Iceberg Phenomena and Synchronic Rules

While language change may naturally lead to the defunctionalization of older linguistic structures, for instance in the guise of non-functional, purely historical instances of allomorphy like Engl. sweep and swept (the latter with Middle English shortening of the stem vowel before double consonant), inheritance need not preclude ongoing functional vitality. In particular, single inherited morphological features may continue to be synchronically productive. This chapter discusses three such cases at length: the frozen German adverbial suffix -maßen and Western Romance -ment(e), which, despite their frozen status, continue to require their adjectival bases to check the feminine gender feature; the frozen English adjective utter, which, together with its cognates in other languages, persists in synchronically barring predicative use; and, finally, the frozen German predicative adjective voller, which continues to cue inherited complementation in the genitive. Such cases cannot be accounted for by blocking or elsewhere conditions and thus recommend the integration of an additional interface of diachrony and synchrony besides the blocking and elsewhere principles in modern linguistic theories.