Multifunctional Morpheme <i>a</i> in Czech: DM with the Superset

This article concerns the morpheme <i>a</i> in Czech. It occurs in nominals, conjunctions, and various verbal predicates. In contrast to the common practice of treating such <i>a</i> exponents as independent, accidentally homophonous elements, it is argued that some of these <i>a</i>s can be treated as one item. What the syncretic <i>a</i>s have in common is pluralizing semantics. Thus, the article proposes that verbal number (specifically, plurality) is related to nominal number and conjunctions. The article addresses the questions of how the multifunctionality of morphemes—such as the Czech <i>a</i>—can be analyzed and which tools of lexical–realizational approaches to morphology are most suitable for the analysis. In addition to the plural interpretation, <i>a</i> brings about changes in the argument structure of verbal predicates and fulfills several functions in the nominal and conjunction domains. The analysis is couched in the Distributed Morphology framework. However, contrary to expectations, the multifunctional <i>a</i> is not treated as an underspecified marker. It is analyzed as an overspecified marker that can realize (i.e., span) several syntactic heads: the pluralization head with the pluralization operator, the voice head, plus some other heads present in verbs and nominals. It is argued that the best option for deriving the multifunctional property of <i>a</i> is to assume the superset principle and pre-linearization spanning.