GENERATIVE MORPHOLOGY

© 2002-2008 Mark C. Baker and Jonathan David Bobaljik

Rutgers University and University of Connecticut

Draft – for class use

revisions of November 2008 JDB

1. BASIC CONCEPTS - ALLOMORPHY

1.1 Allomorphy

Our goal in this section is to introduce the concept of allomorphy (literally “different forms”),
which is the idea that a single morpheme may have more than one realization. Allomorphy is
central to morphological description, and an extended sense of the concept will play a key role in
our theoretical treatment of inflection in Chapter 6.

1.1.1 Phonological Allomoprhy

1.1.1.1 Part 1

points: allomorphy, complementary distribution

What happens when we try to apply our principles of segmentation to try to identify a morpheme
with the meaning “plural” in English? For a start, we’ll limit ourselves to looking at “regular”
plurals, as in (1). English orthography obscures the point we want to make, so we give phonetic
transcriptions of the singular and plural for each noun:
(1) List A List B List C
sg. pl. sg. pl. sg. pl.
cat kæt kæts road rowd rowdz bus bʌs bʌsɨz
dock dʌk dʌks dog dawg dawgz buzz bʌz bʌzɨz
cap kæp kæps cab kæb kæbz bush bʊʃ bʊʃɨz
lamp læmp læmps lamb læm læmz garage gəræʒ gəræʒɨz
dent dɛnt dɛnts den dɛn dɛnz church tʃərtʃ tʃərtʃɨz
ski skij skijz
spa spa spaz

Is there a single regular plural suffix in English? When we look at these lists, we appear to find
three similar, but not identical, suffixes: [-s] in List A, [-z] in List B, and [-ɨz] in List C. It would
seem we might have to posit three different plural morphemes in English, each of which occurs
with only some nouns. However, when we look more closely at which endings go with which
nouns, it turns out that there is a regular pattern that determines the appropriate plural ending for

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any noun. The pattern is phonological. All of the nouns in List C end in sibilant consonants ([s],
[z], [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ] or [dʒ]) and none of the nouns in List A or B do. In addition, all of the nouns in
List A end in voiceless consonants, while none of the nouns in List B do. In other words, the
choice of the plural form is directly correlated with the phonology of the stem, as summarized
here:

(2) Condition 1: If the stem ends in a sibilant,

then the plural suffix is [ɨz].
Condition 2: If the stem does not end in a sibilant,
but ends in a voiceless consonant,
then the plural suffix is [s].
Condition 3: If the stem does not end in a sibilant, or a voiceless consonant
then the plural suffix is [z].

In linguistics this type of patterning is known as complementary distribution. What this means
is that the three forms of the plural each occur in a particular environment and that there is no
overlap among them. If you know the environment (in this case the phonological form of the
stem) then you know the correct form of the plural to use. Complementary distribution is
important, since it suggests that alternation among the various forms we see on the surface is rule
governed, and the rules relating the different surface forms are part of our grammatical
knowledge. This brings us to our key term for the section: allomorph (literally: different form).
When complementary distribution is encountered among surface forms with identical
meaning/function, it is a reasonable hypothesis that these are different realizations of a single,
abstract morpheme, in this example, the English plural. In this sense, what (2) (and (3) below)
provides is a list of the allomorphs of the plural morpheme. (If you have studied phonology, you
may recognize here the analogy to the terms phoneme and allophone).

One way of relating the surface forms is by deriving them from a single underlying form (we
will do this in section 1.1.1.2). First, we will find it useful to introduce some formal notation.
The information in (2) can be represented slightly more formally as the statement of
allomorphy in (3). In this notation, which we will use throughout this book, the slash is to be
read “in the environment”, and the material after the slash defines the context. The specification
of the environment where the rule takes place will contain a “focus bar” (the underline __),
which indicates the position of the input form in some larger environment. Thus, line (3b) is thus
read as “[s] when immediately following a voiceless consonant”.

(3) Allomorphs of the English (regular) plural:

a. [ɨz] / C[+sibilant] __
b. [s] / C[-voice] __
c. [z] / __ (elsewhere)

In a list such as this, the relevant allomorphs are listed in order of increasing generality, that is,
from most specific (or “special case”) to most general (this is often called a Paninian order,
reflecting the fundamental contributions of the Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini around the 4th century
BC to grammatical analysis). In order to determine the form of the plural for any given noun, we

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first determine whether the most specific context/condition is satisfied. If it is, the matter is
settled and we look no further, but if the first condition is not met, then we proceed to second
one, etc. Since the final condition is the most general, applying whenever neither of the other
conditions are met, it is traditionally called an “elsewhere” condition, and written with just a
focus bar. This is understood as meaning “in any environment not described by a more specific
rule.”

