Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Principal references
- 1 What is morphology?
- 2 Word, word-form and lexeme
- 3 Inflections and word-formation
- 4 Lexical derivation
- 5 Compounds
- 6 Morphemes and allomorphs
- 7 Morphological processes
- 8 Morphophonemics
- 9 Properties and their exponents
- 10 Paradigms
- 11 Inflectional morphology and syntax
- 12 Iconicity
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Principal references
- 1 What is morphology?
- 2 Word, word-form and lexeme
- 3 Inflections and word-formation
- 4 Lexical derivation
- 5 Compounds
- 6 Morphemes and allomorphs
- 7 Morphological processes
- 8 Morphophonemics
- 9 Properties and their exponents
- 10 Paradigms
- 11 Inflectional morphology and syntax
- 12 Iconicity
- Index
Summary
Basic forms and morphophonemic processes (English -ed). Forms may be partly specified (vowel harmony in Turkish); or abstractions (thrikh - in Ancient Greek). Processes phonetically natural: ‘euphony’ and ‘ease of articulation’.
Sandhi. Morphophonemics as a process of joining: sandhi forms and rules of sandhi. Types of sandhi: assimilation, regressive and progressive; dissimilation; epenthesis; fusion. Examples of fusion in Ancient Greek: dentals before s; extended discussion of contracted Adjectives.
The scope of morphophonemics. Morphophonemics as a transitional field: what then are its boundaries? Alternations in Italian: purely morphological vs purely phonetic. Nasal assimilation in Italian: as case of neutralisation; morphology predictable from phonology. Further examples of neutralisation. Consonants before s and t: rules phonologically motivated; but not predictable; therefore need for explicit statement. Limits to motivation. Palatalisation of velars: morphophonemic only if we posit diacritic features.
We have argued that the ‘Item and Process’ model is better, for a language like English, than the ‘Item and Arrangement’ model. But our account of it is not complete.
Take, for example, the Past Participle formations. We have dealt with the [d] of sailed and distinguished it from sundry irregularities. But what of [t] in fished or [id] in faded? [t], [d] and [id] all have an alveolar plosive, and the choice between them, as we pointed out in chapter 6, is phonologically conditioned. All three are regular. When the Verb blitz was created or borrowed in the 1940s, its Past Tense and Past Participle were automatically [blitst].
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Morphology , pp. 145 - 167Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991