F-structural Spellout in LFG Morphology

Although its architecture ascribes a central role to the lexicon and mor-phology, most work in LFG has proceeded without reference to any partic-ular theory of morphology. Sadler and Nordlinger (2004, to appear) begin to amend this deficiency by applying Stump’s (2001) theory of Paradigm Function Morphology (PFM) to an LFG analysis of some particularly chal-lenging data, the phenomenon of ‘case stacking ’ (Dench and Evans 1988) in Australian languages, especially Martuthunira (Dench 1995) and Kayardild (Evans 1995).1 In this note I will point out a rather implausible feature of Sadler and Nordlinger’s (2004) proposal for connecting the morphological descriptions of PFM to the functional descriptions of LFG, and propose an alternative which I think is simpler and more consistent with what I take to be the basic ideas of PFM. 1 Case-Stacking The problem of case-stacking is that in languages that have it, inflectional morphology appears to occur in multiple layers, sometimes interleaved with number marking, showing that the inflected word seems to have access to structure several layers above it. A standard entry-level example is this sentence from Martuthunira: (1) ngayu I nhawu-lha see-PAST ngurnu that.ACC tharnta-a euro-ACC mirtily-marta-a little-PROP-ACC thara-nga-marta-a pouch-LOC-PROP-ACC I saw the euro with a joey in its pouch (Dench 1995) The ‘access to higher levels ’ is indicated by the final two nominals, which con-stitute a proprietive modifier specifying something that the euro (medium-sized Australian macropod, not European currency) has; the head of this nominal bears first the proprietive case and then an accusative, indicating the function of the NP it is inside of, but this proprietive nominal has a 1For more work integrating LFG and PFM, see also Ackerman and Stump (2004). 1 further locative nominal within it specifying where the little one is. After its locative case-marker, this nominal recapitulates the proprietive and ac-cusative cases. It seems clear that Martuthunira has NPs, so that the annotated phrase-structure of this example is something like: (2) S (↑SUBJ) =