Locality Constraint GIVEs an Insight into Suppletion

This paper deals with the locality constraints on optional morphological alternations in the grammar, whose architecture is local and serial in nature. We investigate the allomorphy of the root GIVE in Korean. These data provide a prima facie counter-example, which poses a problem to the locality condition on suppletion. However, we show that suppletive allomorphy does conform to a stringent locality constraint. We also address the challenging issue of optional alternations in morphology. We resolve these two puzzles by reconciling the local domain, rather than the lexical entries, through morphological operations. We claim that these data further suggest that morphosyntax interacts with phonology, both locally and serially.