The Nanosyntactic conception of spell out and grammar in general has com-mon points with the theory of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993 and much subsequent work). What is shared is the assumption that lexical insertion is post-syntactic, and that the lexicon is seen as a passive list of instructions mediating between the syntactic structure and the output systems: PF and CF. However, there are also significant differences between the two models.
For instance, most of the work done within Distributed Morphology as-sumes that insertion is restricted to terminal nodes. More importantly (and partly as a consequence of the first assumption), it is assumed that the map-ping from syntax to pronunciation is not isomorphic. A number of operations have been proposed which adjust the syntactic structure before and after in-sertion takes place, see Embick and Noyer (2007), Harley and Noyer (1999).
These operations are located in a separate module of the grammar, called Morphology.
The point of this section is to show that the need for some of the core morphological operations disappears, once it is acknowledged that insertion can target non-terminal nodes. In this section, I show that the spell out of non-terminal nodes is equivalent to the combination of the morphological
operation called Fusion and the spell out of terminals.8 The implication is that it is better to have only one thing (spell out) than two things (spell out and Fusion). Eliminating Fusion is also the first step on the way to make the morphology module job-less, and thus eliminate the need for it in the architecture of grammar.
The empirical illustration of the point comes from suppletive negative forms in Korean, discussed in detail in Chung (2007). The starting point is the fact that sentences in Korean can be negated by attaching one of the two negative prefixes ani or mos to the verb (14a,b). Chung (2007) shows that each of the negations is a head in the clausal spine and the verb combines with it by syntactic movement.9
(14) a. ca
‘cannot sleep / is not sleeping’ (Korean, Chung 2007:ex.1,2,4) The second relevant fact is that the verbal-‘know,’ see (15a), does not combine with any of these markers (15b), but shows a suppletive formmolu- instead, as in (15c).10
‘do(es) not / cannot know’ (Korean, Chung 2007:ex.45) Finally, if the same verbal-‘know’ is causativized by-li, meaning ‘inform, let know’ (16a), the negation switches back to the non-suppletive form (16b), and the suppletive form becomes ungrammatical (16c).
8Fusion is an operation which applies to two nodes of the syntactic representation, and turns them into a single node, which can be subject to insertion.
9The meaning of the negations differs slightly,ani is a simple negation,mos has a modal component, and means ‘cannot, is not allowed to.’ The modal negation does not have an epistemic reading.
10Chung (2007) shows that for a number of reasons, molu ‘not know’ cannot be analyzed as a conceptual counterpart of ‘know’ (similar to, e.g., learn and forget), but as a form which incorporates an independent syntactic negation.
(16) a. al
‘did not /could not inform’
c. *molu
As Chung (2007) points out, the contrast betweenal-andal-li means that the effect is not due to phonological contraction under adjacency; the negation and the rootal- ‘know’ are in the same phonological and linear configuration, but one “contracts” and the other does not. Rather, the emergence of the suppletive form is determined by structure. With al- ‘know,’ the negation is a sister to the verb (17a), whereas with al-li, it is not. The verb is first causativized, the affix being the head, and only later negated, see (17b). (The structure (17b) corresponds to the scope in (16c)). Crucially, only when Neg is the sister of ‘know,’ i.e. in (17a), suppletion occurs.
(17) Structures from Chung (2007:exs.81,86) a. Suppletion: NegP
Chung (2007) concludes that within theories like Distributed Morphology, which allow insertion only under terminals, there is only one (partly) sat-isfactory solution. We have to propose that the structure (17a) is turned into a flat node by the operation of Fusion. The procedure is given in (18a), taken from Chung (2007:ex.82). The lexical entry (18b) is then allowed to apply, since Fusion has turned the structure into a flat node:11
11An alternative would be to say that ‘know’ is spelled out as molu-when in the context of Neg, and Neg is spelled out as Ø when in context of molu-. (Such a solution represents another strategy to mimic phrasal spell out of two independent head positions, H1 and H2: H1 is said to be spelled out by zero morphology, and at the same time triggers a context specific allomorph of H2.)
(18) a. Fusion in Korean: NegP Neg V0
know
⇒ [Neg, know]
b. /molu/⇔ [Neg, know]
Clearly, Fusion (as shown in (18a)) cares about two things: (i) constituency (Fusion merges Neg with the verb ‘know’ only when they are sisters, and not when ‘know’ is embedded in vP) and (ii) the content of the nodes (Fusion applies when the V is ‘know,’ but not ‘read’).
These are exactly the same properties which fall out from the present model. Keeping the assumptions about structure constant, the suppletive form /molu/ has the entry (19): it is the negated form of V, and if we insert this item, the concept KNOW will be sent to the conceptual form.
(19) /molu/⇔ NegP Neg0 V0
⇔ KNOW
The Superset Principle ensures that the item (19) cannot lexicalize the syn-tactic structure of the negated causative (17b): the lexical entry does not have a part identical to it. Hence, insertion must target terminals, and as a result, al- is chosen as the lexicalization of the V head.12
To sum up where we are: the insertion under non-terminals achieves the same results as insertion under terminals augmented with Fusion. Given a choice between the two systems, spell out of non-terminals is a more parsimo-nious option, because it renders superfluous one of the operations which are assumed to take place in a specific morphology module.
In addition, the solution in terms of Fusion leads to a paradox (identified in Chung 2007:ftn.22), consider the reasoning. On the one hand, Fusion must precede lexical insertion, because lexicalization targets the structures which Fusion creates. On the other hand, Fusion happens only when the lexicon con-tains a portmanteaux for the fused heads. Thus, an operation which precedes lexicalization is triggered by lexicalization.
On the phrasal spell out hypothesis, this (apparently) paradoxical situation is in fact the predicted scenario, because “Fusion” of terminal positions into one morpheme is the product of phrasal lexicalization.13
12Chung (2007:ftn.22) considers the solution proposed here as a possible alternative to Fusion, but (correctly) points out that such a solution would not work under the standard formulation of the Subset Principle. I do not go into the details of why the Subset Principle fails to deliver the correct outcome here, referring the interested reader to the quoted footnote in Chung’s paper.
13The paradox is subject to an ongoing research in Distributed Morphology. For instance, Chung (to appear) proposes that insertion is cyclic, and Fusion applies