Inner and outer domains for Hawaiian causatives and nominalizers

Hawaiian valency-related morphology includes a complex set of surface forms which have traditionally been understood as causatives. Despite phonological similarity among this set of forms, these have traditionally been analyzed as separate morphemes. A closer view of their distribution and argument structure suggests an analysis in which these forms are allomorphs of one underlying, valency-increasing morpheme. A similar analysis of two nominalizing forms suggests that these are also allomorphs of one valency-decreasing morpheme. In each case (causatives and nominalizers), an analysis of surface realization is presented in terms of inner (or root-selecting) and outer domains. With the analysis of causatives and nominalizers in place, corpus evidence suggests that the inner causative allomorph and inner nominalizing allomorph do not co-occur, even though co-occurrence of the inner nominalizer and the outer causative is common. This data suggests a morpho-syntactic view of word formation, according to which morphological properties result from general properties of the morpho-syntax, such as the availability of only one root-selecting position for a given root.