The data in this article are drawn from the Greek of the Classical period (~800–300 BCE), in Attica. Under consideration is the “synthetic perfect”; that is, the inflected form(s) taken by a verb that expresses perfect meaning. These forms contrast with the periphrastic constructions used with some verbs in the present perfect, and with most verbs in the future perfect active and past middle–passive.2

Much previous work on the Classical Greek perfect focuses on its meanings (e.g., Wackernagel 1904; Chantraine 1927; McKay 1965; 1980; 1981; 1992; Rijksbaron 1984; Ringe 1984; Sicking & Stork 1996; Gerö & von Stechow 2003; Haug 2004) or on cataloguing forms (e.g., Smyth 1920 and countless pedagogical works; more recently, e.g., Groton 2000). Authors note resultative (Wackernagel 1904; Chantraine 1927; McKay 1980; 1981; Gerö & von Stechow 2003) or “resultant state” (Haug 2004) uses; Gerö & von Stechow (2003) also claim instances of experiential and universal perfects. Some verbs (generally statives) also show an “intensive” perfect (giving what Rijksbaron 1984: 38 calls the “highest degree of that state”), though this use is more common in pre–Classical Greek. I adopt Haug’s (2004) position that the “abnormal” uses of the perfect (such as the intensive) are derivable semantically in the same way as the typical uses; furthermore, I will assume that there is, at least for a given time period, a unitary perfect semantics general enough to allow us to derive all the various readings. There is at least no variation in form that corresponds to the different shades of meaning.3

In the following sections I turn to each of the reflexes of perfect aspect in Classical Greek and the conclusions they lead us to about morphological structure and timing. In Section 2 I establish that the reduplicative prefix instantiates the Aspect node, examine the mechanics of the prefix, and modify an existing proposal by Zukoff (2017a; b) to formally account for the realizations that surface. In Section 3 I argue that the suffix -/k/ instantiates Voice in a case of outwardly sensitive span–conditioned allomorphy and reject several other possible analyses. In Section 4 I argue that the agreement marking that obtains in the perfect is the result of allomorphy in the AGR node in inwardly sensitive span–conditioned allomorphy. Section 5 is the conclusion.

As introduced above, perfect aspect is indicated in three distinct positions on the Classical Greek verb. I will argue that the -/k/ suffix and stem changes are instantiations of Voice[active] conditioned by a span including Aspect[perfect], and that the agreement suffixes instantiate AGR in a similar context. The reduplication on the left side of the verb, however, signals nothing in these forms other than perfect aspect. All perfect forms, regardless of tense, mood, voice, person, or number, show reduplication. In Table 1, the distinct4 perfect forms of παιδɛύω /paideuo:/ ‘I teach’ are listed, with the reduplicant emphasized.5

Given that reduplication is always present in forms with perfect meaning, and that it is an indicator only of perfect meaning in those forms, I take it to be the primary signal of the perfect: It instantiates the Aspect node when the [perfect] feature is present. The basic patterns of perfect reduplication, predictable from the phonology of the root, are summarized and exemplified in Table 2 (after Smyth 1920, Groton 2000). The reduplicant is emphasized in the right–hand column. Full examples can be found in the Appendix. Note that part of the reduplicant is always the fixed segment /e/ (and in fact this is sometimes the entirety of the reduplicant).6

In the next section I consider existing approaches to reduplication in Distributed Morphology, before adopting one in the following section.

The challenge of reduplication for piece–based theories like Distributed Morphology is that the reduplicant gains its phonological identity in reference to the phonology of the base, rather than being associated with its own phonological piece (see e.g. Haugen 2008; 2011; Cook 2013). In Distributed Morphology terms, this means that instead of a Vocabulary Item with a phonological string and a context for insertion, we have a situation in which there is a context (e.g., the feature [perfect] on Aspect), but no invariant or even simply phonologically conditioned string to insert. The reduplicant must instead reference the output of any phonological processes that apply to the root.

