LangSci Lunch Talk: Paulina Lyskawa (LING)

The research I conducted in Guatemala looks into Mayan phonology and the productivity problem of phonological phenomena. Mayan grammars traditionally classify ergative agreement and possessive morphemes as one paradigm called Set A. The superficial uniformity of the markers and cross-linguistic patterns lead us to believe that indeed they are the same category. While the paradigms align almost 1:1, the first person singular morphemes diverge quite substantially in the Mayan language Kaqchikel – 5 different forms are found depending on the function (possessive vs. ergative agreement) and the phonological environment they appear in - i.e. whether the preceding and following segment is a vowel or a consonant.There is disagreement whether we should treat all these forms as phonologically derived from one common underlying form or as case of morphological suppletion. I’ll argue that while the first analysis is very attractive, it introduces phonological processes that are not found outside of this paradigm, calling into question its explanatory power within the whole phonological system.