The conditions listed in this way are subject to disjunctive application, meaning that only one
from the list can apply in any given instance. Some people find the metaphor of “competition” to
be useful here: the list in (3) gives the various forms that are competing to stand as the plural
marker for any given noun. The “winner” is the form that is the best fit for the context, where
best is understood as the most specific rule that is consistent with the context. It may seem
somewhat pedantic to dwell on disjunction/competition at this point, but it is an important piece
of the formalism, and we will see many such competitions as the course progresses. Although
not all theories express the idea in this way, the notion of disjunctivity and competition are an
important part of many different theories of morphology. Understanding disjunctive ordering
now will provide a firm basis for understanding more complex cases later in the book.

Two technical remarks on the analysis are in order at this point.

First, note that the ordering of the elements in (3) is important. This may seem to be a bit of a
nitpick for now, but we will dwell on this point for a moment, since it will be important in more
complex cases we consider later in the book. Imagine if (3b) were ordered before (3a) in our list
of allomorphs, but nothing else was changed. Under that ordering, what would the plural of
horse be? Well, the stem horse [hors] ends in the voiceless sibilant [s]. In the correct analysis,
given in (3), the first thing to check is whether the final segment is a sibilant—it is, and the
proper plural [horsɨz] is derived. But in the alternative, if (3b) were ordered first, then the plural
would incorrectly come out as [horss]. (And, of course if the last condition were applied first,
then one would always get the [z] plural, and never anything else, given this formulation.)

Second, a reasonable question is whether an alternative order might have been possible if the
contexts were stated differently. For example, since voicing is a binary opposition (there are only
two choices: voiced and voiceless), why didn’t we say that the second allomorph was [z],
following voiced consonants, with the voiceless allomorph [s] as the elsewhere case? To some
degree, the answer lies in phonological theory, and so we will postpone answering this to in
section 1.1.1.2. But even with the data we have, we can see an argument for the way we have set
up the list. Specifically, [s] occurs after voiceless consonants, where [z] occurs not only after
voiced consonants, but also after vowels. It therefore seems appropriate to treated the voiceless
consonants as a natural class, and leave [z] to pick up the remainder of the contexts.

Many experiments have been conducted demonstrating that English speakers have tacit
knowledge of generalizations encoded in (3), and that they acquire these at a very young age.
The classic experiment showing this has come to be known as the Wug Test, after the seminal
work by Jean Berko-Gleason (Berko 1958). In experiments of this sort, English speakers are
presented with drawings of made-up creatures, and nonce words (possible, but not actual words
of the language) are introduced to name the creatures. When the name is introduced in the
singular as in (4a), and subjects are prompted to give the plural, as in (4b), subjects reliably give

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the plural with the appropriate plural affix. For example, presented with (4a), subjects will
respond with [wugz], and never with *[wugs]. If the nonce (made-up) word were ZIFF, speakers
will reliably select the [s] plural, giving [ziffs].

(4) a. This is a WUG.

b. Now there is another one. There are two ____.

These experiments provide striking confirmation that the choice of plural allomorph is rule
governed and is not learned by rote memorization of the appropriate plural forms. Since the
nonce words used in the experiment are, by definition, not part of what the speaker knows, there
is no way for speakers to know how to form the correct plural, except by the application of the
relevant phonological generalizations.

Exercise:1

The following examples illustrate a case of allomorphy in Russian, similar to the English plurals.
Can you find the three allomorphs of the preposition meaning “in/into” or “at/to” (this
preposition is also used for days of the week, where we use “on” in English). Note that certain
prepositions in Russian typically form a phonological word together with the word that
immediately follows them (this is not indicated in Russian orthography). The examples are given
in a phonetic (not phonemic) transcription; note that “ʌ” represents a mid-vowel (similar to the
vowel in English but [bʌt]).

(5) vʌskrisjenji ‘Sunday’ vvʌskrisjenji ‘on Sunday’

čitvjerk ‘Thursday’ fčitvjerk ‘on Thursday’
ftornik ‘Tuesday’ vʌftornik ‘on Tuesday’
ugəl ‘corner’ vugəl ‘into the corner’
ljvof ‘Lvov’ (place name) vʌljvof ‘to Lvov’
morji ‘sea’ vmorji ‘into the sea’
sat ‘garden’ fsat ‘into the garden’
ljes ‘forest’ vljes ‘into the forest’
vremjə ‘time’ vʌvremjə ‘at (the) time (during)’
teatr ‘theatre’ fteatr ‘into the theatre’
dom ‘house’ vdom ‘into the house’

1 NB to MB: (i) I chose the example for the three-way parallel that can be drawn to English, the
environment for epenthesis is not as simple as the selected data suggests (there is also some
variation and lexical exceptions), but the basic point is accurate; (ii) since voicing is relevant to
the example, I indicated voicing alternations (not part of Russian orthography) in the
transcription; for consistency, I also transcribed the vowels after the effects of reduction (this is a
rather complex area, and I’m not sure where to draw the line in terms of phonetic detail); these
will look strange to Russian speakers. Source note: vowels reduced as per Garde 1980[19982].

