The role of gender suffixes in number suppletion

A well-known empirical generalization is that suppletion is sensitive to the presence of intervening morphemes: for suppletion to take place, the trigger and the target must be adjacent. In this article, we focus on one manifestation of this generalization in Romance pronouns: number-triggered suppl...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Fábregas, Antonio|||0000-0001-9907-5878, Putnam, Michael T.|||0000-0002-7758-8266
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2025
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:319592
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/319592
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.559
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Gender
Number
Suppletion
Pronouns
Nanosyntax
Descripción
Sumario:A well-known empirical generalization is that suppletion is sensitive to the presence of intervening morphemes: for suppletion to take place, the trigger and the target must be adjacent. In this article, we focus on one manifestation of this generalization in Romance pronouns: number-triggered suppletion (NTS) is blocked by the presence of overt gender markers. We show how the Nanosyntactic Lexicalization Algorithm can derive the generalization without having to postulate any type of post-syntactic operation by focusing on the analysis of the three situations compatible with the generalization, and by showing how the fourth, unattested logical possibility cannot be generated by the Lexicalization Algorithm. This will also serve as an argument that the generalization on suppletion should be stated in terms of syntactic constituency, not locality.