The cycle in a syllable: Phases and impenetrability in Dinka morphology

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Abstract:

This talk argues for a cross-modular theory of cyclicity rooted in phase theory (Chomsky 2001; Marvin 2002; Newell 2008 a.o.), in which the application of the syntactic, morphological, and phonological grammar is interleaved. I present a detailed investigation of the Nilotic language Dinka (South Sudan), a language with extensive effects of cyclicity in its syntax and a rich system of nonconcatenative morphology. I show that several asymmetries in how nonconcatenative morphology is expressed on the verb, including allomorphy, the availability of affixation, and shifts in voice quality, align with a clause-internal domain diagnosed by successive-cyclic long-distance movement (Van Urk and Richards 2015). As a result, Dinka provides a clear argument that the domains of cyclic computation of phonology, morphology, and syntax are parallel, as predicted by a phase-theoretic view of cyclicity. In addition, the nonconcatenative morphology of Dinka demonstrates a key property of an interleaved system: morphosyntactic information is rendered opaque at the end of each cycle of interpretation, but phonological content remains accessible in higher domains.