We are pleased to welcome Michelle Yuan (UC San Diego) as part of the
UCLA Linguistics Colloquium Series. This talk will be given in person.




Title: Morphological conditions on chain resolution: Inuktitut noun incorporation revisited

Abstract: Previous research on the Copy Theory of Movement has suggested that the
realization of movement chains may be regulated by morphological well-formedness
conditions governing complex word formation, such as the Stray Affix Filter (e.g. Boskovic
2001, Landau 2006, Kandybowicz 2007). This talk provides novel evidence for this
interaction from noun incorporation in Inuktitut (Eastern Canadian varieties of the Inuit
language) and, in doing so, reevaluates a number of previous claims about the structural
properties of incorporated objects in Inuit. Noun incorporation throughout Inuit is crosslinguistically unusual, in that a small set of verbs is obligatorily incorporating (i.e. affixal),
while for most other verbs incorporation is not possible (Sadock 1980, Johns 2007). In
contrast to most prior characterizations of Inuit incorporation, I present new data from my
fieldwork demonstrating that incorporated nominals in at least Inuktitut are in fact
syntactically active: despite their morphological appearance, they display the same syntactic
and semantic properties as their standalone counterparts and may be targeted by phrasal (Aand
A’-) movement operations. This is argued to be a Stray Affix effect applied in the context
of phrasal movement: the nominal complement of an incorporating verb is obligatorily
realized within the verb complex, regardless of whether it has undergone movement, due to
the affixal nature of the verb. Finally, I show how the basic logic of this interaction may serve
as a novel diagnostic for backward control (cf. Polinsky & Potsdam 2002).

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Note that for colloquium talks this academic year, no lunch will be provided by the
department. The faculty hosts will take the speaker somewhere on campus for lunch. Others
are welcome to join, but will have to pay for themselves.