Mismatched suppletion in Azeri as morphology/phonology competition

Abstract

-mIʃ, but it can also be realized as -(j)Ib when the subject is 2nd or 3rd person, with one exception: in certain contexts where this suffix is used twice, the first instance is realized as -(j)Ib, even if the subject is not 2nd/3rd person. I hypothesize that this over-application of suppletion is driven by a requirement to avoid strings with adjacent identical morphemes. If this analysis is correct, this phonologically-forced morphological mismatch provides evidence that lexical insertion interacts and competes with phonological constraints (Wolf 2008, 2009, Pertsova 2015, a.o.). I go on to consider some remaining puzzles about the distribution of -(j)Ib.