Monotonicity in word formation: The case of Italo-Romance result state adjectives

The Monotonicity Hypothesis (Koontz-Garboden 2012) predicts that no productive word formation operations delete any decompositional operators that are part of word meaning. We test this hypothesis examining Italo-Romance result state participles. First, we consider rhizotonic~arrhizotonic pairs, which provide morphologically transparent evidence for the contrast between non-passive (non-agentive) and passive (agentive) result state adjectives (e.g., Sicilian cuòttu/cùattu vs. cuciùtu ‘cooked’). Whereas the non-passive result states of other languages have received decausative accounts, our findings suggest that such non-monotonic accounts are based on an incorrect interpretation of the results of a key diagnostic test. Broadening the scope of our investigation, we consider other classes of non-passive result state adjectives, which are indisputably non-causative and cannot but be formed monotonically. We put forward a monotonic account of the formation of Italo-Romance result state adjectives, which captures all the classes under investigation and can be extended to the result state adjectives of other languages. Ultimately, this study provides strong support for monotonicity in word formation.