This paper presents data bearing on two key issues in morphophonological theory: 1) the domain of phonological evaluation, and 2) the item- versus process-morphology debate. I present data from Guébie (Kru) [Côte d’Ivoire] showing that imperfective aspect is exponed by a scalar shift in surface tone, which can affect either the tone of the inflected verb, or the subject noun phrase. There are four tone heights in Guébie, and the first syllable of a verb can underlyingly be associated with any of the four tones. In imperfective contexts only, that initial verb tone lowers one step on the four-tone scale. If the tone of the verb is already low, the final tone of the subject raises one step instead. This paper demonstrates that in order to account for the cross-word tonal effects of the imperfective morpheme, phonological evaluation must scope over more than one word at a time; specifically, it must scope over a syntactic phase. Additionally, I show that with phonological constraint rankings sensitive to morphosyntactic construction, no abstract phonological underlying form of the imperfective morpheme is necessary.

中文翻译：

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圭比（Guébie）的跨字词形态条件标量音调转换

本文介绍了有关形态语音学理论中两个关键问题的数据：1）语音学评估领域，以及2）项目形态与过程形态之间的争论。我提供了来自Guébie（Kru）[Côted'Ivoire]的数据，该数据显示，不完美的方面是由表面语调的标量偏移所指数化的，这可能会影响到已弯曲的动词的语调或主语名词短语。Guébie中有四个音调高度，并且动词的第一个音节可以与这四个音调中的任何一个基本关联。仅在不完美的上下文中，初始动词音调会在四音阶上降低一级。如果动词的语气已经很低，那么主语的最终语调就会提高一级。本文证明，为了说明不完善语素的跨字调音效，语音评估必须一次超过一个字。具体来说，它必须在语法阶段范围内。此外，我表明，由于对语素句法构造敏感的音位约束等级，不完整的语素不需要抽象的音位基础形式。