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This chapter provides a precise and full characterization of adpositions (Adps), by showing what they are, what they are not, and what they do, synchronically and diachronically. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 first proposes a general definition of Adps. Section 2.1 studies the relationship between Adps and case affixes. Section 2.3 characterizes Adps with respect to the term they govern. Section 2.4 presents word-types that might be mistaken for Adps, while Section 2.5 presents Adps as sources of new units. Finally, the ‘adposition’ is justified in relation to the other available terms.

This chapter presents a concrete, crucially holistic, model for understanding the distributional properties of infixes. There are three main components to this model. Section 3.1 offers a formal theory of phonological subcategorization and, by extension, morphological subcategorization that can express the full range of subcategorization relations in language. Section 3.2 shows that such a theory is possible if the present theory of phonological subcategorization is situated within a declarative unification-based framework of grammatical analysis. Section 3.3 argues that the model must also include a theory of how phonological subcategorization interacts with grammar-external constraints imposed on morphological learning and morphological change. Section 3.4 shows that a proper understanding of the synchronic typology of infix distribution requires the theory of affix placement, indeed of grammar as a whole, to be embedded within a temporal axis.

This chapter reviews previous theories of syllable structure and propose a new one: the CVX theory, according to which the maximal syllable is CVX, where C, V, or X can be a complex sound. Extra consonant at word edges can be attributed to morphology, in particular a potential V, anti‐allomorphy, and the affix rule.

This chapter investigates the maximal syllable size in English. It shows that given the concepts of a potential V, the affix rule, and complex sounds, the maximal syllable in English is CVX. The analysis is checked against an exhaustive examination of the CELEX lexicon of English.

This chapter offers an exhaustive analysis of German words in the CELEX lexicon. It shows that given the concepts of a potential V, the affix rule, and complex sounds, the maximal syllable in German is CVX.

This chapter analyzes Jiarong, a Tibeto‐Burman language that was thought to be quite unusual in having large onset and coda clusters that violate expected sonority contours. It shows that, given the concepts of a potential V, the affix rule, and complex sounds, the maximal syllable in Jiarong is CVX.

Derivation is the formation of lexemes by means of affixation, reduplication, conversion, or root-and-pattern morphology. The outputs of such processes often exhibit idiosyncratic properties. Morphological processes differ as to the number of constraints they are subject to and in their degree of productivity. Morphological analysis of complex words also comprises the investigation of constraints on affix ordering in multiply complex words.

The morphological structure of a complex word determines how the constituent morphemes of a word are realized phonetically. The phonological structure of a complex word reflects its morphological structure, but is not isomorphic to that structure. Phonology plays a role in the selection of one from a set of competing affixes. This can be modelled in terms of phonological output conditions.

This chapter elaborates a more precise account of the phrasal morphology that is responsible for the appearance of special clitics, within an Optimality Theoretic framework. A limited set of constraint types suffice to describe these concisely and insightfully. The OT-based account of ‘Clitics as Phrasal Affixes’ is compared with a variety of other theories: those postulating a purely syntactic account of cliticization, and those locating the unusual properties of special clitics in their phonology or in other properties of the interface between syntax and other parts of grammar. The system of second-position clitics in Tagalog provides a complex and nuanced example displaying a number of the properties discussed to this point.

This chapter describes how natural coordination is expressed in co-compounds and phrase-like tight coordination. Different types of markedness are discussed, including formal, distinctive, structural, local, typological, and textual markedness. Marking strategies for natural coordination can deviate in several respects from ordinary coordination, all of which can be accounted for by two conflicting relationships of iconicity: minimal distance and symmetry. The phenomena of phonological-syntactic non-isomorphism in the syntax of coordination are discussed, putting them into a broader context of similar phenomena in related domains of syntax, such as clitics, phrasal affixes, and group inflection.

This chapter provides a critical evaluation of Generalized Template Theory (GTT), developed within Optimality Theory, to explain canonical morpheme shape. The central proposal of GTT is that prosodic morphemes have a restricted repertoire of prosodic shapes because they draw on the canonical shapes of a restricted repertoire of morphological categories. General theoretical principles correlate particular morphological categories (Stem, Root, Affix) with particular prosodic constituents. The central prosody-morphology correlation in this approach is between the stress foot and the morphological Stem (via the Prosodic Word in the Prosodic Hierarchy: the Stem=Prosodic Word Homology). The first two sections of this chapter define GTT and illustrate its strengths with examples showing the processes of reduplication, word minimality, templatic morphology, and hypocoristics drawn from a variety of languages. The third and final section discusses the empirical problems with the GTT, which motivate the alternative approach developed from Chapter 3.

