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Alternation (linguistics)

Alternate phonetic realization of a morpheme

Summary

Alternate phonetic realization of a morpheme

morphophonological alternations

In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant. The variation may be conditioned by the phonological, morphological, and/or syntactic environment in which the morpheme finds itself.

Alternations provide linguists with data that allow them to determine the allophones and allomorphs of a language's phonemes and morphemes and to develop analyses determining the distribution of those allophones and allomorphs.

The term "sound change" refers to diachronic changes, which occur in a language's sound system. On the other hand, "alternation" refers to changes that happen synchronically (within the language of an individual speaker, depending on the neighbouring sounds) and do not change the language's underlying system.

Phonologically conditioned alternation

An example of a phonologically conditioned alternation is the English plural marker commonly spelled s or es. This morpheme is pronounced , , or ,The vowel of the inflectional suffix - may belong to the phoneme of either or depending on dialect, and is a shorthand for "either or ". This usage of the symbol is borrowed from the Oxford English Dictionary. depending on the nature of the preceding sound.

  1. If the preceding sound is a sibilant consonant (one of ), or an affricate (one of ), the plural marker takes the form . Examples:
  • mass , plural masses
  • fez , plural fezzes
  • mesh , plural meshes
  • mirage , plural mirages
  • church , plural churches
  • bridge , plural bridges
  1. Otherwise, if the preceding sound is voiceless, the plural marker takes the likewise voiceless form . Examples:
  • mop , plural mops
  • mat , plural mats
  • pack , plural packs
  • cough , plural coughs
  • myth , plural myths
  1. Otherwise, the preceding sound is voiced, and the plural marker takes the likewise voiced form .
  • dog , plural dogs
  • glove , plural gloves
  • ram , plural rams
  • doll , plural dolls
  • toe , plural toes

Notes

References

References

  1. Steriade, Donca. (1999). "Formal Perspectives in Romance Linguistics". John Benjamins.
  2. Green, Antony D.. (2006). "The independence of phonology and morphology: The Celtic mutations". Lingua.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

linguistic-morphology phonology
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