Comparatiefmorfologie in verschillende woordsoorten: Oekraïense adjectieven, adverbia en deadjectivale werkwoorden

This dissertation is a case study on comparative morphology in Ukrainian, i.e. comparative suffixes that are used to derive the comparative form of an adjective, such as the English comparative morpheme -er in tall-er. In Ukrainian, this comparative morphology is attested not only in adjectives, but also in adverbs and deadjectival verbs. Analysing Ukrainian comparative morphology in these three domains involves three theoretical challenges, which are the central focus of the dissertation. The first challenge concerns comparative allomorphy. This term refers to the fact that the Ukrainian comparative suffix (CMPR) appears in two forms: -i&scaron;, as in (1), and -&scaron;, as in (2); in both cases the suffix comes between the root and the agreement marker (AGR). The same type of allomorphy is attested in adverbs and deadjectival verbs. (1) a. vesel-yj merry-AGR 'merry' b. vesel-i&scaron;-yj merry-CMPR-AGR 'merrier' (2) a. molod-yj young-AGR 'young' b. molod-&scaron;-yj young-CMPR-AGR<br /> 'younger' I propose to split the comparative suffix into two morphemes: -i and -&scaron;, which spell out two comparative heads: C1 and C2 (Caha et al. 2019). The second challenge comes from complex adjectives. These are adjectives derived with an additional morpheme (a so-called augment, AUG) between the root and the agreement, such as -k in (3-a) and (4-a). The difference between the two forms in (3) and (4) is the behaviour of this augment in the comparative: while it is preserved in (3-b), it is dropped in (4-b). (3) a. čit-k-yj clear-AUG-AGR<br /> 'clear' b. čit-k-i&scaron;-yj clear-AUG-CMPR-AGR 'clearer' (4) a. solod-k-yj sweet-AUG-AGR 'sweet' b. solod-&scaron;-yj sweet-CMPR-AGR 'sweeter' There is a relation between augments and comparative morphology: when the augment is retained, it is followed by the comparative marker -i&scaron;, and when it is not retained, the comparative allomorph -&scaron;​ is used. The same morphological behaviour is attested in adverbs and deadjectival verbs. Bobaljik (2012) argues that there is a structural containment relation between positive and comparative adjectives, where the structure of the positive is contained in the structure of the comparative. I claim that, structurally, positive adjectives are always contained in the comparative in Ukrainian, although this is not always reflected in the surface morphology, as the discussion of augments above has shown. Using the framework of Nanosyntax (Starke 2009), I explain the distribution of comparative morphemes and augments in terms of root size and shape. The third challenge comes from deadjectival verbs. Ukrainian has two types of deadjectival inchoative verbs. The first type takes overt comparative morphology, as in (5), which is followed by the theme vowel (TV) -a; I refer to such verbs as Inchoative 1. The other type of deadjectival inchoative verbs do not take overt comparative morphology, as shown in (6), and only take the TV -i; I refer to such verbs as Inchoative 2. (5) vesel-i&scaron;-a-ty merry-CMPR-TV-INF 'to get merrier' (6) vesel-i-ty young-TV-INF 'to get merrier' Since the Inchoative 2 form in (6) is derived without overt comparative morphology, the null assumption would be that such forms embed the positive adjective, which would entail the reading 'to get merry'. However, this is not the case, and both Inchoative 1 and Inchoative 2 forms can have the comparative reading 'to get merrier'. I conclude that, despite the absence of an overt comparative marker in Inchoative 2 verbs, both types of verbs contain the structure of the comparative adjective. On the empirical side, this dissertation provides a detailed description of Ukrainian comparative morphology across categories. On the theoretical side, it provides a theoretical account of Ukrainian comparative morphology. The central claim is that the size and shape of lexical roots underlie the syntactic distribution of comparative morphology in adjectives, adverbials, and deadjectival verbs. References Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2012. Universals in comparative morphology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Caha, Pavel, Karen De Clercq & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd. 2019. The fine structure of the comparative. Studia Linguistica 73(3). 470-521. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/stul.12107. Starke, Michal. 2009. Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language. Nordlyd 36(1). 1-6.