Welsh Prenominals: at the Syntax-Morphology Interface

Abstract

Welsh is a strongly head-initial VSO language: within a variety of projections only a very limited range of elements may appear in pre-head position. This paper is concerned with the prenominal field within noun phrases, and discusses a set of elements which occur in this position and which also exhibit a number of quite puzzling restrictions on their syntactic behaviour. We present the data drawing together observations from standard descriptive grammars, examples from corpus searches of reputable sites and work with informants, and show that the observed picture departs in some respects from the standard view in descriptive grammars. Data from the interaction with NP-internal coordination throws up some intriguing challenges. The restrictions on the prenominal domain which we explore appear to place the problem squarely at the interface of syntax and morphology: are we dealing with morphological constructions, cases of phrasal affixation, or some form of restricted lexical constructions? What weight should be given to tests such as the Coordination Criterion (Miller, 1992a)? In sum, we consider that the data we discuss pose a challenge to

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