As Haugen (2008; 2011) details, two types of proposals have been made regarding reduplication in Distributed Morphology:9 treating it as the result of a specialized Readjustment Rule, or as a special kind of affix. In what follows, I adopt the latter type of approach; first, though, I briefly summarize two major readjustment accounts and Haugen’s (2008; 2011) arguments against such analyses.

I follow Haugen’s (2008; 2009; 2011) proposal for reduplication in Distributed Morphology here. Under this type of approach, the surface form of a reduplicant obtains from a special kind of Vocabulary Item, RED, whose phonological output is derived in the phonology via correspondence with a base. First, the morphosyntactic structure is built in the narrow syntax and Morphological Structure via the application of syntactic operations including Merge, Copy, etc.; and morphological operations such as Impoverishment, Fission, Fusion, etc. Vocabulary Insertion and linearization take place after these morphological adjustments. With these operations and adjustments completed, the surface phonology can be determined via Correspondence Theoretic means in the phonology proper. The Vocabulary Items inserted in the morphosyntax are the inputs to the Optimality Theoretic tableaux; in very simple cases, a Vocabulary Item directly provides the phonological information that will end up surfacing. In the case of reduplication, the phonological processes involved will adjust the phonological value of the Vocabulary Item accordingly. This allows morphology to interact with syntax through structure–building (via typical Distributed Morphology mechanisms), and to interact with phonology through what we might call output–building (typical Correspondence Theory mechanisms).11

In the Greek data, we see that RED surfaces as a prefix whose phonology is dependent on the phonology of the left side of the verb. It must therefore be the case that RED is in place linearly before the phonology undertakes its operations. In this way, the data support Deal’s (2016) contention that the actual phonological instantiation of a reduplicant must be extremely late – after Vocabulary Insertion and linearization.

As mentioned in Section 1.1, I assume a core invariant perfect semantics to be present in the Classical Greek perfects, from which the less canonical meanings can be derived semantically. Since the meaning conveyed is that of perfect aspect, I assume RED to instantiate the head of a grammatical/outer AspectP. I take there to be a single morphosyntactic feature involved in the expression of perfect aspect, which I will call [perfect]. The Vocabulary Item for perfect is seen in (3):

This Vocabulary Item will compete for insertion into the Aspect terminal node.12 The perfect contrasts with the aorist in both finite and non–finite verb forms,13 often realized with the suffix -σ -/s/ (and different suffixes for agreement); and with the imperfective, which has no overt phonological realization. For example:

We arrive at the following list of Vocabulary Items that compete for insertion into Aspect:

After the syntax, at Vocabulary Insertion, RED will win the competition and be inserted in an Aspect terminal node specified for [perfect]. This brings us to a point where the abstract morpheme RED is in the correct position hierarchically, as in (6) (abstracting away from the particular root and features of other heads):

Noyer (1992/1997) takes Vocabulary Items to be lexically specified with a special feature marking them as prefixes or suffixes, but his account is not concerned with the details of whether or how this feature is interpreted by linearization. Let us specify the RED Vocabulary Item as a prefix:

The order of Vocabulary Insertion and the eventual linear order of affixes is not related, as Halle (1997: 135) acknowledges. Vocabulary Insertion itself presumably proceeds “inside–out” (Bobaljik 2000; Embick 2010), that is, hierarchically up the tree.

If linearization happens at Vocabulary Insertion (Embick & Noyer’s 2001 Late Linearization Hypothesis) or after, and can “read” the information about whether each Vocabulary Item is specified as a prefix or suffix, then the Vocabulary Items can end up in the correct place without any special dislocation mechanism having to be posited. (Sections 3 and 4 provide further insight into the process of Vocabulary Insertion.) The partial linearized form can be seen in (8) (I employ Embick & Noyer’s 2001 notation a * b “to denote a requirement that a must linearly precede b and be adjacent to b” p. 562):

With the reduplicant linearized as a prefix to the root, it is in a position for its surface form to be correctly determined by the phonology.

