出版社：Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto
摘要：In models of morphosyntactic feature geometry, unmarked features are often necessarily underspecified because they are absent from the geometry and, hence, unavailable for specification. At the same time, underspecification is held to be the primary source of morphological syncretism. Together, these two approaches predict that, given the opportunity, a morphological form associated with unmarked features should participate in syncretism over and against any other form in a paradigm. While this is generally true, there are exceptional cases in which the form associated with unmarked features is precisely the one that fails to participate in syncretism. I illustrate instances of this kind and argue that they provide evidence for the availability of unmarked features within the universal geometry. If such features are available, then languages must have the option of uniquely specifying them (i.e., of ‘marking the unmarked’). When this is recognized, a simple solution to these exceptional patterns is available — one that relies only on underspecification, and not on accidental homophony or rules of impoverishment.