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dvor ‘courtyard’ vʌdvor ‘into the courtyard’

Extra: The capital city of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, has had three Russian names since the 19th
century. As the site of a Russian fortress, it was named Pishpek [pišpek], then renamed Frunze
[frunze] in the Soviet period (after a Bolshevik leader who was born there), and finally renamed
Bishkek [biškjek] in 1991 as Kyrgyzstan country moved towards independence. The three names
all refer to the same place, but take different allomorphs of the preposition meaning ‘in/to’. Give
the forms your analysis predicts:

(6) “to Pishpek” _____

“to Frunze” _____
“to Bishkek” _____

Turkish problem goes well here

1.1.1.2 Underlying representations

We have said that English has only one (regular) plural morpheme, but that this one morpheme
has multiple surface realizations, known as allomorphs. How should we describe this in terms of
our lexical entries? In this particular case it is not the morphology of English (or Turkish) that is
complex, but rather the phonology. In other words, we may keep the morphology
straightforward, by giving just one phonological form in the lexical entry of the English plural.
By convention, this is listed between slashes and is referred to as the Underlying Representation
(UR) of the morpheme. This underlying representation is then subject to phonological rules that
alter its form in predictable ways to yield the surface (phonetic) representations (written in
square brackets to keep them distinct). The lexical entry for the English plural is given in (55).

(55) Lexical Entry for (regular) plural suffix in English:

Phonology: /z/  The Underlying Representation “UR”

Position: suffix
Meaning: PLURAL
Attachment: Attaches to nouns
Cat. of Result: Noun

In the “phonology” slot of the lexical entry only one of the surface forms appears: the one that
constitutes the underlying representation of the morpheme (the sounds the morpheme has if no
phonological rules apply). This underlying representation is the same as the “elsewhere” case in
the conditions mentioned above. But of course this Lexical Entry alone is not a complete account
of the data in (1); a full account of the data would include the lexical entries for each of the roots,
the lexical entry for the suffix (55), and the phonological rules that affect how the plural
morpheme is pronounced on the surface. We can make these rules explicit as in (56). The same
information can be stated in a variety of ways, a common alternative to rules like (56) is to
invoke constraints. As this is not a phonology textbook, we will present the information in the
most straightforward manner we can, leaving the phonological theory for other courses.

(56) English phonology:

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Rule1 Ø  ɨ / C __z # where: C = strident

coronal  coronal 
Rule2 + voice   - voice  / C __ # where: C = [- voice]
   

Aside: Following an old tradition in linguistics, in this text book we write phonological rules in
the following format:

INPUT  OUTPUT / Environment (+conditions)

The specification of the environment uses the same notation we introduced in describing the
allomorphs in (3). # is a special symbol for the end of the word. Hence /C__# means that the
change takes place after a consonant (with particular features) and before the end of a word.

If you have had some exposure to phonology, you will probably recognize that these are fairly
natural kinds of phonological rules to have, and rules like these are common in languages of the
world. Rule 1 is a kind of epenthesis rule, which inserts a vowel in order to break up a sequence
of two consonants, perhaps one that would be difficult to say. Many languages prohibit
sequences of adjacent elements that are too similar to one another: /z/ itself is a sibilant
consonant and English does not tolerate sequences of adjacent strident consonants. Epenthesis
may thus be thought of as a repair for a sequence that is non-optimal. Similarly, rule 2 can be
thought of as a repair rule, fixing a marked sequence. Simple words in English do not (generally)
allow two adjacent consonants to disagree in their voicing specification, and in particular, a
voiced consonant cannot immediately follow a voiceless one: there are single morpheme words
like ‘box’ [baks] but none like *[bakz]. Rule 2 in (56) is an assimilation rule, which causes the
plural to take on the same voicing specification as the immediately preceding segment.