The realizations of the reduplicant that surface in Greek perfect aspect depend on the form of the first one or two segments of the surface form of the verb, and always include the fixed segment /e/. Both of these facts present challenges. For reference, I repeat Table 2 here as Table 3.

Roots with initial stop–sonorant clusters copy the stop and add /e/; other C–initial roots add /e/; and regular V–initial roots lengthen the V.14 In this section I first consider what the Greek data tell us about the question of the target/base for reduplication, and then pursue an adjustment to Zukoff’s (2017a) account.

In the previous section I argued that the prefix RED/e/- instantiates an Aspect node carrying the [perfect] feature. As mentioned, many perfect forms also show a reflex of perfect aspect on the right side of the root. In the active voice, in all tenses, aspects, and moods other than future infinitives and future participles, perfects display a suffix -/k/ or stem allomorphy, depending on the phonology of the root. Verb roots ending in vowels, dentals, liquids, and nasals (traditionally “first perfects”) suffix -/k/; those ending in labials and velars (traditionally “second perfects”) instead have a special stem form.19 A prototypical example of a verb with a “first” perfect is λῡ́ω /luo:/, ‘I loose/release/destroy’, as seen in (11). The first person present active indicative is in (11a), the corresponding present perfect is in (11b), and the corresponding past perfect is in (11c).

A typical example of verb with a “second perfect” is βλέπω /blepo:/ ‘I see’, as seen in (12).

Table 4 (after Groton 2000; Smyth 1920) shows the patterns in question, and full examples can be found in the Appendix.

It is predictable whether a root will suffix -/k/ or not, based on the final segment in the root. Many roots that do not suffix -/k/ undergo predictable root changes (as seen in Table 4), but many other roots undergo unpredictable changes. These facts will help determine the content of the Vocabulary Items for -/k/ and the labial and velar roots.

We saw in the previous section that RED/e/- is present across perfect forms; I took it to be the instantiation of Aspect[perfect]. Perfect aspect is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the appearance of the -/k/ suffix/stem changes, however. Most notably, these right–side changes only occur in the active voice, as seen in (13) (using the same verbs from above as examples):

They do not appear in non-perfect aspects:

And they appear across tenses and moods with the exception of future infinitives (15a) and future participles (15b):

Thus, the appearance of -/k/ or stem allomorphy is dependent upon not a single feature in a single head, as RED/e/- was, but on a combination of the featural content of Voice, Aspect, and Tense. Given that -/k/ appears only in the active voice and appears in a position after the verb root and before mood and agreement endings, we might imagine it is instantiating Voice, Aspect, or Tense.

We can rule out tense distributionally. We saw (as in 11c) that -/k/ co–occurs with the past tense prefix /e/-. Then, in the indicative, most verbs form their future perfects periphrastically; however, there are two verbs that form their future perfect indicatives synthetically, and these show -/k/ + future -/s/, as expected if /k/ instantiates a head inside Tense.23 This can be seen with the verb ἵστημι /histe:mi/ ‘stand’ in (16):

We have already established that RED/e/- instantiates Aspect when [perfect] is present. If -/k/ and stem allomorphy were direct results of Aspect[perfect] as well, a second exponent would need to be involved that somehow managed to get expressed simultaneously with, and on the other side of the root from, RED/e/-. A simpler explanation is that these changes are the result of an allomorph of Voice[active] that is conditioned by the presence of [perfect] on Aspect, among other things. This is the analysis I pursue here; I briefly explore and ultimately reject the other possibility in Section 3.3. The structure (without Vocabulary Items) we have so far is as follows:

Now we must determine the Vocabulary Items in competition for insertion into the Voice[active] head. First, -/k/ must be in competition with a Vocabulary Item with a null phonological exponent, as active voice is unmarked in situations other than the ones under consideration:

