Phonology produces morphology: how to define the Righthand Head Rule (RHR) in morphologically complex words as an effect of phonology
Résumé
We question here the modalities of the relationship between an abstract structure required, where the functional or categorial heads connect with their dependent, as well as its phonological realization.
In the Righthand Head Rule (RHR), Williams states (1991, 248): “In morphology, we define the head of a morphologically complex word to be the righthand member of that word”.
We propose to see in the typical configuration, where the heads (of any nature, categorical and functional) are made final, the effect of the syllabification, universally retrograde. If this proposal is right, we do not need to state the morphological principle of the head finality (RHR, Williams 1981). The primacy of structural heads (below any linear reading) ensures their final realization, ordered, from more embedded to more peripherical.
If the syllabification can ensure a realization of the successive linear morphological elements, it can also be used to determine their co-realization, a form of merger, to the extent that the content of phonic morphemes determines an interpretation of the structural dependency in this sense. The segregation of consonants and vowels naturally lends itself to the co-realisation in the syllabification (rather than the consecutive realization) of the morphemes hierarchically associated (such as the temporal-aspectual head and the verbal root in the Semitic languages).
In the Italo-Romance domain and in Metaphony, the number and gender can be performed as a final segment, the current situation. However, they can also be realized parasitically on the tonic vowel, which is a description of the opaque metaphonic status of Southern Italian Modern dialects.
The internal morphology of Southern Italian dialects is not the effect of a phonic segregation that would require using the material of a morpheme structurally neighbour to syllabify the content of a morpheme. We can, however, see in it a kind of ionization phonological effect that an elements phonological approach allows to formalize. It is known that the incompleteness of the ions determines their propensity to combine.
We have argued strongly that the responsible for the Italo-Romance Metaphony has to be an element, and specifically not one or the ones that we are waiting for... the element A (the one that defines the low and mid vowels) is the active element in the Metaphony (see Russo 2007), i.e. a morpheme A singular and feminine, instead of the morphemes, the elements high (I, U) plural and masculine. A morphological mark reduced to an element is ready optionally, instead of an interpretation as a segment, to an interpretation by combination with other vocalic material.
The Italian heteroclitic paradigms type masculine singular il dito ‘the finger’ and the feminine plural le dita ‘the fingers’ correspond to the dialectal, with the exception of the metaphony, furno M.S. the oven / forna F.PL. the ovens. The analysis is facilitated here if the Element A represents a morpheme of plural, functionally higher than the proper gender of the form, which also imposes a parasite gender, in this particular case the feminine gender:
[PL-A [F-A m-0-N
[F / PL [Ge-A
ǀ
A
Fig. 1 heteroclitic paradigms (il dito /le dita)
[PL [F m - N
⁄ ⁄ ǀ
A A 0
Fig. 2 furno / forna – metaphonic type
See already in the Medieval Southern forms (HistTroya 78) the feminine plural affix -a in quella mura with heteroclit agreement of the (plural) verb and adjectives:
quella mura foro fabricateAGR.PL. e coperta de marmore ben laborate, e pente
These walls were built and covered of marbles well worked and painted
Or the Italian Southern Latin forms: - ad agra puma ‘apples’ - as Modern Italian le dita F.PL. ‘the fingers’.
As the derivational suffixes, which determine regularly the category of the resulting word, are logically recognized as structural heads of the complex form, the functional categories of the grammar (gender, number in particular) can be considered to be structural heads.
This leads to a unified theory of (affixational) morphology, in which derivational affixes and inflectional affixes do not need to be separated in the rules of formation and in which Phonology builds Morphology.