Middleton (2026): A Remark on the Ordering of Impoverishment Rules: Differences between Taos and Basque #

Arregi and Nevins divide the postsyntax into modules, impoverishment before metathesis and, within impoverishment, the paradigmatic rules, conditioned by the node they change, before the syntagmatic ones. Middleton tests both orders on the verbal agreement prefixes of Taos (Kiowa-Tanoan). Impoverishment feeds metathesis in Taos as in Basque; but in four Taos interactions a paradigmatic rule would bleed a syntagmatic one the attested forms need, while in a fifth they need the bleeding, so the two kinds of impoverishment interleave. The file transcribes the online appendix's analysis, its rules of impoverishment, metathesis, exponence, epenthesis and tone, and derives from it the paradigm of Fragments/Taos/Agreement.lean.

Main results #

derive_eq_form: the appendix's rules derive every cell of the paradigm but the nine it leaves open (unaccounted).
must_interleave: the orders cases 1 and 5 need respect neither block architecture, each case resting on one bleeding fact (r40_bleeds_r34a to r26_bleeds_r29).
mopen_tiers: the rules of exponence read their leftmost brackets on the tiers of [±participant] and of number; read on the present arguments alone, they lose the exponents of mopén.
r24_feeds_m23, Basque.ondarru_feeds, Basque.zamudio_bleeds: impoverishment feeds metathesis in Taos, and Participant Dissimilation feeds or bleeds Ergative Metathesis in Basque.

Implementation notes #

Inverse number is the one feature Feat.inverse, which Arg.Has reads as containing the dual's values (Taos.dual_le_inverse); the category labels s, d, p, i are exact tests on the number features (Arg.IsSingular and kin).
The paper labels its (35) and (43), the appendix's (40) and (26), paradigmatic, though as printed each carries a condition on another slot: r40 and r26 follow the labels, r40' and r26' the printed rules, and both sets derive the paradigm (derive_eq_form_printed).
Three orderings are this study's repairs of the appendix's sets, forced by cells its listing would not derive: (32) after (7), (44) after (43), and (44)'s context widened (see r32, r44).
Exponence is the appendix's rules as ExponenceRules, each bracket read in the adjacent window of a tier (onTiers), the present arguments keeping an agent impoverishment has left only [+author], as the appendix's trace reading has it; a third person object's number is null (objectNumberNull). The portmanteaux, epenthesis and tone carry the additions the appendix's prose uses but never states (see exponence).

TODO #

The nine cells in unaccounted, with what the pipeline gives them in derive_unaccounted: ∅:2s:∅ and 1:2s:∅ (o; the appendix says it will return to them and does not, and the rules give kǫ), 3i:3p (printed toneless; footnote 5 calls that a typo for high, but (50c) gives a closed final syllable falling, îw), 3i:refl (printed ímó; the rules give footnote 6's corrected ímo), and the three 3d possessives with an object (Table 3 prints ónôm and ónôw, but the tone rule (51h) and the appendix's Tables 8, 14, 17 and 38 have ónóm and ónów, which the rules give).
The paper's (13) is an adjacent swap; the study follows Arregi and Nevins's fronting rule, which the Zamudio auxiliary of (19) needs, and its rejected-order outputs are Arregi and Nevins's stranded forms rather than the paper's starred (17b) and (19b).

References #

Features and arguments #

The paper's (2) and (3): Taos distinguishes three persons and three numbers, and inverse agreement is the paper's (8), one feature here. The dummy object no and the reflexive are the two objects without person.

Middleton (2026): A Remark on the Ordering of Impoverishment Rules: Differences between Taos and Basque #

Main results #

Implementation notes #

TODO #

References #

Features and arguments #

The agreement prefix #

Rules of impoverishment #

The block architecture #

The Taos rules #

Case 1 (§4.2.1): object impoverishment precedes agent impoverishment #

Case 2 (§4.2.2): dummy object impoverishment precedes agent impoverishment #

Case 3 (§4.2.3): [+minimal] impoverishment precedes [+participant] impoverishment #

Case 4 (§4.2.4): third singular object impoverishment precedes possessive impoverishment #

Case 5 (§4.2.5): a paradigmatic rule before a syntagmatic one #

The two kinds interleave (§4.2, §5) #

Linearization, metathesis and exponence #

Rules of exponence #

Epenthesis and tone #

The derivation #

Impoverishment precedes metathesis in Taos (§3.2) #

Impoverishment precedes metathesis in Basque (§3.1) #

Case 3 (§4.2.3): `[+minimal]` impoverishment precedes `[+participant]` impoverishment #