A Linguist's Linguist: Studies in South Slavic Linguistics in Honor of E. Wayles Brown

Morphology-Free Syntax: Two Potential Counter-Examples from Serbo-Croat

Morphology-Free Syntax: Two Potential Counter-Examples from Serbo-Croat* Greville G. Corbett 1. Introduction An important aspect of Wayles' work is his combined interest in the small and the large: he is very interested in the detail, the individual items of language, and at the same time in how these impact on largerscale generalizations. For instance, his (1978) paper on the Russian verb VlJgljadet" appear' focuses on this single verb, whose stressed prefix suggests it would be perfective, according to the general rule, yet it is imperfective. In this paper I look at the very general principle of morphologyfree syntax and consider two potential counter-examples from SerboCroat . Following Wayles' usage in Corbett and Browne 2009, I use "Serbo-Croat" as a linguistic cover term for Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin , and Serbian; an alternative is Central South Slavonic. The first example has been discussed previously, and is recapitulated in order to highlight the type of argumentation involved. It concerns conjoined noun phrases (the "carelessness and capriciousness problem"). The second has received little attention, and is our main focus. It may be summarized as the "two colleagues problem." 2. Morphology-Free Syntax Just as we recognize different components in grammar (syntax, morphology , phonology, and so on) so there are different features appro- * The support of the AHRC under grant AH(D001579/1 is gratefully acknowledged . While working on this topic it was natural to ask Wayles for his view, so I thank him for his (unwitting) help. I am also very thankful to Mirela Dumic for her linguistic intutions, to Matthew Baerman, Ranko Matasovic, and Ljubomir PopoviC for suggestions and comments, and to Steven Franks and an anonymous reviewer for their reactions to the final draft. Steven Franks, Vrinda Chidambaram, and Brian Joseph, eds. A Linguist's Linguist: Studies in South Slavic Linguistics in Honor of E. Wayles Browne. Bloomington, IN: Siavica, 14966 . 150 GREVILLE G. (ORBED priate to these components. In addition, there are features which cross the component boundaries. The relevant type here are morphosyntactic features, which have an effect both in syntax and in morphology. The typical morphosyntactic features are gender, number, person, and case. Morphological features are those which characterize variations in form without reference to syntax. The most obvious example is inflectional class. We use an inflectional class feature to represent the fact that morphosyntactic specifications (such as NUMBER: singular, CASE: dative) are realized differently according to the class of the particular item. Once we accept purely morphological features, we do not expect to find rules of the type: *nouns which inflect according to inflectional class II are placed last in the noun phrase, while all others are placed first. The intuition that such rules are not possible is what is behind the principle of "morphology-free syntax" (Zwicky 1996: 301). Syntax does not have access to purely morphological information. On the one hand this principle may seem obvious. The whole point of conjugations and declensions is that they describe lexical items which are morphologically different but the same otherwise. "Of course" the word order properties of nouns do not depend on how they inflect. And since the principle accords with our intuitions about language and is adhered to in so many instances, it is worth trying to maintain it by scrutinizing apparent counter-examples with suspicion and rigor. Yet, on the other hand, linguists occasionally propose analyses which are not in accord with the principle, and do so almost nonchalantly , as though the violation were of no great import. Two such potential violations have been suggested on the basis of Serbo-Croat data. We look carefully at each in turn. First we need some basic facts about the morphology of nouns. 3. Key Facts about Serbo-Croat Noun Inflection Examples of the main Serbo-Croat declensions are given in Table 1. MORPHOLOGy-FREE SYNTAX 151 Table 1: Serbo-Croat Noun Declensions SINGULAR: I II III IV NOMINATIVE zakon :lena stvar selo 'law' 'woman' 'thing' 'village' VOCATIVE zakone zeno stvari selo ACCUSATIVE zakon zenu stvar selo GENITIVE zakona zene stvari sela DATIVE zakonu zeru stvari selu INSTRUMENTAL zakonom zenom stvarju/stvari selom LOCATIVE zakonu zeni stvari selu PLURAL: I II III IV NOMINATIVE zakoni zene stvari sela VOCATIVE zakoni zene stvari sela ACCUSATIVE zakone zene stvari sela GENITIVE zakona :lena stvari sela DATIVE zakonima zenama stvarima selima INSTRUMENTAL zakonima zenama stvarima selima LOCATIVE zakonima zenama stvarima selima These are the major declensional classes, each...