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Part of
All Things Morphology: Its independence and its interfaces
Edited by Sedigheh Moradi, Marcia Haag, Janie Rees-Miller and Andrija Petrovic
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 353] 2021
► pp. 255–278

Chapter 14
Conditional exponence

ORCID logo | Emeritus, University of Kentucky

In inferential-realizational theories of morphology, the content realized by the application of a rule of exponence is customarily assumed to be invariant across the range of contexts in which that rule applies. Yet, there are morphomic exponents whose content is sensitive to context; Breton verb inflection presents striking examples of exponents of this sort. I argue that the patterns of context dependency presented by such exponents are an effect of the phenomenon of rule combination, by which simple rules of morphology may combine to form more complex rules. Some rule combinations involve ordinary rule composition; the properties of a combination of this sort are deducible from those of its component rules. Other rule combinations are supplementational; a combination of this sort possesses one or more properties that are not deducible from those of its component rules. As I show, the Breton examples of conditional exponence involve supplementational rule combination. I elucidate this claim formally and discuss its wider implications for morphological theory.

Keywords: conditional exponence, morphome, rule combination, rule composition, rule of exponence
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Exponence can be conditional
  • 2.Conditional exponence in Breton verb inflection
  • 3.What is rule combination?
    • Asymmetrical rule oppositions
    • Dependent rules
    • Processing frequent affix sequences
  • 4.Conditional exponence as a kind of rule combination
  • 5.A formal analysis of conditional exponence Breton verb inflection
  • 6.Conclusions
  • 7.Appendix: Further implications of rule combination in Breton
    • Irregular verbs
    • Conjugating prepositions
    • Dialectal variation
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 25 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.353.14stu
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