Multiple defaults: feminine -et and -a in Hebrew present tense

Autor: Daniel Asherov, Outi Bat-El
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Zdroj: Morphology. 26:399-423
ISSN: 1871-5656
1871-5621
DOI: 10.1007/s11525-016-9279-2
Popis: In this paper, we study the distribution of the feminine singular suffixes -et and -a in the present tense of Hebrew verb paradigms. The question we ask is which of these two suffixes is the default allomorph. The answer is not trivial. In terms of distribution, -a appears with limited environments and -et is clearly the elsewhere case, and thus the default. In terms of order, however, -et is the feminine singular suffix associated with the present tense, while -a emerges only when -et is blocked. We thus argue for multiple defaults, distinguishing between local and global default; -et is the local default, uniquely associated with feminine singular verbs in the present tense, while -a is the global default, associated with feminine singular but not specified for the present tense. We provide a formal analysis for the distribution of these suffixes within the framework of Optimality Theory, which allows the interaction of phonological constraints with constraints on morpho-syntactic feature mapping. We further study the partially unpredictable distribution of -et and -a in vowel final verbs, and present the results of an experiment where speakers employed unique strategies in order to assign the local default -et.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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