Then, above we saw that -/k/ occurs only in perfect aspect, does not appear in future infinitives or future participles, and does not appear after labials or velars; that is, the appearance of -/k/ in Voice is dependent upon both its outward–looking morphosyntactic environment and its inward–looking phonological environment. Importantly, the appearance of -/k/ is conditioned by the content not of a single head, but of two heads taken together: Aspect and Tense. These data thus provide empirical evidence for the existence of outwardly–sensitive span–conditioned allomorphy, supporting Merchant’s (2015) Span Adjacency Hypothesis: Allomorphy is conditioned by structurally adjacent spans24 of terminal nodes, all of whose members are implicated in the conditioning. The span in question is ⟨Aspect, Tense⟩, as only certain combinations of features across these two heads permit -/k/ to appear. Thus the Vocabulary Item for -/k/ must include the following:

For a past perfect with -/k/, then, our structure with Vocabulary Items would be as follows:

This allows us to account for the “first perfects”, which suffix -/k/, and we can now turn to the stem–adjusting “second perfects”. We will return to the implications of these Vocabulary Items for linearization in Section 3.4.

Recall that in the cases that meet the morphological criteria for inserting -/k/ but not the phonological ones, stem allomorphy occurs. Merchant (2015) is concerned with similar stem allomorphy in Modern Greek, and a similar proposal is applicable here. Recall that roots ending in labials and velars instead tend to show consonant mutation (and some also show root–internal vowel changes), as seen in (21) (repeated from 12):

These changes appear in exactly the same morphosyntactic environments that -/k/ does (active voice, perfect aspect, not in future infinitives or future participles). Rather than instantiating the Voice head, though, these are roots; their insertion thus depends on a span that includes Voice[active] (⟨Voice, Aspect, Tense⟩). Below are the relevant rules for a sampling of roots:26

Some roots ending in liquids and nasals add an /e:/ to the stem as well as taking the -/k/ suffix. For example, μένω /meno:/ ‘I lead’ becomes μɛμένηκα /memene:ka/ ‘I have led’:

This does not present a problem for our rule in (19), as -/k/ is inserted after vowels – stems with allomorphs ending in /e:/ will still suffix -/k/, as expected. Roots ending in dentals drop the dental before suffixing -/k/; they will also both have a stem allomorph and be subject to the rule in (19). Still other, more irregular, stems show other types of changes; for example, λɛίπω /leipo:/ ‘I leave’ becomes λέλοιπα /leloipa/ ‘I have left’, undergoing stem–internal vowel changes without a stem–final labial consonant change.

In (26) I give the structure (with Vocabulary Items) for /eleloip…/ ‘…had left’, parallel to the structure for the -/k/ suffixing verb given in (16):

A span–based analysis allows us to easily account for the active voice perfect data in Greek. In the next section I briefly explore several alternative approaches and show why these accounts are dispreferable to the above analysis.

Clearly, suffixation of -/k/ or the analogous stem allomorphy is conditioned by perfect aspect in some way. One possibility would be that -/k/ somehow also instantiates Aspect along with RED/e/-, and only in the presence of a (hierarchically lower) active Voice head. Since there are two phonological pieces, presumably these would represent two distinct Vocabulary Items, both with the same context for insertion into the Aspect node (namely, [perfect]) – a situation that is not remediable using the usual tools of Distributed Morphology. The Subset Principle cannot decide between these Vocabulary Items, and we wouldn’t want it to, as both appear in the output. Although the Vocabulary Item for -/k/ would require the presence of active voice in its context somehow, it cannot simply be an active voice allomorph of the perfect, as RED/e/- appears in the active voice as well. Even given a solution to the first problem, we would end up with two Vocabulary Items that appear on either side of the verb root.

