CHAPTER 5 (?)

Parse “allomorphy:”

al / (o) / morphy / -y

‘other’ / (filler) / ‘shape, form’ / ‘N’

‘another shape or form’

Allomorphy (definition & characterisitcs):

morpheme can change depending on phonetic environment (same morpheme, different forms)

Characteristics:

• same morpheme type

• choice depends on neighboring morph(s)

  • (can have a different pronunciation (i.e., form) in a different environment) (voiceless & voiced ‘s’)

• share common history & similar pronunciation

  • de ‘god’ Latin vs the ‘god’ Greek

  • hemi ‘half’ Greek vs semi ‘half’ Latin

Allomorphy examples:

incomparable & illegal

• same meaning & morpheme type (negating prefix)

• pronunciation depends on root

• default for is in- ‘not’

cats, dogs, houses → [kæt-s], [dɔg-z], [haʊz-əz] (after voiceless consonant, after voiced consonant, after “s”)

Why do we have allomorphs?

• phonological environment

• historical changes (great vowel shift, vowel deletion, etc.)

2 categories of allomorphy:

• Predictable (regular): most common, based on environments, can be written as a rule (not on midterm)

• Idiosyncratic (irregular): less common, based on changes & chance, no patterns

Types of idiosyncratic allomorphy:

• Metathesis (switching sounds)

• Nasal insertion (adding nasal)

• Ablaut (vowel moves back to front)

• Vowel weakening (vowel moves low to high)

• Doublets (Latin and Greek)

• Fusion (combining morphemes)

Metathesis (define & examples):

order of sounds is switched

• cre ~ cer ‘to separate, judge’ (discern, secrete)

• men ~ mne ‘think, remember’ (mental, mnemonic, dementia, amnesia)

• IN BORROWINGS TOO: centre (French) → center

Nasal insertion (define & examples):

nasal consonants gets inserted into a morpheme

• tag ~tang ‘touch, feel’ (contagion, tangent)

• cub ~ cumb ‘lie down, remain’ (incubation, recumbent)

(old infixation process!)

Ablaut (define & examples):

‘horizontal’ vowel change (from back to front) corresponding to different “grades”

• alternation between vowels sounds that encodes grammatical info (like inflection) (sang ~ sing ~ sung; drank ~ drink ~ drunk)

o-grade > e-grade > ∅-grade (∅ = null/nothing)

back vowel > front vowel > nothing

• gon ~ gen ~ gn ‘birth, type, origin’

  • gonad > genetic > cognate

• ‘bol ~ bel ~ bl ‘through’ belemnite → symbol → problem

Vowel weakening (define & examples):

reduction in openness of mouth (raising or lowering) (change from low to high)

tag ~ teg ~ tig ‘touch, feel’ (tangent, contagion, contiguous)

• [tæg] > [tɛg / teg] > [tɪg / tig]

Doublets:

borrowed morphemes from different languages

• appears productive in English but actually result of source language differences

(common with Greek & Latin)

• hemi / semi ‘half’

• hexa / sex ‘ six’

• hept /septem ‘seven’

• herp / serp ‘to creep, reptile’

• dent / odon ‘tooth’

Latin s ~ Greek h (semi/hemi, hexa/sex, hepta/septem)

Latin f ~ Greek ph (fantasmic, phantom; frenetic, schizophrenic)

Fusion (define & examples):

2 adjacent morphemes perceived / treated as a single morpheme (difference no longer meaningful)

• corp. ~ corpor ‘body, flesh’ corpus corporation (= corp + or)

• nec ~ necr ‘die’ nectar, necromancer (nec + r)