Meet in Haines A28

Recursive Morphology in Malagasy Reciprocals

Ed Keenan     Baholy Ralalaoherivony

We show that verbal affix reciprocals in Malagasy have several classically lexical properties:  allomorphs, voice conditioning, semantic drift, several non-compositional forms.  But we also show that two (maybe three) types of syntactically derived predicates also host reciprocal morphology (and meaning).  So the Lexicon/Syntax parameter for reciprocals (Reinhart and Siloni 2005; Siloni 2012) is not motivated in Malagasy.  We also argue that in some syntactic cases reciprocal morphology appears more than once even though only one reciprocal action is asserted.  This motivates a kind of recursive analysis which is novel as far as I know (which is not very far, so I’m open to hearing about other morphological processes with this pattern).