This chapter argues for a morpheme-based alternative to the version of the Generalized Template Theory (GTT) of prosodic morpheme shapes critiqued in Chapter 2. In this approach (MBT), canonical shapes do not fall out from the Prosodic Hierarchy. Instead, the basic prosody-morpheme correlation is between the morpheme (Root or Affix) and the syllable. Lexical morphemes (Roots) tend to be branching syllables while affixes tend to be simplex syllables because lexical morphemes license more complex structure than non-lexical morphemes. Derived morphological constructions (Stems) tend to be minimally longer than single morphemes, as morphological branching is optimally matched by (disyllabic) prosodic branching. The first section of the chapter presents the general theoretical motivations for this alternative. The remaining sections provide detailed analyses of processes like reduplication, word minimality, templatic morphology, and hypocoristics, showing how the approach works and how it solves the problems discussed in Chapter 2.

The MBT approach developed in Chapter 3 defines the optimal minimal Root as a branching monosyllable. However, it is not difficult to find Roots which are either larger or smaller than this. The most common minimal word size is actually a non-branching CV syllable, even though a Root optimally branches. Roots in Diyari and other Australian languages are minimally disyllabic, rather than a branching monosyllable. This chapter shows that many of these exceptions can be straightforwardly accounted for in the MBT approach through the standard OT technique of variable constraint ranking. Syllable phonotactics can mask the morphologically-motivated branching requirements if phonotactic constraints are highly ranked. This can lead to ambiguity in the category of the canonical morpheme (is a non-branching monosyllable a Root? An Affix?), motivating further diachronic reduction.

This chapter discusses the remaining problems for the Generalized Template Theory (GTT), both the version developed in this book and other versions. One problem is that canonical shapes in some languages can be minimally smaller than a syllable (e.g., a single segment) or maximally larger than a disyllable (e.g., maximally four syllables). Neither of these shapes is definable as a target for prosodic morphology. Another problem is that GTT assumes that prosodic morphemes can be unambiguously assigned to a particular morphological category. However, a non-branching monosyllable can realize either a Root or an Affix if phonotactic constraints do not allow branching syllables in a particular language. For reasons like this, it is not always possible to determine the morphological category of a prosodic morpheme. These problems for future research are acknowledged, while emphasizing the gain in empirical coverage of the morpheme-based version of GTT.

This chapter is concerned with earlier definitions of degrammaticalization, with the aim to demarcate the book's own definition from these earlier views. It discusses the alternative terms of regrammaticalization and antigrammaticalization, as well as number of changes that have been used as (near )synonyms of degrammaticalization, including lexicalization of affixes and function words, exaptation, and replacement. Degrammaticalization is defined as a composite change whereby a gram in a specific context gains in autonomy or substance on one or more linguistic levels. This chapter argues that degrammaticalization is a change in context, and that there are no degrammaticalization clines. Furthermore, it provides an outline of a taxonomic system to classify degrammaticalization changes, based on Lehmann's ‘parameters of grammaticalization’, arguing that these parameters work in degrammaticalization as well.

This chapter deals with the second type of degrammaticalization, involving bound morphemes. Deinflectionalization is defined as ‘a composite change whereby an inflectional affix in a specific linguistic context gains a new function, while shifting to a less bound morpheme type’. In order to be able to establish what changes in morphological status might qualify as an instance of this type of degrammaticalization, the chapter starts with an assessment of the inflection-derivation and the inflection-clitic interface, concluding that both a shift from inflectional affix to derivational affix and a shift from inflectional affix to clitic qualify as instances of deinflectionalization. Examples include the shift from inflectional genitive to enclitic s-genitive, and inflectional suffixes becoming derivational.

This chapter deals with the third and final type of degrammaticalization. Debonding is defined as ‘a change whereby a bound morpheme in a specific linguistic context becomes a free morpheme’. Like deinflectionalization, debonding involves bound morphemes, but where in deinflectionalization grams remain bound and gain a new function or meaning, in debonding affixes and clitics become free morphemes and do not necessarily gain a new function or meaning. Debonding can be said to comprise two subtypes, since inflectional affixes and clitics on the one hand and derivational affixes on the other behave slightly differently. Examples include infinitival markers, connective particles becoming free connectives, and numeral suffixes becoming quantifiers.