Schreiner & Schildmier Stone (2016) face a seemingly similar problem in the mood marking of Cherokee. They argue that the so–called “future” markers ta- and -i together constitute a single, two–part affix (essentially a circumfix), instantiating the head of a ModalP specified for the feature [Circumstantial]. The analysis they adopt involves Müller’s (2007) rule of Enrichment, intended as a counterpart of Impoverishment (Halle 1997). Müller proposes Enrichment as a morphological process that doubles an existing feature after syntactic operations are complete but before Vocabulary Insertion begins. Schreiner & Schildmier Stone propose that in Cherokee, a language–specific rule of Enrichment operates on a Modal head specified for [Circumstantial], doubling the feature. This yields a situation in which there are two [Circumstantial] features when Vocabulary Insertion begins. This triggers Fission (Noyer 1992/1997) of the Modal position of exponence, yielding two nodes specified for the same feature. Both Vocabulary Items specified for [Circumstantial] can then be inserted.

A similar approach could be taken with Classical Greek, with Enrichment doubling the feature [perfect] and Fission dividing the Aspect node. The next question is how the two Vocabulary Items end up on either side of the verb root (Schreiner & Schildmier Stone do not make a detailed proposal). Assuming linearization happens late (as in Embick & Noyer’s 2001 proposal), and the Vocabulary Items are lexically specified as prefixes or suffixes (Noyer 1992/1997), linearization would be responsible for establishing the linear order between Aspect and the root (say, after the root, given that aorist aspect marking follows the root, but this is not important). While the order of Vocabulary Insertion of the two affixes is presumably random, linearization could perhaps also establish the ordering of the two halves of Aspect with respect to each other, based on their respective affixal statuses. However, to arrive at the surface order, another operation would have to be in play to relocate the reduplicative prefix to a position before the root, for instance, Embick & Noyer’s (2001) Local Dislocation.

While this solution is arguably workable, it presents a number of disadvantages when compared to the Voice–based analysis pursued in the previous section.27 It requires a dedicated (and perhaps overly powerful) mechanism, Enrichment, which is not otherwise widely justified; application of Fission in a non–canonical environment; and a further mechanism to get the affixes in the correct linear order.

Another way of addressing the bipartite nature of the perfect forms would be to attribute both the stem allomorphy and affixation of -/k/ to stem listing, in the spirit of e.g. Bermúdez-Otero (2013) and Haugen (2016).28 Under this type of analysis, the [perfect] feature would be instantiated directly only once (by RED/e/-), as I have proposed, but the changes on the right side would not involve a separate Vocabulary Item. Instead, roots would undergo what amounts to contextual allomorphy in the context of the features [perfect], [active], etc. This type of analysis does not require a dedicated mechanism like Enrichment, and eliminates the need to undertake Fission in an unexpected environment, as we would be required to do under the Enrichment analysis. Local Dislocation is also avoided with a stem–listing approach, since there is no second “half” of the Fissioned Aspect head to be relocated: There is only one Vocabulary Item involved outside the root.

Despite these advantages, a completely29 stem–listing approach falls short when compared to the analysis I argued for above. In this type of approach, the -/k/ suffix as well as the stem allomorphy would be the result of stem listing, relegating the frequent appearance of -/k/ in perfects to the status of accidental homophony. This obscures the fact that -/k/ appears across so many forms, and that its appearance vs. the presence of stem allomorphy is phonologically predictable. The Voice–based analysis allows us to account for these regularities while avoiding the pitfalls of the Enrichment–based approach.

Finally, Christopoulos & Petrosino (2017) suggest an analysis for Modern Greek root allomorphy that employs rebracketing (Radkevich 2010, similar in function to Fusion) to join two contiguous nodes – here, Voice and Aspect – to allow for realization by a single Vocabulary Item. In the Classical Greek perfect, however, we do not see fusion between Voice and Aspect; in the passive, for instance, we see forms like /le-lu-met^ha/ – perfect reduplication, root, and then fusion of Voice, Mood, and AGR. In the active, fusion is frequently present between Mood and AGR. Neither of these facts affects the conditioning of the Vocabulary Items for Aspect (or Voice) that I call for here. Given that we are dealing with many forms that show separate exponents for Tense, Aspect, Mood, and Voice (by assumption that -/k/ is Voice), I do not pursue an overall Fusion (or rebracketing) approach here. An analysis of the middle or passive voice systems would require more Fusion in some forms; for instance, the aorist aspect does not appear with a separate exponent outside the active voice. I leave this pursuit for future work.

