Distributed morphology without secondary exponence: a local account of licensing thematic licensing of vocabulary items and strong verb alternations

Abstract

This paper provides a Distributed Morphology (DM) approach to the thematic licensing of verbs and extends that approach to the licensing of strong verb alternations such as eat/ate. These verbal behaviors have been captured in the DM literature by limiting the morphological environments that condition the insertion of Vocabulary Items (c.f. secondary exponence). In this paper, I show that the verbs in question gain the features of the environment they appear in by undergoing fusion with the relevant heads. In this way, DM does not need to rely upon conditioning the insertion of irregular verbs, but need only rely upon the Subset Principle to license the insertion of these verbs.