Lecture | Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
'Au Liban', but 'en Iran': external sandhi in French prepositions at the syntax-phonology interface
- Date
- Thursday 12 February 2026
- Time
- Serie
- Com(parative) Syn(tax) Series
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.37
Abstract
In this presentation, I revisit two well-known external sandhi alternations in French prepositions—suppletive allomorphy (du Liban/d’Iran, au Liban/en Iran) and fusion-concatenation alternations (du Liban/de l’Iran, au Liban/à l’Iran)—and offer a unified analysis as phonologically optimizing syntactic alternations. Building on prior work, the two patterns are argued to reflect anti-hiatus effects, which respectively override preferences for gender agreement and syntactic simplicity. But I also show that some syntactic and semantic constraints must remain undominated by phonology to block competition across alternations. The analysis has implications for theories of interfaces, because it entails not only that phonology may outrank syntax but also that phonological evaluation is semantically constrained, against the predictions of the Y model. The analysis is formulated in an OT grammar that evaluates aspects of semantic, syntactic, and phonological representations in parallel. Some empirical challenges that have been raised against the parallel approach are addressed and modular alternatives are discussed.