Editing Distributed morphology (section)

==Overview of Distributed Morphology==
The basic principle of Distributed Morphology is that there is a single generative engine for the formation of both complex words and complex phrases: there is no division between [[syntax]] and [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] and there is no Lexicon in the sense it has in traditional generative grammar. Distributed Morphology rejects the notion of a lexicon in the way it had been used. Any operation that would occur in the 'lexicon' according to lexicalist approaches is considered too vague in Distributed Morphology, which instead distributes these operations over various steps and lists.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/dm/|title=Distributed Morphology|access-date=2009-03-15|archive-date=2015-07-16|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150716033658/http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/dm/|url-status=dead}}</ref>
 
The term Distributed Morphology is used because the morphology of an utterance is the product of operations distributed over more than one step, with content from more than one list.<ref name="ReferenceA">Andrew Nevins "Lectures on Postsyntactic Morphology" ling.auf.net</ref> In contrast to lexicalist models of morphosyntax, Distributed Morphology posits three components in building an utterance:
# The Formative List provides the input for syntax.
# The Exponent List (the list of Vocabulary Items) is consulted to provide the utterance with post-syntactic phonological content.
# Syntactic operations (such as [[Merge (linguistics)|Merge]], [[Move α|Move]] or Agree in the [[Minimalist Program|Minimalist]] framework) apply to formatives.

There are three relevant{{Clarify|date=August 2015}} lists in Distributed Morphology: the Formative List, the Exponent List (Vocabulary Items), and the Encyclopedia.<ref name=":2" />  Items from these lists enter the derivation at different stages.

===Formative list: category-neutral roots===
The formative list, sometimes called the lexicon (this term will be avoided here) in Distributed Morphology includes all the bundles of semantic and sometimes syntactic features that can enter the syntactic computation. These are interpretable or uninterpretable features (such as [+/- animate], [+/- count], etc.) which are manipulated in syntax through syntactic operations. These bundles of features do not have any phonological content; phonological content is assigned to them only at spell-out, that is after all syntactic operations are over. The Formative List in Distributed Morphology differs, thus, from the Lexicon in traditional generative grammar, which includes the lexical items (such as words and [[morphemes]]) in a language.

As its name would suggest, the Formative List contains what are known as formatives, or roots. In Distributed Morphology, roots are proposed to be [[Root (linguistics)#Category-neutral roots|category-neutral]] and undergo categorization by functional elements.<ref name="Alexiadou2017">{{cite journal |last1=Alexiadou |first1=Artemis |last2=Lohndal |first2=Terje |title=The structural configurations of root categorization |journal=Labels and Roots |date=25 September 2017 |pages=203–232 |doi=10.1515/9781501502118-009|hdl=10037/20009 |isbn=9781501502118 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Roots have no grammatical categories in and of themselves, and merely represent the bundle of semantic features to be exponed. The notation for roots in Distributed Morphology generally uses a square root symbol, with an arbitrary number or with the [[Orthography|orthographic]] representation of the root.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Embick |first1=David |title=The Motivation for Roots in Distributed Morphology |journal=Annual Review of Linguistics |date=14 January 2021 |volume=7 |pages=69–88 |doi=10.1146/annurev-linguistics-040620-061341|s2cid=226331586 |doi-access=free }}</ref> For example, ''love'', without a grammatical category, could be expressed as √362 or as √LOVE.

Researchers adopting the Distributed Morphology approach agree that roots must be categorized by functional elements. There are multiple ways that this can be done. The following lists four possible routes.<ref name = Alexiadou2017 />
# Roots are merged as [[Complement (linguistics)|complements]] to the functional elements that categorize them.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Bobaljik |first1=Jonathan David |last2=Harley |first2=Heidi |title=Suppletion is local |date=22 June 2017 |volume=1 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780198778264.003.0007}}</ref>
# Roots are merged as [[Grammatical modifier|modifiers]] to the functional elements that categorize them.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=De Belder |first1=Marijke |title=The Root and Nothing but the Root: Primary Compounds in Dutch |journal=Syntax |date=June 2017 |volume=20 |issue=2 |pages=138–169 |doi=10.1111/synt.12133}}</ref>
# Some roots are merged as modifiers and others as complements to the function elements that categorize them.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Embick |first1=David |title=On the Structure of Resultative Participles in English |journal=Linguistic Inquiry |date=July 2004 |volume=35 |issue=3 |pages=355–392 |doi=10.1162/0024389041402634|s2cid=33115196 }}</ref>
# Roots are inserted post-syntactically and do not merge with complements or modifiers.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Belder |first1=Marijke De |last2=Craenenbroeck |first2=Jeroen van |title=How to Merge a Root |journal=Linguistic Inquiry |date=October 2015 |volume=46 |issue=4 |pages=625–655 |doi=10.1162/ling_a_00196|s2cid=57565134 |url=https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/632478 |url-access=subscription }}</ref>
As of 2020, there is no consensus on which approach most accurately describes the structural configuration of root categorization.

===Exponent list: vocabulary items===
Vocabulary items associate phonological content with arrays of underspecified syntactic and/or semantic features – the features listed in the Lexicon – and they are the closest notion to the traditional morpheme known from generative grammar.<ref name = McGinnis>McGinnis, Martha. (to appear). Distributed Morphology. In Hippisley, Andrew & Gregory T. Stump (eds.) ''The Cambridge Handbook of Morphology''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</ref> Postsyntactic Morphology posits that this operation takes place after the syntax itself has occurred.

