distributed morphology (DM)

An approach to MORPHOLOGY proposed in the early 1990s by MIT linguists Morris Halle and Alec Marantz, in which morphological processes are not localized within a single COMPONENT (such as the LEXICON) but are ‘distributed’ throughout the GRAMMAR, involving SYNTACTIC as well as PHONOLOGICAL operations. Vocabulary insertion takes place at a level of morphological structure (MS) between S-STRUCTURE and phonological form. The approach can be contrasted with models which make a clear division between lexical and syntactic operations, and with associated notions such as the distinction between derivational and inflectional morphology.