Suffix ordering in Bantu: a morpho centric approachl LARRY M. HYMAN 1. INTRODUCTION Within recent years there has been considerable interest in multiple affixation, particularly in explaining why strings of prefixes and suffixes occur in the orders in which they do. The explanations given have been of either a semantic or syntactic nature, as seen in two influential publications that appeared in the same year. Noting cross-linguistic tendencies to fix certain affix orders, Bybee (1985) attributes the most widely attested orders to the semantic function and scope of each affix (those having greater 'relevance' to the action of the verb root appear closer to it). On the other hand, Baker (1985), focusing on cases where affix ordering is not strictly fixed, argues for a 'Mirror Principle' (MP) by which contrastive affix orders (AB vs. BA) directly correlate with - and hence are explained by - the order of syntactic operations. Although seeking different motivations (and to some extent covering a different data base), Bybee and Baker have in common that they seek to find a morphology-external explana-tion for why affixes occur in the observed orders. While Bybee's semantic characterization of inflectional affixes is presented as a tendency, which "was found to be a valid prediction with very few exceptions" (p. 34), Baker's (1985) theory is generally interpreted as a necessary formal property of grammars: "Morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa)" (p. 375). Since derivational affixes marking causative, passive, reciprocal etc. are each affiliated with a syntactic operation, their specific ordering with respect to other affixes is said to reflect the order in which the corresponding syntactic operations have applied. Some researchers have expressed this mor-phology-syntax relationship as an inviolable universal: " ... the Mirror Principle is an exceptioniess generalization, with strong empirical cpntent given the con-straints on word formation" (AI sin a 1999: 6). -Standing in opposition to both of the above characterizations is the possi-bility that affix ordering - or at least certain aspects thereof -is directly deter-mined by the morphology proper. That is, languages can impose specific morphotactic constraints for which there is no synchronic extra-morphological explanation. If correct, one would expect cases where equivalent affixes arbi-trarily appear as AB in one language, but as'BA in another. The so-called morpho tactic constraints might represent a relation between pairs of specific morphs, or they might define an overarching 'template' by which multiple affixes are automatically ordered, e.g. ABeD. The possibility of morphologi-cally-determined templates has been questioned in the literature, most recently in a major work on Athabaskan affix ordering: ' ... template morphology is highly marked in languages of the world .. " As pointed out by Myers 1987, if Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds), Yearbook of Morphology 2002,245-281. © 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in Great Britain.246 Larry M. Hyman template morphology is required, then three types of morphological systems exist - concatenative systems, non-concatenative systems, and templatic systems - with the last restricted to only a very few language families' (Rice 2000: 1). Accordingly, Myers, Rice and others have sought to reanalyze allegedly tem-platic prefix systems in Bantu and Athabaskan, respectively, so as to predict their properties from the syntax. In this paper I reach a quite different conclusion. Based on the ordering of Bantu derivational verb suffixes, frequently cited in the literature, I show that that neither semantic scope (or 'compositionality') nor the syntactic MP can account for the full range of suffix ordering facts in any Bantu language. Instead, each suffix system represents a language-specific resolution of a basic tension between two competing pressures: the pressure for affix ordering to be composi-tional vs. the pressure for affix ordering to be fixed (invariant). For this purpose, I adapt the basic notions of Optimality Theory (OT) of Prince & Smolensky (1993) to the morphological realm: The different suffix ordering possibilities found either across different Bantu languages or within the same language are obtained by different rankings of the two families of constraints which I shall refer to as MIRROR and TEMPLATE. However, I will argue in the following para-graphs that, contrary to claims made by Baker (1985) and Alsina (1999), Bantu suffix ordering is driven by a Pan-Bantu default template, with the oft-reported mirroring effects resulting from 'exceptional' overrides, that is, from suffix-specific cases where MIRROR (B,A) outranks the default TEMPLATE (A,B). The paper is organized as follows. In § 2, I show that the suffix ordering facts in Chichewa require the establishment of a fixed, default order which is obtained unless the general constraint TEMPLATE is overriden by a suffix-specific MIRROR constraint. In § 3 I consider syntactic evidence in favor of the 'morpho-centric' analysis of § 2. In § 4 I present further morphological arguments in favor of a Pan-Bantu suffix template, while § 5 presents phonological evidence, based specifically on the nature of cyclic effects within the suffixal phonology. The results are briefly summarized in § 6 . . 2. TEMPLATE vs. MIRROR IN CHICHEWA This paper is concerned with the determinants of affix ordering in languages which exhibit multiple prefixes and suffixes. The examples will all come from Bantu languages, which are well-known for their agglutinative morphological structure. The Chichewa forms in (1), for instance, illustrate the multiple prefix-ation that occurs in most Bantu languages:lorphological systems and templatic systems nilies' (Rice 2000: 1). nalyze allegedly tem-lvely, so as to predict ,ed on the ordering of literature, I show that the syntactic MP can ntu language. Instead, ion of a basic tension 'dering to be composi-ant). For this purpose, Prince & Smolensky ordering possibilities he same language are lstraints which I shall in the following para-l Alsina (1999), Bantu , with the oft-reported , that is, from suffix-EMPLATE (A,B). at the suffix ordering iefault order which is len by a suffix -specific favor of the 'morpho-)logical arguments in Ihonological