Deriving asymmetry in Swedish and Icelandic inflexional paradigms

Abstract

The present thesis sets out to address explicanda which appeal to a notion of gaps vis-à-vis inflexional paradigms and further pose a challenge of modelling within contemporary generative phonology. Albright (2006) discerns phonotactically-motivated and lexically-arbitrary paradigm gaps. The former case serves as a repair strategy mandating circumvention of a surface-illicit configuration (i.e., ill-formedness); whereas the latter case sees the emergence of gaps alongside structurally analogous forms wherein no such gaps occur. Enquiry into the aforementioned phenomena will draw empirically on Swedish -ddt clustering and Icelandic imperative formation, respectively. A generalised phonological account will be pursued ad rem in the Swedish case study such that constraints relativised to morphosyntactic properties will be argued as conceptually inferior to the purely phonological model of grammar put forth. Upon analysis of Icelandic imperative formation, an approach appealing stringently to phonological properties will prove infeasible in light of data neutralising any such phonological triggers; requiring rather lexicalisation and the utility of a transderivational constraint, as incited by the uniformity effects of paradigm levelling. The cogency of these analyses will further suggest that analytic disparities distinguishing between Swedish and Icelandic gaps are irreconcilable in that the systematicities driving phonotactically-motivated and lexically-arbitrary paradigm gaps are markedly at odds.