Strictly Local Impoverishment: An Intervention Effect

According to Harley (2008) and Nevins (2011), languages that exhibit systematic patterns of morphological syncretism must involve a rule that derives such syncretism as a “deep” property of the grammar. These authors show that, within Distributed Morphology (DM; Halle and Marantz 1993), the relevant rule is Impoverishment (Bonet 1991, Noyer 1992, Halle and Marantz 1994), which, as a context-sensitive operation, deletes feature F_a. in the context of F_β. In discussing Ljubljana Slovenian, Nevins (2011) posits Impoverishment of the DUAL-number contrasts in the context of feminine gender. However, Nevins’s argument is based only on the relevant morphological paradigms in isolation and only on their nominative case forms. This squib provides more empirical context: namely, entire morphological paradigms from Ljubljana Slovenian, and the interaction of the relevant syncretism with agreement patterns. While the agreement patterns confirm the postsyntactic nature of Impoverishment, the...