The ultimate vindication of treating the variation in the plural as a phonological phenomenon
rather than as a case of several different plural affixes comes from the fact that other affixes in
English show essentially the same behavior. For example, in addition to the plural morpheme,
English has a morpheme that marks the possessor of a noun phrase. This possessive marker is
clearly a different morpheme from the plural morpheme: it has a very different meaning, and
somewhat different attachment properties. But interestingly, it comes in exactly three forms: [s],
[z], and [ɨz]:

(57) Possessive ’s: Nash’s [ɨz], Matt’s [s], Harold’s [z]

These are exactly the same forms as the plural morpheme, and they show up in the same
environments: [ɨz] after a coronal fricative like [ʃ], [s] after a voiceless consonant like [t], and [z]
after a voiced consonant or vowel like [d]. English also has a third person singular present tense
suffix. This attaches to verbs, not nouns, and means singular, not plural, so it is a different
morpheme. But it demonstrates the very same surface allomorphy:

(58) Third person singular -s buzzes[ɨz], walks [s], plays [z]

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Finally, only slightly different is the regular past tense ending in English. This varies between a
voiced version [d], a voiceless version [t] and a syllabic version [ɨd]. The voiceless version
shows up after a voiceless consonant, the voiced version shows up after a voiced consonant, and
the syllabic version after a consonant that is so similar to [d] in place and manner of articulation
that the added [d] would get lost otherwise (in other words, after [d] or [t]).

(59) Past tense: “ed” patted [pætɨd], walked [wak-t], played [pley-d]

Although these are clearly different morphemes from the plural suffix, each with its own lexical
entry, they are all phonologically similar in that they consist of a single coronal consonant.
Thus, they undergo similar phonological changes to accommodate to the stem they are added to,
the changes stated roughly in (56). (Rule 1 needs to be stated in a more general way so that it
will apply to the past tense morpheme /d/ as well as to the various morphemes /z/; since this is
not a phonology course, we will not consider exactly how to do this.) Clearly these phonological
rules are not part of the morphemes per se, because they apply to several different morphemes;
rather they are part of the general phonological laws that the language obeys, which some
morphemes happen to feed into.

Similarly for the Russian (and Turkish) examples discussed at the end of the last subsection, the
phonological alternations that derive the three various allomorphs occur elsewhere in the
grammars of those languages, and are more properly seen as part of the phonology of the
languages.

We can now return to a question we raised in the preceding subsection. Why is it that we treat /z/
as the UR for this morpheme, and derive the other two allomorphs, rather than, for example
giving /s/ as the UR? Two points are relevant here. The first observation is that Rule 1 would
have to be more than a simple epenthesis rule if /s/ were underlying, since epenthesis alone
would incorrectly give plurals like *[horsɨs] instead of [horsɨz]. The second observation is that
Rule 2 is extremely general in English; there are no sequences *Cz, where C is a voiceless
consonant. If /s/ were treated as underlying, the assimilation rule would have to be a rule that
shares voicing. Such a rule is less plausible in English, since [s] is permitted in voiced
environments when it is not the plural: relevant minimal pairs are: [dɛns] dense vs. [dɛnz], the
plural of den, or [dʒas] Joss (a name) vs. [dʒaz] the plural of jaw.
Jonathan Bobaljik 11/24/08 9:47 PM
Comment: [Background: students routinely
These phonological rules and laws will not be a direct object of study in this course, and we will ask me how you choose which form should be
take an informal, “rough and ready” approach to them. But they come into our discussion basic and which derived. I’m not deeply
because we need to be able to recognize them when they occur well enough to see the committed to this, but wonder if the benefit of
not making this seem arbitrary/mystical for our
morphemes that they can partially disguise. first example balances out the cost of the extra
text.]

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1.1.1.3 Underspecification

As another example of surface allomorphy, look at the following examples from Inuktitut (some
of them repeated from (48)), and try to find the affixes that correspond to first person and second
person subject agreement. (The glosses of these examples are simplified for ease of exposition).
(60) oral consonant : voiceless stops: p t k q
inventory voiced fricatives: v j γ ʁ
other: s,l

anijuŋa I leave anivit you leave

takujuŋa I see takuvit you see
isumajuŋa I think isumavit you think
pisuktuŋa I walk pisukpit you walk
ikajuqtuŋa I help ikajuqpit you help
isiqtuŋa I enter isiqpit you enter
takujumajuŋa I want to see takujumavit you want to see
takujumalauqtuŋa I wanted to see takujumalauqpit you wanted to see

Comparing the two forms for ‘leave’, it seems that the root meaning ‘leave’ is ani. Subtracting
that out leaves the suffix -juŋa as the 1st person agreement and the suffix –vit as the second
person agreement. These same forms show up in the examples of ‘see’ (taku) and ‘think’
(isuma). Different forms are seen in the next few examples, however. The largest string of
phonological material that the two examples meaning ‘walk’ share is [pisuk]. That leaves [tuŋa]
as the first person agreement in this case, and [pit] as the second person agreement. These forms
also appear following [ikajuq] ‘help’ and [isiq] ‘enter’. Overall, then, we can isolate the
following allomorphs (the tilde symbol is used to indicate an alternation, and is read “alternates
with”):

