Deletion Operations Targeting Morphological Markedness

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the interaction of morphological markedness constraints with the feature-deletion and terminal-deletion operations of Impoverishment and Obliteration. We examine both context-free markedness (the marked value of a particular binary feature) and context-sensitive markedness (the marked combination of certain feature-values in the presence of others). A large part of the chapter is devoted to an exemplification of Participant Dissimilation, a process of morphological dissimilation based on multiple instances of the feature [ + participant] in the same M-word. We argue for a general constraint, found across many Biscayan dialects, that bans the co-occurrence of first plural clitics and second person clitics within the same finite verb, but that each dialect may impose additional subcondition and enacts separate repairs in terms of deletion operations of Participant Dissimilation. We exemplify the distinction between Impoverishment and Obliteration through an examination of their effects on the allomorph selection between transitive and intransitive auxiliary roots. This chapter also presents an analysis of the phenomenon of Plural Clitic Impoverishment, whereby the number distinction on absolutive and dative clitics is neutralized in the context of a particular type of ergative clitic. The deletion phenomena in this chapter exemplify some of the procedures recurrently found during the participation of the Feature Markedness module in the Spellout of the Basque auxiliary.