LING2002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Voicelessness, Allomorph, English Plurals
Monday, 10 April 2017
LECTURE 13
PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF ALLOMORPHY
-Phonology and Morphology: Overview in 9 steps
•1. Morphemes are the minimal units of form that carry meaning
•2. Morphemes are often combined to build words
•3. In some cases, the form of a morpheme differs depending on the context it occurs in: allomorphy
-Ex/ Warlipri Past morpheme has multiple allomorphs:
•/ɟa/ with Class A verb roots
•/ŋu/ with Class B verb roots
•4. In some of those cases, the allomorphy depends on the phonological context it occurs in
-Ex/ English plural
•5. And, the allomorphs are phonologically relatable
•6. In such phonological allomorphy, the alternation between allomorphs of a morpheme is analysed
down into alternations between segments/phonemes
-/s/ ~ /z/, /ə/ ~ Ø
•7. Each segmental alternation is analysed as the result of a phonological process (or more than one)
-Ex/ /z/ > /s/ after a voiceless consonant
•8. Phonological processes imply the single underlying form of the morpheme
-As listed in the lexicon
-To say ‘make something voiceless’ implies that it is underlyingly voiced
•9. Phonological processes and underlying forms together explain phonological allomorphy
-Review: Contrast and beyond
•Analysis into individual phonemes captures/expresses the fundamental facts of which phonemes
contrast in a given language
•But there are also other generalisations to be made about the words in a given language which the
analysis of individual phonemes does not capture/express
-Allomorphy with phonologically similar forms of a morpheme
-Morpheme
•A morpheme is a word component with discrete phonological form and a distinct meaning
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Monday, 10 April 2017
-Ex/ 5 morphemes in /nɔn-ɹiː-njʉː-əbl-z/ (non-re-new-able-s)
•Morpheme analysis of a language produces a list of the morphemes of that language
-Referring to morphemes
•A meta-linguistic label is often used for convenience to refer to an
individual morpheme
-Often represented in uppercase in an attempt to distinguish it from
standard written representation in the language
-Meta-linguistic: referring to an element of a language
-What is allomorphy?
•If different forms have the same meaning, and they occur in complementary distribution they are
recognised as allomorphs of the same morpheme
-Ex/ Warlpiri Past morpheme has multiple allomorphs:
•/ɟa/ with Class A verb roots
•/ŋu/ with Class B verb roots
-Ex/ English regular Plural morpheme has three allomorphs:
•/s/ if preceding segment is voiceless
•/z/ if preceding segment is voiced
•But /əz/ if preceding segment is a strident coronal
-Types of allomorphy
•If allomorphs are phonologically unrelated, this is called suppletive allomorphy
-Ex/ Warlpiri Past allomorphs /ɟa/ and /ŋu/
•If the allomorphs are phonologically relatable, this is phonological allomorphy
-Ex/ English regular Noun Plural
•By matching up the corresponding segments across the three allomorphs, we can see that there are
two alternations:
-/s/ ~ /z/, /ə/ ~ Ø
-Review: phonological conditioning
•In phonological allomorphy, typically the allomorphs occur in different phonological contexts
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Document Summary
Phonology and morphology: overview in 9 steps: 1. Morphemes are the minimal units of form that carry meaning: 2. Morphemes are often combined to build words: 3. In some cases, the form of a morpheme differs depending on the context it occurs in: allomorphy. Ex/ warlipri past morpheme has multiple allomorphs: / a/ with class a verb roots, / u/ with class b verb roots, 4. In some of those cases, the allomorphy depends on the phonological context it occurs in. And, the allomorphs are phonologically relatable: 6. In such phonological allomorphy, the alternation between allomorphs of a morpheme is analysed down into alternations between segments/phonemes. /s/ ~ /z/, / / ~ : 7. Each segmental alternation is analysed as the result of a phonological process (or more than one) Ex/ /z/ > /s/ after a voiceless consonant: 8. Phonological processes imply the single underlying form of the morpheme.