(61) 1sg: -juŋa ~ -tuŋa

2sg: -vit ~ -pit

Looking at the whole range of examples, it also seems that the allomorphy is phonologically
conditioned. The [juŋa] and [vit] forms, which begin with a voiced continuant, come after a
vowel-final root, whereas the [tuŋa] and [pit] forms, which begin with the corresponding
voiceless stops, come after a root that ends in a voiceless stop. We thus discern another
phonological rule of assimilation, in which the first sound of the suffix takes on a feature of the
sound that comes immediately before it. The last two rows of examples confirm this nicely.
[taku] ‘see’ ends in a vowel, so it normally takes the [juŋa] and [vit] endings. When the suffix
[juma] ‘want’ attaches to [taku] ‘see’, the combination still ends in a vowel, so we have
[takujumajuŋa] ‘I want to see’ and [takujumavit] ‘you want to see’. But when the past tense
suffix [lauq] is added, the complex stem now ends in a consonant, so the [tuŋa] and [pit] forms
are used, giving [takujumalauqtuŋa] ‘I wanted to see’ and [takujumalauqpit] ‘you wanted to see’.
Notice that is not the root ‘see’ that determines which ending is used, but rather the sound that
comes just before the ending—exactly as expected if this is an instance of phonological
conditioning. In fact, these affixes are representative of a large class of Inuktitut affixes, where
the first consonant undergoes an alternation that can be described as follows:

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(62)

-continuant  -continuant  +continuant   (+continuant) 

 -voice   -voice  or  +voice   +voice 
       

The new question that this material raises is what the underlying representation of these
morphemes is. Are they underlyingly /tuŋa/ and /pit/, with a phonological rule that changes the
voiceless stops into voiced continuants after a voiced sound (including vowels)? Or are they
really [juŋa] and [vit], with a phonological rule changing the voiced continuant to voiceless stop
after a voiceless stop? The choice seems arbitrary; either assumption would work equally well,
and there is no straightforward way to tell which is correct. Indeed, the most natural way to
describe what is happening here is simply to say that the consonant of the affix has to match the
last sound in the stem in voicing and continuancy either way. The phonological rule can be
stated in this way:

(63) C  [α voice] / [α voice] ___

The two αs here simply mean that whatever value the voicing feature has in the context, plus or
minus, the consonant in question receives the same value. In addition, [-voiced] consonants in
Inuktitut are always stops, whereas [+voiced] consonants are always [+continuant], so we can
take it that the value of the continuant feature changes as well, as an automatic side effect of
(63). Then an attractive way to talk about the Inuktitut affixes is to say that their first consonant
starts out being specified for place of articulation, but not for voicing. In other words, the first
sound of the first person suffix is a coronal consonant, but neutral between [t] and [j]; the first
sound of the second person suffix is a labial consonant, but neutral between [p] and [v]. This can
be expressed as lexical entries as in (64).

(64) Lexical Entries for affixes in (61):

LABEL: -Tuŋa -Pit

C C
Phonology: ua it
[+coronal ] [+labial ]
Meaning: 1 SG SUBJ 2 SG SUBJ
Position: suffix suffix
Selection: Attaches to verbs Attaches to verbs
Category: Inflected Verb Inflected Verb

Note that our definition implies that a morpheme must have a phonological representation (as
well as a meaning) but it need not be a complete phonological representation. The technical name
for incompleteness in a representation is underspecification. That is what we see here: there are
plenty of phonological features present to show that the first person ending is different from the
second person ending, for example. The fact that these morphemes are not phonologically self-
sufficient is thus immaterial. That is really no different from what we saw with the English plural
/z/; this phonological representation is incomplete in that it is less than a syllable, so it needs to
be incorporated into some other syllable in order to be pronounced. What we have in Inuktitut is
a slightly more radical version of the same thing. In chapter E we will see that partially specified

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phonological representations like these are also the key to understanding various kinds of
“exotic” word formation, such as reduplication and certain kinds of mutation and ablaut.

