Definite Markers, Phi Features and Agreement - Georgetown ...

As a starting point, it is clear that the definite marker is a morphophonologicallydependent element in that it must be attached to other material and can never stand on its own.Specifically, it requires a host to its left; in conventional terms, it is a suffix or an enclitic. It isimportant to clarify the assumptions made here about the terms affix and clitic. Affixes areconventionally said to have a closer relationship with their stems than clitics, and many tests havebeen proposed to distinguish between the two (Zwicky and Pullum 1983, Miller 1992a). Astandard theoretical treatment is that affixes are attached to their stems in the lexicon, whereasclitics are added to their stems in the syntax or later. Distributed Morphology, however,specifically rejects Lexicalism and lexical composition, and thus the conventional differencebetween clitics and affixes. In Distributed Morphology, prosodically and morphologicallydependent items can be attached to their stems in a variety of ways, and the labels “clitic” and“affix” become descriptive terms for some of these ways, and not primitive categories (see e.g.,the discussion in Embick and Noyer 2001). I thus refer to -u ~ -wa neutrally as a definite marker,and, while I do develop an analysis of how the definite marker is attached to its host, I do notdiscuss whether it should be labeled a clitic or a suffix due to some characteristic of thatattachment.In the simplest pattern of definite marking, if a DP contains only a nominal head N,then the definite marker attaches to the right of N.(3) a. bet-u ‘the house’b. *u-betIf the DP contains an AP, though, then the definite marker attaches to the adjective. All APs areprenominal.26