Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- An introduction to the textbook
- Chapter One Word origins
- Chapter Two The background of English
- Chapter Three Composition of the Early Modern and Modern English vocabulary
- Chapter Four Smaller than words: morphemes and types of morphemes
- Chapter Five Allomorphy, phonetics, and affixation
- Chapter Six Replacement rules
- Chapter Seven Deletion rules and other kinds of allomorphy
- Chapter Eight Fossilized allomorphy: false cognates and other etymological pitfalls
- Chapter Nine Semantic change and semantic guesswork
- Chapter 10 The pronunciation of classical words in English
- Appendix I An introduction to dictionaries
- Appendix II Morpheme list
- Index
Chapter Six - Replacement rules
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- An introduction to the textbook
- Chapter One Word origins
- Chapter Two The background of English
- Chapter Three Composition of the Early Modern and Modern English vocabulary
- Chapter Four Smaller than words: morphemes and types of morphemes
- Chapter Five Allomorphy, phonetics, and affixation
- Chapter Six Replacement rules
- Chapter Seven Deletion rules and other kinds of allomorphy
- Chapter Eight Fossilized allomorphy: false cognates and other etymological pitfalls
- Chapter Nine Semantic change and semantic guesswork
- Chapter 10 The pronunciation of classical words in English
- Appendix I An introduction to dictionaries
- Appendix II Morpheme list
- Index
Summary
This chapter and the next deal with rules which account for predictable allomorphy. The rules of predictable allomorphy are of three types:
replacement rules – replace one sound by a different sound in a certain position in the morpheme;
deletion rules – account for the loss of a sound, or sounds, from a morpheme;
expansion rules – expand a morpheme by inserting a new sound within the existing structure of the morpheme.
This classification exhausts the logical possibilities of what can happen to one phonetic segment. It can be replaced, deleted, or some sequence of sounds can be expanded.
Assimilation and types of assimilation
Assimilation rules are replacement rules which have the effect of making one vowel or consonant more similar to, or even identical with, another. In principle, assimilation can affect both vowels and consonants; most instances of assimilation discussed below, however, are cases of consonantal assimilation.
The process of assimilation can be described in terms of the target, the direction, and the scope of the resulting similarity. Assimilation can target some or even all of a sound's features: voicing, place, or manner of articulation. Depending on the direction of the influence between the sounds we find right-to-left assimilation, when the influence is from the second to the first sound, i.e. A ← B, also known as regressive assimilation, and left-to-right, when the first sound influences the second, the A → B type, known as progressive assimilation.
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- Information
- English WordsHistory and Structure, pp. 95 - 111Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001