No Escape from Syntax: Don't Try Morphological Analysis in the Privacy of Your Own Lexicon

Most contemporary theories of grammar assume a general organization in which elementary constituents are drawn from a place called the " Lexicon " for composition in the syntax, as in (1). (1) STUFF Syntax Lexicon Sound Meaning (Pure) Lexicon: place from which items are drawn for the syntax; the source of items used by the computational system of syntax While it is uncontroversial that our knowledge of language includes a list of atomic elements for syntactic composition, the " Lexicalist " position is of course associated with a stronger claim about the source of building blocks for syntax, as given in (2). Lexicalism: words are created in the Lexicon, by processes distinct from the syntactic processes of putting mor-phemes/words together. Some phonology and some struc-ture/meaning connections are derived in the lexicon, while other aspects of phonology and other aspects of structure/meaning relations are derived in (and after) the syntax. So Lexicalism claims that the syntax manipulates internally complex words, not unanalyzable atomic units. The leading idea of Lexicalism might be summarized as follows: Everyone agrees that there has to be a list of sound/meaning connections for the atomic building blocks of language (=the " morphemes "). There also has to be a list of idiosyncratic properties associated with the building blocks. Perhaps the storage house of sound/meaning connections for building blocks and the storage house of idiosyncratic information associated with building blocks is the same house. Perhaps the distinction between this unified storage house and the