Finally, the Greek perfect provides an interesting testing ground for determining the order of operations for Vocabulary Insertion and linearization. Recall the Vocabulary Items competing for insertion into Voice[active] from (19), repeated here as (27):

The contexts for insertion of -/k/ over -∅ involve both the phonology of (the right side of) the root and the (hierarchically) adjacent morphosyntax. The need for Vocabulary Insertion to be able to “read” the surface–adjacent phonology might lead us to assume a pre–Vocabulary Insertion linearization process. Embick (2010), for example, argues from data with root–conditioned allomorphy that linearization must occur before Vocabulary Insertion, and Arregi & Nevins (2012) and Haugen & Siddiqi (2016) assume that Vocabulary Insertion operates on a linearized syntactic representation.

This would not be a problem for our data if the conditioning span ⟨Aspect, Tense⟩ were linearly adjacent to the Voice head. However, Aspect surfaces as a prefix (RED/e/-) and thus would not be linearly adjacent to Voice when Vocabulary Insertion began. Tense[past], too, surfaces as a prefix (/e/-). An approach under which the winning Vocabulary Items are determined based on surface (post–linearization) order of the morphemes would fail here. The choice of Vocabulary Item inserted in Voice[active] thus needs to depend instead on a hierarchically adjacent span. As Merchant (2015: 279–280) notes, linearization (by design) removes the information about the hierarchical structure built by the syntax. Given the data at hand, if linearization were to occur entirely before Vocabulary Insertion, the hierarchical information needed to determine the winning Vocabulary Items for Voice would be unavailable.

In order to allow for conditioning by both surface–adjacent phonology and hierarchically–adjacent morphosyntactic elements, Vocabulary Insertion must proceed cyclically, and linearization must occur after Vocabulary Insertion is complete. After the hierarchical arrangement of the heads is determined by the syntax, Vocabulary Insertion will proceed from the root outwards. The choice of Vocabulary Item for the root will in some cases, as with the roots discussed in this section, be sensitive to the span of heads ⟨Voice, Aspect, Tense⟩. Once the root Vocabulary Item is spelled out, Vocabulary Insertion can proceed for Voice. Since linearization has not yet removed the hierarchical information, Aspect and the rest of the heads in the span are available to condition the allomorphy in the presence of the feature [active]. When Vocabulary Insertion operates on Voice[active], it can take into account the phonology of the spelled–out Vocabulary Item inserted into the root (“inward sensitivity” to phonological features, as discussed by Embick 2012), as well as the morphosyntax of the hierarchically adjacent heads.

In this section I have been discussing the conditioning of -/k/ and stem allomorphy that appears in certain perfect active environments. Both the suffix and stem allomorphy are conditioned by the presence of spans of hierarchically, rather than linearly, adjacent heads. The data thus provide empirical evidence for the existence of outwardly–sensitive span–conditioned allomorphy. The presence of -/k/ also depends on the phonology of the right side of the root. These facts taken together indicate the need for cyclic Vocabulary Insertion and a post–Vocabulary Insertion process of linearization. In the next section I turn to the final location of perfect–specific marking in Classical Greek, the agreement suffixes.

Person/number agreement suffixes in Greek resemble each other in large part across tenses and aspects for a given voice and mood. The general pattern for active and passive suffixes in the indicative mood (abstracting over tenses and aspects) is given in Table 5.

Table 6 shows the full agreement suffixes (including “theme vowels”) for the present (carrying imperfective semantics), present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect active indicative.

