*ABA pronominal stem allomorphy without containment

Abstract

*ABA environments are pockets of morphology that prohibit noncontiguous suppletion, and which show promise to generativists as a diagnostic for the presence of syntactic hierarchical structure. In particular, it identifies Lower Arrernte (Pama-Nyungan) nonsingular pronouns as an AAB-permissive *ABA environment. Morphological contiguity in Lower Arrernte results from the manner in which kintactic features expressing kinship generation and shared patrimoiety must always be bundled together at the same node as co-triggers of suppletion within a realizational morphology. Crucially, this study contradicts earlier accounts of the relevant paradigms in terms of how the categories are ordered by markedness: it argues that the agnatic-harmonic pronouns (i.e., pronouns that refer to groups in which all members belong to the same patrimoiety and even-numbered generations) are the most representationally complex. It emerges that morphological contiguity in Lower Arrernte nonsingulars patterns against the containment relationship observed in comparative suppletion and with the bundling relationship observed in English ablaut.