Breton non-local spirantization reexamined

Abstract

In certain dialects of Breton, spirantization triggered by a few possessive adjectives appears to apply their mutation on a non-local word. A plausible diachronic development is proposed in which noun phrases with and without the intervening word were nearly semantically identical, making it easier for the mutation effects on the noun to spread to the construction in which a word intervened between the possessive adjective and the noun. A synchronic solution couched in Distributed Morphology which makes use of string-vacuous Local Dislocation is proposed, which provides a locality-obeying account.