In (28–31) I give some representative examples from the 2^nd person singular paradigms of /lu:o:/ and /blepo:/ (with /histe:mi/ for future perfect, as most verbs form their future perfect forms periphrastically):

Note that the suffixes in the present and past perfects have their own distinctive vowel pattern.30 This might be unremarkable if the conditioning head were adjacent to AGR; however, Tense intervenes between Aspect[perfect] and AGR. An explanation is required for this conditioning across an intervening node. Pruning could possibly be at work in the conditioning of the Vocabulary Items in AGR in the present. Embick (2010: 54) proposes for a similar situation in Latin that Tense, when realized by -∅, can be pruned – essentially, removed from the tree for the purposes of computing adjacency and Vocabulary Insertion. The pruning of Tense makes Aspect and Agreement linearly adjacent (Embick uses the term concatenation, ⌢ ), allowing for Vocabulary Items marking agreement to refer to the content of Aspect in their contexts for insertion. Note that the agreement affixes for the future perfect (for the two verbs that form it synthetically) are identical to the present (simple) indicative forms – that is, there is no effect of perfect aspect on agreement in the future. This is consistent with a pruning approach: If Tense has a non–∅ exponent, as it does in the future, and therefore is not pruned, the aspectual feature cannot condition the appearance of the agreement suffixes.

That said, observe that the past perfect forms, like the future perfect forms, have an overt tense affix, and yet are conditioned by the presence of perfect aspect. Furthermore, Tense is not the only thing that affects the realization of the agreement suffixes in addition to Aspect: They also vary according to voice and mood. Table 7 gives a sampling of forms.

As was the case for the Voice[active] allomorphs, the realization of AGR depends again on the combination of the features across several heads – namely, Voice, Aspect, Tense, and Mood. Our Vocabulary Insertion rules must have spans that are similar to those we saw for -/k/. Some examples are given below:31

In the case of -/k/ we saw outwardly–sensitive span–conditioned allomorphy; here we have inwardly–sensitive span–conditioned allomorphy. Note that, although I leave aside the details here, some of the realizations of these agreement suffixes are affected by the phonological content of the conditioning span, as is expected for inward (but not outward) sensitivity. For instance, in the perfect middle/passive indicative, second person plural -/st^he/ is realized as -/t^h/ when following a labial in the stem. For a past perfect active indicative, we have the following structure:

4.2 Implications of AGR for linearization

As was the case for -/k/, the Greek agreement affixation data evidence the need for a post–Vocabulary Insertion linearization process. Recall that the Vocabulary Items competing for insertion into Voice are conditioned by Aspect[perfect], which is instantiated by the prefix RED/e/-; this tells us that the conditioning (during Vocabulary Insertion) must take place before linearization. In the same way, the suffixal Vocabulary Items competing for insertion into AGR are conditioned by the presence of Aspect[perfect], and in some cases Tense[past] (instantiated by the prefix /e/-). The conditioning of the instantiations of AGR by these heads again demonstrates the need for linearization to occur after Vocabulary Insertion is complete.

Now that we have all of the pieces in place, let us consider a derivation in its entirety. I will use /luo:/ ‘I release’ as an example. First, the feature bundles are selected and form the Numeration, and the structure is built from these bundles via a series of Merge operations (etc.), yielding (34):

Vocabulary Insertion proceeds from the root outward, with hierarchical information conditioning the choice of several Vocabulary Items (including the form of the root in “second perfects”), resulting in (35). Vocabulary Insertion must proceed cyclically, as e.g. the choice of Vocabulary Item for Voice[active] depends on the root Vocabulary Item.

Only after Vocabulary Insertion is complete does linearization take place, yielding (36) (again employing Embick & Noyer’s 2001 notation a * b to denote linear precedence and adjacency):

Finally, the linearized string, with the reduplicative morpheme linearly adjacent to the root, undergoes phonological computations. Functionally, reduplication copies the first segment of /lu/ and adds /e/, yielding /le/-. The surface string results: [elelukemen].