The fact that the phonological representation of a morpheme can be fairly complex and abstract
is the real reason why it is often convenient to give each lexical entry a label, as we have been
assuming. The label is just something that we can use to refer to the morpheme easily. It has no
theoretical status; it is not claimed to be part of the mental representation of what the native
speaker of the language knows about that particular morpheme in the language. It is just a
convenience for us as linguists. For the most part, we have used the sounds (or the orthography)
of a morpheme as its label, but remember that morphemes are not just sounds; rather they are
pairings of sound and meaning, together with other properties like syntactic category and
attachment requirements. For example, /dag/ by itself is not a morpheme; rather the lexical
entry “Phonology /dog/ + Meaning DOG + Category Noun + Morphology Root” is a morpheme.
When the phonology is simple, we can continue to use the phonology (or orthography) as a label,
to stand in for the whole morpheme. But when the phonology is not so simple, as in this
Inuktitut example, it is useful to have another convention. It seems unfair to pick either [vit] or
[pit] as the label for the second person morpheme, given that the two forms are equally basic. A
common convention in this case is to use a capital letter in place of the alternating sound, in this
case Pit. We pick P to indicate that it is a labial sound, but capitalize it to show that it is not an
real IPA symbol, but something that varies between different related phonetic values. Similarly
we can make the label of the first person morpheme [Tuŋa], using the same convention. (Note
that there is still some arbitrariness—we could just as well pick [Juŋa], or even something like
[Duŋa]. It doesn’t really matter, since the label is only a convenience, not knowledge attributed
to the native speaker.)

1.1.2 Labels, Abstractness and Exponents

In the examples of allomorphy that we’ve looked at so far, it has turned out to be the phonology
that is doing most of the work. In other words the allomorphy—the appearance of different forms
of a single morpheme—is explained by the phonology. We refer to allomorphy of that sort as
phonological allomorphy. One could even say that phonological allomorphy is not really part of
the study of morphology proper; it simply makes it a bit more challenging to recognize the
morphemes which are our primary concern. There is, however, a second type of allomorphy,
where phonology alone cannot provide the whole explanation. Understanding the phonological
allomorphy considered in the previous section lays the groundwork for extending the notion of
allomorphy into the morphology proper. Let’s consider a range of examples.

In Hungarian (a Ugric language of central Europe), verbs take endings indicating (among other
things) the subject of the action. Here is a small but representative sample of present tense forms
of regular verbs with singular subjects, presented in a broad transcription (not in Hungarian
orthography):

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 Baker & Bobaljik, Morphology: Basic Concepts

(7) meaning 1sg “I verb” 2sg “you verb” 3sg “he/she verbs”

write i:rek i:rs i:r

love seretek serets seret
speak bese:lek bese:ls bese:l
ask ke:rek ke:rs ke:r
beat verek vers ver

Applying our principles of segmentation, we quickly find that the third person form shows the
basic stem and is not marked by any affix. The first and second person each have a
corresponding affix: -ek for first person and –s for second person (when a larger range of verbs is
considered, additional phonological rules apply, such as vowel harmony and epenthesis, but we
will set these aside here). Now compare these to verbs whose stems end in {–s, -z, -ʃ}:

(8) meaning 1sg “I verb” 2sg “you verb” 3sg “he/she verbs”

buy vesek vesel ves

look ne:zek ne:zel ne:z

get more –el examples

Segmentation proceeds as above, but the second person form is surprising. In place of the -s
expected on the basis of (7), we find –el. This is systematic, and meets the criterion of
complementary distribution: for the second person singular, the –el ending is used for sibilant-
final stems, and the -s ending is used everywhere else. That is, we may state the allomorphy as in
(9):

(9) Allomorphs of the Hungarian second person singular:

a. -el / C[+sibilant] __
b. -s / __ (elsewhere)

The motivation for the allomorphy is clearly phonological (i.e., the statement of the conditions
refers to phonology), but this time (in contrast to the examples considered above), the alternation
itself is not a plausible rule of Hungarian phonology. In other words, s  l / [+strident] __ is
not a natural phonological rule. Now, whether an alternation is attributable to a natural
phonological rule is not something we expect you to know, necessarily, and indeed, to some
degree it depends on one’s theory of phonology. We will return to this point below, but for now,
we ask you to simply accept that this characterization is correct. One clue that the alternation is
not itself phonological is that the Hungarian case is markedly different from what we saw in
English, Russian, Turkish and Inuktitut, where whole families of affixes undergo a similar
phonological adjustment. In any event, if the alternation is not due to phonology as such, we
must introduce into our framework a means for capturing morphological alternations of this sort.

In fact, we have all the tools we need, it is simply a matter of putting them together in the right
way. It is a unique property of the second person singular subject agreement suffix in Hungarian,
and not of any other morpheme, that it has these two forms [-s] and [-el]. Since it is part of what

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a native speaker of Hungarian knows about this particular morpheme of Hungarian, the
information properly goes into the lexical entry of the affix. Specifically, we simply write the
information in (9) directly in the lexical entry of this affix (we will refine this view in the chapter
on inflection, but this basic point will not change). Note that, as with any disjunctive block, the
order is important, with the special form listed first, and the elsewhere (general) form next.

