining a suffix; and a definite D must have a host, so that if N cannot move to D, an overt determiner is used instead. The difference between Swedish and Danish is that Swedish has

58 _{The Scandinavian problem has been the subject of frequent discussion in the literature. The analysis} followed here is that of Embick and Noyer (2001:580ffn.), with examples from Börjars (1998).

57 an additional requirement that the head N be marked definite when D is definite, and therefore gains a dissociated definiteness agreement marker post-syntactically if it fails to be thus marked in the course of the syntactic derivation. Danish requires only that definite D have a host, and therefore lacks definiteness agreement.

The Scandinavian data is useful here because it illustrates two things. First, when an adjacency relationship between proto-affix and host is frequently disrupted by other elements, analysis of the proto-affix as an affix may not be prevented outright, but the immediate outcome is not necessarily a garden-variety affix. Second, there are different strategies available; the outcome is hardly deterministic. In Danish, the determiner is affixed to the noun when the syntax permits it, and not otherwise. Swedish – which may well have gone through a Danish-like stage – has developed a type of doubling.

What is particularly interesting about the Swedish case is that – thus far, anyway – Swedish speakers did not eliminate the overt determiner upon concluding that nouns always take a definite suffix, presumably because there was so much evidence for its existence. This raises interesting questions for transmission: what led Swedish speakers to conclude that all definite nouns required overt definiteness marking, and what would it take for Swedish speakers to eliminate the overt determiner?

Similar questions are raised by the definiteness clitic in Bulgarian, also discussed by Embick and Noyer (2001:568ffn.). This clitic shows second-position effects, in that it Lowers to suffix itself to the first head within the DP. If there are no premodifiers, it surfaces on the noun; when there are premodifiers, it surfaces on the first adjective (3.48b), even when the adjective is itself modified by an adverb (3.48c).

(3.48a) kniga-ta book- DEF

‘the book’ (3.48b) xubava-ta kniga

nice- DEF book

‘the nice book’

(3.48c) dosta glupava-ta zabeležka

quite stupid- DEF remark

‘the quite stupid remark’

Bulgarian differs from Scandinavian in that the determiner is always a clitic, and never surfaces in its presumed original position as the head of D, and that, therefore, the clitic appears on adjectives as well as on nouns. Since -ta does sometimes appear on the noun, it is not inconceivable that future generations of Bulgarian children might decide that definite nouns should always have -ta, as in (3.49), but again this raises the question of what evidence they might need to do make this decision; and in fact, given the syntax of the Bulgarian DP, the most likely potential innovation is probably (3.50), where both the noun and its modifiers are marked.59

(3.49a) ◊ xubava kniga-ta (3.49b) ◊ dosta glupava kniga-ta (3.50a) ◊ xubava-ta kniga-ta (3.50b) ◊ dosta glupava-ta kniga-ta

A proto-affix and its potential host need not always be linearly adjacent for affix- genesis to occur; this much is clear. Most of the other questions surrounding potentially

59 _{Out of a desire to avoid adding to the polysemy of the diacritics already in use, particularly “*”, I’m} using “◊” to mark “preconstructed” hypothetical forms.

58 intervening material remain unresolved. It is not clear how frequently material can intervene to preclude affix-genesis entirely, or to generate a phrasal affix rather than a head affix; nor is it clear what evidence allows innovators to restrict the set of potential interveners more stringently than their forebears. Something seems to allow the proto-affix and host to come together regardless, but it is not at all clear what this something is. Therefore, although linear adjacency is clearly essential for affix-genesis, exactly how this is arrived at – or circumvented – is still uncertain.

While linear adjacency is necessary for reanalysis, it is not itself sufficient; and here we need to make a distinction between the strict use of “affixation” as a structural term and the use of affixation as a descriptive term, the latter including phenomena like LD. Nouns, for instance, are relatively unlikely to acquire temporal affixes even if tense markers must always be immediately preceded by them. The sufficient conditions for affixation in the stricter sense are structural. Consider the relative position of the noun and auxiliary in (3.51).

(3.51) TP  DP T’  ...N... T vP   Aux tDP v’  

The noun is embedded in a specifier; the auxiliary is a head. No conceivable syntactic analyses of (3.51) would allow the auxiliary to be affixed to the noun by head movement because there are no legitimate syntactic movement operations combining elements in these two positions. Therefore, no reanalysis of the auxiliary as a suffix can occur, for structural reasons. However, it would, of course, be possible for T to be analysed as a post-syntactic affix via LD.60

By contrast, auxiliaries are likely to be reanalysed as tense on the verb, as shown by (3.52). (3.52) TP  DP T’  T vP   Aux tDP v’  v √P 

In (3.52), tense and verb are both heads (and potentially linearly adjacent), and therefore they could be brought together by head movement. Two additional analyses available for the relation of the two nodes in (3.52) are linear concatenation and affixation under adjacency.

59 The contrast between (3.51) and (3.52) is crucial, because it explains the restrictions on the typology of affixes. As discussed above, in the view of morphosyntax adopted here, the term affixation is used in a structural sense to refer to the syntactic process of head- adjunction. Thus, for a structural reanalysis of an item as an affix, it must be the case that the candidate for reanalysis could be put together with its host by deeper structural principles. Linear adjacency alone is insufficient.