Case stacking in realizational morphology

Case stacking, the phenomenon whereby a single word may bear multiple cases reflecting its relation to a number of different syntactic elements, is an important phenomenon both for the development of theories of inflectional morphology and for our understanding of the relation between morphology and syntax. However, to date it has received virtually no attention from theoretical morphology. Working within the inferential-realizational framework of paradigm function morphology (PFM), we provide a morphological analysis of the phenomenon of case stacking as found in the Australian Aboriginal languages Kayardild (Tangkic) and Martuthunira (Pama-Nyungan). We argue that the standard assumptions concerning morphological property sets in PFM are too weak to satisfactorily accommodate case stacking morphology, and we propose that (in some languages) the morphological property sets which define paradigm cells are structured rather than being the simple objects of the standard view. We show how this provides a comprehensive analysis of the complex case and number stacking facts and further, allows for a straightforward (although nontrivial) mapping between the morphology and the syntax as outlined in Sadler and Nordlinger (2004). © Walter de Gruyter.