(68)
“label” 2 sg / 'you'
phonology -el / C[+sibilant] __
-s / <elsewhere>
meaning 2 sg agreement
position Suffix
selection Attaches to verbs
category "inflected verb"

Note also that the convenience of having a label that is distinct from the sounds that are
associated with the morpheme is especially important here. In this case, we picked the meaning
of the morpheme as its label, because the meaning is consistent whereas the sounds are not.

There is a special term for allomorphs that are listed in the lexical entry in this way and not
derived by phonological rule. Each allomorph is called an exponent. In the material we have
seen thus far, the Hungarian second person singular has two exponents. This contrasts with the
English plural. Although the English plural has three allomorphs, it has only one exponent,
namely, the UR /z/. The reason we say it has only the one exponent is that the derivation of the
surface forms is due to regular, phonological allomorphy. The core idea to keep in mind here is
that the lexical entry contains information that must be listed as specific to a particular
morpheme.

Let’s look at another example of allomorphy where we need to use multiple exponents, where
phonological allomorphy is not sufficient. (69) presents a second example, from the Mayan
language Tzeltal, spoken in Southern Mexico. The question is what are the forms of the prefixes
that indicate possessors in this language?

(69) Allomorphy in Tzeltal

k’ab ‘hand’ hk’ab ‘my hand’

akan ‘leg’ kakan ‘my leg’

lumal ‘land’ alumal ‘your land’

inam ‘wife’ awinam ‘your wife’

k’op ‘language’ sk’op ‘his language’

at’el ‘work’ yat’el ‘his work’

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Assuming that this small amount of data is representative, you can see that each prefix has two
forms, one that occurs before a consonant initial stem, and a different one that appears before a
vowel initial stem. This is summarized in (69).

(69) my = h / __C; k / __V

your = a / __C; aw / __V
his = s / __C; y / __V

Again, which form is used is phonologically conditioned; and the choice may reduce to which
form will make more optimal syllables in the language. But the changes themselves do not
appear to be phonological, since many of the features of the prefixes are different. Certainly it
could not be the same phonological rule that changed [k] to [h], [y] to [s] and deleted a [w]
before a consonant. Once again, we tentatively posit two exponents for each of these possessive
prefixes, listing the exponents in the lexical entries for the possessive prefixes. Here, we have
somewhat arbitrarily chosen to consider the pre-consonantal exponents as specific, and left the
pre-vocalic exponents as the elsewhere cases, though we could have done this the other way
around as well. The lexical entries would be:

(70)
“label” my Your his
phonology h / __ C a / __ C s / __ C
k / __ <elsewhere> aw / __ <elsewhere> y / __ <elsewhere>
meaning my your his/her/its
position prefix Prefix prefix
selection attaches to N Attaches to N Attaches to N
category <IGNORE> <IGNORE> <IGNORE>

Of course, this treatment should be considered to be tentative. As we learned more about

Tzeltal, it is conceivable that we would uncover evidence that there really is a phonological rule
or principle that could take [k] and automatically produce [h] or vice versa. This is no different
from what we saw when we were segmenting morphemes in the first place: our initial
hypotheses can always be revised in the light of new data or a better understanding of what is
going on.

Closer to home, English also provides a good example of allomorphy that requires positing
distinct exponents, and which cannot be reduced to a general phonological rule. The indefinite
article in English has two forms: it is “a” (pronounced [ej] or [ə]) before a word that starts with a
consonant, and “an” (pronounced [æn] or [ən]) before a word that starts with a vowel:

(10) a computer an apple

a spire an obelisk
a basilisk an eel

Yet there is no plausible, general rule of phonology that deletes or inserts n in the appropriate
environment in contemporary English. Again, both versions of the article must be listed in the
lexical entry of the indefinite article, together with an indication of the context where each
exponent is used.

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 Baker & Bobaljik, Morphology: Basic Concepts

(11)
“label” a(n)
phonology æn / __ V
ej / <elsewhere>
meaning Indefinite article
position root
selection --
category DETERMINER

The English indefinite article allows us to reinforce another important point regarding the
different types of allomorphy. If you look closely, we described the article as having four distinct
pronunciations: [ej], [ə], [æn], and [ən]) but we set up only two exponents in the lexical entry.
Why did we do things this way, rather than setting up four distinct exponents? The answer is in
the difference between exponence and phonological allomorphy. The alternation between “an”
and “a” is not the result of a regular phonological process in English, and the two must therefore
be listed as distinct exponents. On the other hand, the exponent that we write as “a” has two
different pronunciations: [ej] when it bears stress, and [ə] otherwise, likewise “an” is pronounced
either [æn] or [ən] according to stress. But this alternation is due to a quite general phonological
property of English, in which vowels are reduced (pronounced as [ə]) in unstressed positions.
This is a case of phonological allomorphy, and requires no special information to be listed in the
lexical entry of the article.

