Vocabulary Insertion in Two Steps: Evidence from Anti-Homophony Effects in Ethiosemitic

Abstract Certain Amharic verbal constructions include a main verb and an auxiliary that are both inflected for subject agreement. However, in certain φ-feature combinations, one of the agreement markers is absent. We distinguish two patterns of agreement disappearance and develop an analysis of both on which full agreement in the syntax can be obscured during postsyntactic Vocabulary Insertion. To that end, we propose that Vocabulary Insertion be broken down into two ordered steps. First, Select chooses the best exponent to realize the features of a given node. Second, Link pairs the node and selected exponent. We associate the two types of agreement disappearance in Amharic with each of these steps: main verb agreement is realized as zero during Select via blocking, whereas auxiliary agreement goes unrealized due to a failure of Link. The failure of Link is driven by a novel anti-homophony constraint we dub Uniqueness. Finally, we show that our analysis accounts for cross-Ethiosemitic variation in the realization of agreement and is more empirically successful than alternatives.