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The present article provides a case study of the forms corresponding to the meaning 'small' in Swedish, which exhibit a number-based suppletive alternation: descriptively, liten appears in the singular while små appears in the plural. We demonstrate that this alternation is best treated as contextual allomorphy, and provide six arguments that favor this account over a plausible alternative, according to which the forms realize two distinct roots with different lexical semantics. We situate a Distributed Morphology-based account of the alternation within the broader context of inflection in the language, and address challenges and complications to the allomorphy approach from outside of the root's 'typical' adjectival contexts, including adverbs and compounding. This study supports the existence of root suppletion conditioned by inflectional features, and has implications for our understanding of locality conditions on root suppletion as well as contextual allomorphy more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indefinite and possessive pronouns in German such as ein-es ‘one’ and mein-er ‘mine’ bear strong inflectional endings unlike their determiner counterparts. Following Saab and Lipták (Stud Linguist 70(1):66-108, 2016), I argue that this difference in inflection is due to NP ellipsis, which creates a ‘stranded’ affix that subsequently docks onto the determiner. Assuming that adjectives are reattached by Local Dislocation allows us to account for the descriptive observation that the determiner and pronominal paradigms differ only in the same three exceptional cases where determiners do not bear overt inflection. Furthermore, I discuss how this approach can extend to similar data from Afrikaans, Dutch and English, as well as to split topicalization constructions in German. This analysis provides further support for Saab and Lipták’s proposal that inflection emerges as a direct result of ellipsis, rather than constituting part of the licensing conditions on ellipsis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]