LINB04H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Final-Obstruent Devoicing, English Plurals, Fez
Document Summary
Lec 4: week 5: phonological alternations (reading: odden, chapter 4) Morpheme alternations : a morpheme that has different pronunciations in different contexts is said to alternate. The different variants are called alternants or allomorphs. For example, the english plural suffix is realized as [ z], [z] or [s]. [ z]: latch, hinge, fez, witch, breeze, fudge, wretch, garage, lash, lunch, kiss(=strident coronals, i. e. , sibilants) [s]: lip, rock, myth, laugh, bat, turf, stick (=non-sibilant voiceless sounds) [z]: tree, hen, gum, law, two, bar, cove, tea, toe, row, bell, tray, rib, tag, load[i n m u (cid:448) l (cid:271) g ] (cid:894)=all other sounds) A null hypothesis would be to list all three forms in the mental dictionary with additional information regarding which group of nouns each form goes with. This approach is problematic because 1) the distribution of the allomorphs is predictable even for a new word and possibly a new segment that does(cid:374)"t e(cid:454)ist i(cid:374) e(cid:374)glish.
