The determination of the component of Universal
Grammar where word formation takes place has been a
major area of controversy in the literature. The
main goal of this book is to
uncover the component of Universal Grammar where a
morphologically-complex de-adjectival verb is
formed. It shows that although the internal
structure of morphologically-complex de-adjectival
causatives is empirically and theoretically
predicted to be opaque to phrase-level operations
(Borer 1991; Li 2005), syntactic processes and
descriptions are not oblivious to the internal
structure of that derived structure in Oromo and
Amharic. Building on a well-motivated assumption
that there is no well-formed syntactic structure
into which a synthetic de-adjectival verb might
project (Li 2005), we advance an argument to the
effect that both members of those derived de-
adjectival causatives are lexically independent.
Inspired by work done in Distributed Morphology
(Halle & Marantz 1993), we maintain that a merger of
the members of de-adjectival causatives takes place
post-syntactically in an intermediate level of
representation called morphological structure (MS).
Grammar where word formation takes place has been a
major area of controversy in the literature. The
main goal of this book is to
uncover the component of Universal Grammar where a
morphologically-complex de-adjectival verb is
formed. It shows that although the internal
structure of morphologically-complex de-adjectival
causatives is empirically and theoretically
predicted to be opaque to phrase-level operations
(Borer 1991; Li 2005), syntactic processes and
descriptions are not oblivious to the internal
structure of that derived structure in Oromo and
Amharic. Building on a well-motivated assumption
that there is no well-formed syntactic structure
into which a synthetic de-adjectival verb might
project (Li 2005), we advance an argument to the
effect that both members of those derived de-
adjectival causatives are lexically independent.
Inspired by work done in Distributed Morphology
(Halle & Marantz 1993), we maintain that a merger of
the members of de-adjectival causatives takes place
post-syntactically in an intermediate level of
representation called morphological structure (MS).