THE CAUSATIVE-INCHOATIVE ALTERNATION: A CASE STUDY IN PARALLEL MORPHOLOGY

The question of the morphology/syntax interface, an important linguistic battleground in the '60s and early '70s, but inert in the following decade, has emerged with renewed force in the last couple of years. Work done on the lexicon during the '70s and the '80s has resulted in important structural insights into the nature of word formation, thus strengthening the claim that morphology is an autonomous module. On the other hand, work done in syntax during that same period resulted in the emergence of syntactic Systems capable of handling word formation operations in a fairly restricted way, thereby suggesting the possible reduction of word formation operations to syntactic ones. It is within this enhanced understanding of both syntax and word formation that the same question is now raised again: is morphology an independent module, subject to restrictions all its own, or should it be subsumed under syntax, obeying syntactic restrictions which are independently motivated? For those who believe in the existence of an independent word formation component, another question must be resolved: how is the interaction between such an independent word formation component and the syntax to be characterized? The bottom line is that the resolution of these questions is an empirical issue. Proponents of an independent word formation component must show that such a component includes operations and constraints which cannot be reduced to independently motivated syntactic conditions. They must further show that an independent word formation component with its accompanying restrictions allows for a ränge of phenomena that cannot otherwise be accounted for. Proponents of exclusively syntactic word formation, on the