On suffixhood and verbalness: a Mirror Theoretic approach

Abstract

In this thesis, I argue that suffixal and verbal status of a grammatical object can be predicted from its syntactic position within the framework of the Mirror Theoretic syntax of Brody (2003). I first show that in Turkish there is a constraint that dictates that the morpheme syntactically right above a verbal item be suffixed to this verbal item, which I dub V-X. I argue that X-bar Theory is not well-suited to capture this observation of suffixhood as a syntax-related phenomenon. I show that, in an antilexicalist implementation, the Mirror Theory of Brody (2003) can capture V-X as a reflex of syntax, relating it to the inability of verbal items to show phrasal behavior. I argue that this follows from the fact that verbal items can only occupy a complement position (one of the two logically possible positions) in Mirror Theoretic syntax. I present evidence from Basque, Japanese, Hindi and English to show that VX is a valid constraint in these languages and that this is correlated with the fact that verbal items cannot show phrasal behavior in these languages. I, then, argue that, in direct opposition to verbal items, two non-verbal items (nouns and non-verbal participles) always show phrasal behavior in Turkish. I present evidence from earlier works, indicating that the inflection on non-verbal items is always phrasal (and not suffixal) and that head-movement analysis of noun incorporation in line with Baker (1988) is not the right analysis for Turkish. With this, I argue that non-verbal items can only occupy the other position (i.e. the specifier position) in Mirror Theoretic syntax. I present further evidence from Basque, Japanese, Hindi and English, indicating that the claim that the non-verbal elements are always phrasal objects has cross-linguistic validity. I show that, with a few exceptions, in these languages, too, nominal inflection is phrasal inflection and that head-movement of bare objects is not the right analysis in the context of noun incorporation. Lastly, I outline a theory of lexical features where the [+/- verbal] and [+/- suffix] features are replaced by features that indicate what syntactic position an object may occupy in Mirror Theoretic syntax.