The Morphophonology of Basque Finite Auxiliaries

Abstract

This chapter provides an in-depth look at the morphophonology of the auxiliaries, focusing on Fission, vocabulary entries for the auxiliary root, and phonological rules affecting the underlying form of auxiliaries. The chapter presents novel revisions to the mechanisms of Fission and Vocabulary Insertion proposed within earlier work on Distributed Morphology. It also contains argumentation to the effect that Basque has no third person absolutive clitics, a fact that has many consequences outside of the non-realization of this particular expected element. The chapter also includes a discussion of plural morphology within the Basque auxiliary, with an emphasis on decomposing apparent cases of multiple exponence into independent morphemes, each of which carries its own particularities of distribution. The core of the chapter is devoted to developing explicit analyses of all aspects of Vocabulary Insertion affecting the form of the root in Lekeito, Ondarru, and Zamudio, with an eye towards highlighting key points of convergence and divergence in terms of their exponents according to agreement features, tense, and argument structure, and contains a complete analysis of all phonological rules applying to the auxiliaries under study.