Day 6 Suppletion and morphophonemics

English noun plurals: Morphophonemics and stem suppletion

Morphophonemics and stem suppletion

Morphophonemics refers to allomorphy which results from regular phonological rules; STEM SUPLETION refers to irregular inflection.

The data

Most nouns form their plural by adding suffix –(e)s, which has three spelling forms: /-z/, /-s/, and /-iz/.

(1)   a. /boI-z/            boy-s

           /tri:-z/               tree-s

           /kaʊ-z/          cow-s

       b. /tɔp-s/             top-s

           /bʊk-s/                        books

           /hIp-s/             hips

        c. /bɔk-iz /         box-es

            /rɔz-iz/                        ros-es

            /pIt∫-iz/          peach-es

However, other nouns have irregular plurals. A few have identical singular and plural forms.

(2)        Singular          Plural

            Sheep             sheep

            Fish                  fish

With others, the singular and plural forms differ in the stem vowel.

(3)        Singular          Plural

            Foot                feet

            Mouse                        mice

            Woman          women

            Man                men

With a few, the plural has a suffix that no other stem in the language has. Some nouns have both an irregular suffix and a vowel change.

(4)        Singular          plural

            /ɔks/               / ɔks-Ən/        ox(en)

            /t∫aIld/           /t∫Ild-rƏn/      child(ren)

Other retain the singular/plural inflection from latin , although this pattern is being regularized, i.e., some irregular forms have been replaced by regular ones.

(5)        Singular          Plural

            alumnus         alumni

            octopus         octopi                                    (traditional, irregular form)

                                    octppuses                 (colloquial, regularized form)

Morphemes and allomorphs

One morpheme having several different variants is called its ALLOMORPHS. The different allomorphs of a morpheme all have the same meaning. However, they are in  complementary distribution, just like the allophones of a phoneme; in any given context, only one allomorph of the morpheme is possible.

       A morpheme is a consistent and unanalyzable association of phonological, grammatical, and semantic information.

Morphophonemics

There are several kinds of allomorphy in English noun plurals. The most widespread is the variation in pronunciation of the regular suffix –(e)s, as illustrated in (1). We can attribute it to two phonological process;

(6)        a. assimilation in voicing (/z/ à /s/ after a voiceless segment)

b. insertion of /I/ to break up clusters of alveolar and alveopalatal consonants.

This type of allomorphy is called MORPHOPHONEMICS and is considered to be a part of phonology, since it has to do purely with the interactions of sounds. The two phonological rules in (6) modify /-z/ to produce the other two variants /-s/ and /-iz/. Together , the three forms /-z/, and /-s/ and /-iz/ are the SURFACE FORMS for the plural morpheme. Inflectional spellout rule for noun plurals:

(7)        NP

         [+plural]

            [X]       à [Xz]

      For example, suppose we want to generate cats, dogs, and roses. The deep structures are as follows:

 

 

Morphophonemics in derivational morphology

      Morphophonemics occurs with both inflectional and derivational morphology. Let’s look at an example involving derivation. Consider the pairs of adjectives listed in (11)

(11) a. elegant                      inelegant

            Eligible                       ineligible

            Tolerant                     intolerant

            Direct                         indirect 

        b. possible                     impossible

            perfect                      imperfect

            practical                   impractical

            movable                    immovable

        c. correct                      incorrect

            capable                    incapable

        d. legal                          illegal

            legible                                   illegible

            legitimate                 illegitimate

        e. reverent                    irreverent

            regular                       irregular

            reversible                  irreversible

There are five allomorphs of the same prefix here: /in-/, /im-/, /iŋ-/,  /il-/, / and /ir-/. The variation is phonologically predictable. If we assume that /in-/ is the underlying form, then it is easy to explain the other four allomorphs as a case of assimilation to bilabial  /m/ before a bilabial, to velar /ŋ/ before a velar, to /I/ before /I/, and to /r/ before /r/.

Phonological rules then immediately change /in-/ to /im-/ before a bilabial stop, etc., so that in the lexical entries, we show the different allomorphs of the prefix.

(13)      A

            In[elIgnt]        not elegant

            Im[præktIkl]   not practicle

            Iŋ[korekt]      not correct

            Il[kigl]             not legal

            Ir[regjƏlƏ^r]     not regular

           

Stem suppletion

Not all allomorphic variation is morphophonemics; any that cannot be handled by regular phonological rules is called SUPPLETION or SUPPLETIVE ALLOMORPHY. Suppletion is words that have irregular forms in their paradigms. This is called STEM SUPPLETION. Most of the allomorphy of the English noun plurals discussed above is of this type, involving irregular patterns of suffixation and vowel changes.

(14)      N

            fʊt       [- plural]

            fi:t        [+plural]                     foot

            t∫aIld              [- plural]

          t∫Ild-rƏn         [+plual]           child

            maʊs   [- plural]

            maIs    [+plural]         mouse

the correct surface form is inserted directly from the lexicon in deep structure.

Analyzing allomorphic variation in general

There are three main factors that distinguish different types of allomorphy:

(38)      a. type of variation: morphophonemics versus suppletion

            b. what varies: stems versus affixes

c. conditioning environment: lexical (arbitrary) or something else (e.g., phonological)

In principle, all three can vary independently, but usually they combine to produce the following four types: