Abstract
Describing the root and its nature is one of the most challenging issues in Distributed Morphology. The different approaches— including the Null Root, Conceptual Root, Phonologically Specified Root, and the Root with an Index Hypothesis — have been introduced to describe this concept, but their effectiveness is still controversial. Thus, the present study tries to test the efficacy of these approaches by using bilingual spoken data. This research used an analytical-descriptive method based on the spoken data from Persian-Kurdish (Kalhori) and Persian-English bilinguals. The data were collected from normal conversations in educational settings and then analyzed within the framework of Distributed Morphology. The analysis of the data shows that the first two hypotheses fail to predict the behavior of the roots. The third hypothesis, the Phonologically Specified Root, fundamentally contradicts the principle of distributed morphology. However, the Root with an Index Hypothesis could successfully explain the mechanism of insertion in such a way that aligns with the theoretical principles of this framework. In addition, this study shows that López’s (2023) view about the index of roots in bilingual individuals is only valid for languages that have a gender feature and cannot be generalized to languages lacking this feature.
Main Subjects
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