Vocabulary items are also known as the Exponent List. In Distributed Morphology, after the syntax of a given utterance is complete, the Exponent List must be consulted to provide phonological content. This is known as 'exponing' an item.<ref name=":1">Nevins, Andrew "Lectures on Postsyntactic Morphology," ling.auf.net</ref> In other words, a vocabulary item is a relation between a phonological string (which could also be zero or null) and the context in which this string may be inserted.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/dm/ |title=Distributed Morphology FAQ |access-date=2009-03-15 |archive-date=2015-07-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150716033658/http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rnoyer/dm/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Vocabulary items compete for insertion to syntactic nodes at spell-out, i.e. after syntactic operations are complete. The following is an example of a vocabulary item in Distributed Morphology:

An affix in Russian can be exponed as follows:

/n/  <-->  [___, +participant +speaker, plural]<ref name = Halle>Halle, Morris. 1997.  'Distributed morphology: Impoverishment and fission.'  In MITWPL 30: Papers at the Interface, ed. Benjamin Bruening, Yoonjung Kang and Martha McGinnis.  MITWPL, Cambridge, 425-449.</ref> 
 
The phonological string on the left side is available for insertion to a node with the features described on the right side.

Roots, i.e. formatives from the Formative List, are exponed based on their features. For example, the first-person singular pronominal paradigm in English is exponed as follows:

[+1 +sing +nom +prn] ←→ /aj/
[+1 +sing +prn] ←→ /mi/

The use of /mi/ does not seem infelicitous in a nominative context at first glance. If /mi/ acquired nominative case in the syntax, it would seem appropriate to use it. However, /aj/ is specified for the feature [+nom], and therefore must block the use of /mi/ in a nominative context. This is known as the Maximal Subset Condition or the Elsewhere Principle: if two items have a similar set of features, the one that is more specific will win. Illustrated in logical notation:

f(E1) ⊂ f(T), f(E2) ⊂ f(T), and f(E1) ⊂ f(E2) → f(E2) wins.<ref>Andrew Nevins, "Lectures on Postsyntactic Morphology"</ref>

In this case, both /mi/ and /aj/ have a subset of features f(T), but /aj/ has the maximal subset.

===Encyclopedia===

The Encyclopedia associates syntactic units with special, non-compositional aspects of meaning.<ref name=McGinnis/> This list specifies interpretive operations that realize in a semantic sense the terminal nodes of a complete syntactic derivation. For example, adjectives ''compárable'' and ''cómparable'' are thought to represent two different structures. First one, has a composition meaning of ‘being able to compare’ – root combines with a categorizer V- and the two combine with the suffix ''–able''. The second one has an idiomatic meaning of ‘equal’ taken directly from the Encyclopedia – here root combines directly with the suffix ''–able''.<ref name=:1 />

===Derivation===

The Y-model of [[Minimalist Program|Minimalism]], as well as the syntactic operations postulated in Minimalism, are preserved in Distributed Morphology. The derivation of a phrase/word proceeds as follows:

# A subset of the '''Lexicon''', i.e. some combination of interpretable and uninterpretable features, and category-neutral lexical roots (e.g. √CAT) enter the computation. These features specify structural relations, which are satisfied via the operation of syntactic operations, such as Merge, Move or Agree. For example, if node A has a [+ plural] feature, while node B has no value assigned to the feature [plural], then node B could become [+plural] if it is in the right configuration with node A for Agree to apply. The category-neutral roots combine with a categorizer e.g., N-, A-, V- and turn into a respective category noun, adjective or verb. Once all relations specified by the features present in the numeration are satisfied, the syntactic derivation is complete; there is a configuration of terminal nodes, with different combinations of features and their values, and roots but without phonological content assigned to these nodes. At spell-out, the traditional division to [[logical form (linguistics)|logical form]] (LF) and [[phonetic form]] (PF) of the Y-model takes place. 
# 	At LF, the '''Encyclopedia''' is responsible for the semantic interpretation of the terminal nodes. Any non-compositional and idiosyncratic meaning associated with the bundles of features and lexical roots present at the end of the syntactic computation is assigned at this stage. 
# 	After syntactic operations are complete, certain morphological operations (see below) apply before any assignment of phonological content to the terminal nodes.
# 	Once these morphological operations are complete, phonological content is finally assigned to the terminal nodes, through '''competition''' of vocabulary items for insertion. How does competition work? Each terminal node contains a bundle of features and all vocabulary items compete for insertion into the terminal nodes. The vocabulary item that wins the competition and is inserted in a certain terminal node is the item that is most highly specified for that node. For example, if at the end of the derivation there is a terminal node with the features [+past, + plural, +3rd person] and the lexical root √PLAY, then the phonological content that will be assigned to the node will be the one corresponding to "played" because the most highly specified vocabulary item for this node is the item /d/  <-->  [___, +past, plural, 3rd person]. It is important to note that this vocabulary item does not exactly match the features of the terminal node; however, it wins the competition because in English it is the most highly specified vocabulary item for the specific values of features present in the node. Competition for insertion is governed by the Subset Principle, the following version of which is from Halle (1997):
:''The phonological exponent of a Vocabulary Item is inserted into a morpheme in the terminal string if the item matches all or a subset of the grammatical features specified in the terminal morpheme. Insertion does not take place if the Vocabulary item contains features not present in the morpheme. Where several Vocabulary items meet the conditions for insertion, the item matching the greatest number of features specified in the terminal morpheme must be chosen.''<ref name=Halle/>