Joan Mascaró (UAB) – Morphological epenthesis, trisyllabic feet, and recursivity

Seminari del CLT

Divendres, 21 d’abril de 2023
Horari: 15:30h
Aula 202

In the debate around Hauser et al. (2002) (Pinker and Jackendoff 2005, Fitch et al. 2005) one of the issues discussed is the role of recursivity in language, and whether there is recursivity outside syntax. I will devote the last part of the talk to the examination of these questions in the light of the previous discussion.
The talk presents additional evidence for internally layered trisyllabic feet, structures where the category foot dominates another instance of foot, i.e. there is a single recursive step. (Martínez-Paricio 2013 and related work). I will examine a derivational pocess in Catalan in which there is a prosodic requirement of trisyllabicity (Lleida—> *lleidà, lleid-at-à), satisfied through insertion of a meaningless morpheme between root and suffix (morphological epenthesis). Additional evidence will be briefly presented: a set of ideophones have a similar requirement, and a process of trochaic harmony operates within the foot, but is restricted to disyllabic foot domains.

(Talk in Catalan, handout and/or PowerPoint in English)