Prospects of Inflectional Morphology in Harmonic Serialism

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gereon Müller
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 439622645

This project investigates the prospects of a cyclic, optimization-based approach to inflectional morphology that relies on Harmonic Serialism, a derivational alternative to Standard Parallel Optimality Theory.To this end, the project pursues two interrelated goals: The first goal is to substantiate Harmonic Serialism as a viable approach to inflectional morphology, covering roughly the same ground as other models like Distributed Morphology or Paradigm Function Morphology. Given that Harmonic Serialism has been successfully pursued in both phonology and syntax, establishing the model as a working theory of (inflectional) morphology opens up the possibility of a single, unified approach to all form-based components of grammar, one which has the potential to reconcile the two widely adopted but seemingly incompatible approaches of minimalist syntax andoptimality-theoretic phonology in a coherent, highly restrictive framework. The approach laid out in my recent monograph ``Inflectional Morphology in Harmonic Serialism'' (Equinox, Sheffield) is primarily designed to provide a basic proof of concept, by showing how somewell-known phenomena (affix order, extended exponence, disjunctive blocking, non-local stem allomorphy, and *ABA patterns) can be accounted for, in sometimes straightforward but more often radically new ways, which would seem to be empirically or conceptually superiorin at least some of the cases considered. However, this is clearly only the very first step: To reach this first goal, many more paradigms from many more languages need to be systematicallyinvestigated, and exponent order, disjunctive blocking and Extended exponence effects derived.The second, more far-reaching goal is to try to show that the Approach can offer new and convincing solutions to some recalcitrant Problems for existing morphological theories, in the areas of impoverishment, exponent drop, deponency, paradigm gaps, morphological movement,discontinuous bleeding, and learning algorithms for underspecification. The property of the harmonic serialist Approach that makes it amenable to new perspectives on these phenomena whereother, well-established approaches are not is that it is unique in combining a derivational, cyclic approach to structure-building with an optimality-theoretic approach to optimization. The former property implies that decisions in inflectional morphology can be myopic (andmay ultimately give rise to opacity, in the sense of Kiparsky), and that intermediate stages of derivations may be crucial for determining the properties of eventual output forms. The latter property makes it possible to accomodate evidence for violable and ranked constraints, like repair or last resort, emergence of the unmarked, conspiracies, constraint simplicity, and parametrization by reranking.In practice, two main goals of this project are tightly interrelated: By focussing on the second goal, the first goal will automatically also be addressed.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5175: Cyclic Optimization