Stephen R. Anderson Where's Morphology? In the early years of the development of a theory of generative grammar (roughly 1955 through the early 1970s), a striking difference between the research problems that char-acterized the emerging field and those that had occupied its predecessors was the pre-cipitous decline of the study of morphology. The principles of word structure can be divided roughly between those that govern the distribution of "morphemes" or sub-constituents of a word and those that govern the variations in shape shown by these elements; and early developments in phonology and syntax left little if any distinctive content to such a field in either of these two domains. In phonology, the discovery was made that when we extend the scope of rule governed generalizations beyond the particular limits imposed (as in classical phonemic theory) by surface contrast, the effect is to increase the range of cases in which variation in shape shown by a linguistically elementary unit can be reduced to a single underlying form. This observation raised the very real possibility that (with the exception of the facts of lexically governed suppletion, which are comparatively uninteresting from the point of view of linguistic structure) all of the study of "allomorphy" would turn out to be encompassed within the domain of phonology. In syntax, similarly, it seemed that the inherent basis of the principles governing the distribution of significant elements provided no particular justification for limiting their operands to units of (at least) the size of entire words. Work such as Lees's classic description of English nominalizations and much that followed, culminating perhaps in the program of "Generative Semantics" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, seemed to subsume the principles governing morphemes (and even phonologically unrealized "se-mantic" units) under exactly the same set of principles as those determining sentence structure. With neither morpheme distributions nor allomorphy to account for, then, morphologists could safely go to the beach. Recent years have seen the reappearance of a field of morphology, since both of I would like to express my appreciation to a number of people with whom I have discussed various issues raised in this article at various times. Foremost among these are the participants in my Proseminar in Mor-phology at UCLA (Fall-Winter, 1980-81): M. Hammond, S. Hargus, J. Horvath, R. Janda, D. Kempler, D. Meyer, D. Platt, D. Ridley, T. Thomas-Flinders, and L. Tuller. Many of the ideas below arise directly or indirectly from their suggestions. In addition, I have received helpful comments, advice, etc., from Sandra Chung and Will Leben. Carlos Otero and Osvaldo Jaeggli made suggestions on the basis of the presentation of some of this material at the "fESTival" at UCLA (22 February, 1981) which helped me clarify the issues involved. In addition, I have benefited from the comments of two anonymous referees for Linguistic Inquiry. None of these people, of course, should be held accountable for my views or mistakes. Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 13, Number 4, Fall 1982 0024-3892/82/04057 I -42 $02.5010 © 1982 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology 571572 STEPHEN R. ANDERSON the above-mentioned programs for reducing it to other domains have proven over-ambitious. In phonology, it has been recognized that morphologically conditioned var-iation obeys somewhat different principles from those governing strictly phonological processes (cf. Anderson (1975), Dressler (1977), for discussion). In syntax, on the other hand, the introduction of the Lexicalist Hypothesis by Chomsky (1970) has gradually reestablished the significance of the notion that word structure is interestingly different in its basic properties from sentence structure. It is not our intent to argue these basic propositions here, but rather to explore their implications for the nature of a field of morphology. Let us assume that it is appropriate to recognize, internal to the theory of grammar, a field of study concerning itself with the shape and internal structure of words. In characterizing a field of linguistic structure, we are of course required to specify the primes that are relevant to description within that field, and the principles which govern them. A part of this question involves the issue of whether the primes relevant to one subpart of the theo.ry o.f grammar and those relevant to o.thers have a (nonnull) intersectio.n. In other wo.rds, to what extent do the elements of a field (say, mo.rphology) overlap and interact with tho.se o.f another (say, pho.no.lo.gy o.r syntax)? The existence of such an o.verlap in the classes o.fprimes relevant to' different subparts of a grammar in no. way compromises the propo.sed distinctness o.f the areas invo.lved: it is the existence of a well-defined, unitary set of principles that defines a coherent field of study, rather than a unique set of o.bjects these principles may refer to. It follo.ws, however, that if the various subparts of a grammar o.verlap in significant ways, then the pro.perties o.f the shared elements will be described o.nly in terms of a complex interactio.n of principles from distinct areas; and an understanding of anyone area can only proceed hand in hand with our understanding of o.thers. It sho.uld be emphasized that the question o.f o.verlap between po.rtio.ns of the study of language governed by distinct sets of principles is entirely an empirical o.ne, to. be answered by investigation o.f the facts of particular grammars rather than by pretheoretic stipulation or arbitrary definitio.n of the fields o.f interest so that they must necessarily be disjo.int. If one takes the field of syntax to' be co.ncerned with the internal o.rganizatio.n o.f sentences, and that of morphology to be concerned with the internal organizatio.n of wo.rds, it is not necessary a prio.ri either that these two disciplines intersect o.r that they fail to do so.. It is the business of this article to explo.re the interactio.n between these two studies and to clarify the relation o.f this questio.n to so.me traditional issues in the study o.f language. In section 1, we survey the areas in which morphology and syntax evidently interact. Section 2 then explo.res in so.me detail a single example in which an aspect of word structure (agreement