What can syntax do for phonology? A case study in Basque

Bridget Samuels, University of Maryland

Abstract

In this talk, I present an analysis of vowel assimilation in Lekeitio Basque based on a direct approach to the PF interface, which holds that phonology is cyclic as a direct consequence of phases in syntax (Marvin 2002). Specifically, phonological operations apply at each application of Spell-Out, and are subject to the Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 2001), which prevents ‘reaching back’ too far into the derivation. I claim that ‘morpheme-level’ phases defined by the DM categorial heads n and a (Marantz 2001, Marvin 2002) can replace Lexical Phonology’s hierarchy of strata, and that ‘clause-level’ phases (defined by v, ApplH, D, C, etc.) can replace the prosodic hierarchy. I use this framework to analyze two processes which affect vowels in Lekeitio Basque, arguing that these assimilation rules are lexical and as such can apply only between two adjacent morpheme-level Spell-Out domains.