Urdu Ezafe and the Morphology-Syntax Interface

Abstract

This paper introduces data from Urdu into the discussion surrounding the well-known Persian ezafe-construction (Samvelian 2007, Gomeshi 1997, Samiian 1994) in order to further explore the interplay of phonology, morphology and syntax. In contrast to earlier studies of Samvelian (2007) for HPSG and Luis and Otoguro (2005) for LFG, who each introduce new formal mechanisms that map between the morphology and the syntax in order to resolve the tension between lexical/affixal properties of clitics (phrasal affixes) and their ability to take wide phrasal scope, our approach demonstrates that the classic LFG projection architecture already allows for a straightforward account of the properties of Urdu ezafe and postlexical clitics in general. In particular, we invoke postlexical prosodic phonology in order to ensure the correct placement of clitics, while accounting for their phrasal scope and lexical selectional properties in terms of c-structure representations and f-structure constraints, respectively.