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Morphological Integrity and Syntax: The Evidence from Finnish Possessive Suffixes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Jonni M. Kanerva
Jonni M. Kanerva*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Abstract

The relationship of morphological structure to syntactic functions has received much recent attention (e.g. Anderson 1982, McCloskey & Hale 1984, Stump 1984, Sadock 1985, Bresnan & Mchombo 1987). The behavior of possessive suffixes (Px's) in Finnish sheds light on this issue. These are important syntactically; yet phonological, morphological, and semantic evidence shows them to be suffixes rather than clitics (i.e. elements found on words but not placed there exclusively by the morphology). They stand in striking contrast to the Finnish clitics, which by similar evidence must be word-external. The contrast is interpreted as a consequence of the integrity of the morphological word. To violate this integrity in analysing elements like the Finnish possessive suffixes would gravely weaken linguistic theory.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1987, pp. 498 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Linguistic Society of America

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