1.1.2.1 Phonological plausibility

We have now seen two different ways of formally describing allomorphy: in some cases, we list
different exponents in the lexical entry, while in other cases, we derive multiple surface
allomorphs from a single exponent. In theory, the distinction is clear cut—a single exponent is
given, corresponding to a UR in phonology, where the phonology of the language can derive the
various surface forms in a straightforward manner. Where the phonology is not up to the task,
then distinct exponents are posited. In practice, the division is not always clear cut. Whether an
alternation is phonologically plausible depends in part on one’s theory of phonology, and there
are grey areas. There are some rules of thumb we can appeal to: in general, the following three
conditions should be met in order to confidently attribute allomorphic variation to phonology,
rather than to exponent selection.

(67) Conditions relevant to recognizing phonological allomorphy:

a. The allomorphy should be phonologically conditioned. (i.e., which form attaches to the
stem is predictable in terms of phonological properties of the stem).

b. The difference between the allomorphs can be characterized in terms of (a small number
of) phonological features.

c. Affixes that have similar phonological characteristics should show similar allomorphy,
where applicable.

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(67a) and (67b) are both requirements; (67c) is desirable but not absolutely essential. For
example, the language might not have any other affixes with a similar phonological shape that
would make a fair comparison with the one being studied. Also, various other factors can
intervene, which we return to in chapter xx. In the Hungarian example, only the first criterion is
satisfied. Therefore, this is probably not phonological allomorphy, attributable to the phonology
of the language, and must be listed.

Luckily (for us as morphologists) the we do not need to resolve the issue once and for all. Both
types of allomorphy clearly exist, and we now understand how to encode each type within our
theory. As individual analysts, working with small data samples, we may not always know with
confidence which way a given example is to be characterized, but we can rest soundly, knowing
that whichever way a troubling example turns out to pattern at the end of the day, we have the
theoretical tools to characterize it appropriately. As a final point on this topic, it is worth noting
that many of the cases of allomorphy that we have treated as choice of distinct exponents have a
certain amount of phonological motivation, even if the actual outcome cannot be treated as a
purely phonological process. The fact that the Hungarian second person singular allomorph –el
occurs after sibilants, is undoubtedly related to the avoidance of a cluster of sibilants that would
otherwise be created. In English, this triggered epenthesis, but in Hungarian, it triggers selection
of an alternate exponent. Likewise, in the choice between “a” and “an” in English (or between
“a” and “aw” in Tzeltal), it is surely no coincidence that the longer forms are used to avoid
having a vowel prefix before a vowel-initial word: this configuration is termed called hiatus and
is regularly avoided in phonological systems. Examples like these that have a morphological
solution to a phonological problem have been used by some researchers, especially those
working in constraint-based frameworks (including Optimality Theory), to argue that there is not
such a strict division between morphology and phonology. As we write (2008) there is an
emerging body of new work in this topic area. But pursuing this issue more fully would require
more phonological background than we assume here.

Exercise

In discussing Hungarian inflection, we considered only verbs with front, unrounded vowels.
Here is an expanded list of verbs, in the same three inflectional categories:

(12) meaning 1sg “I verb” 2sg “you verb” 3sg “he/she verbs”

write i:rek i:rs i:r

love seretek serets seret
wait va:rok va:rs va:r
sow varok vars var
break tœrœk tœrs tœr
sit ylœk yls yl
cook fœ:zœk fœ:zœl fœ:z
read olvɒʃok olvɒʃol olvɒʃ
bring hozok hozol hoz

In what ways would you expand the analysis of Hungarian given in the text above to account for
all the forms in (7), (8) and (12)? Pay attention to the following:

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• What are the allomorphs of the first person and second person endings?

• Which of these are instances of phonological allomorphy and which involve distinct
exponents?

• How do you justify your decision to classify the alternations either as phonological
allomorphy or as exponent selection?

1.1.3 Stock-taking

In this section we have introduced the descriptive notion of allomorphy: multiple surface
realizations of a single underlying morpheme. We distinguished two types of allomorphy.
Allomorphy via exponent selection occurs when a single morpheme has two (or more)
exponents—distinct forms that are in complementary distribution, but whose forms are not
related to one another by phonological rule. Phonological allomorphy occurs when a single
exponent has more than one surface realization, but the forms are predictable from the
phonological processes in the language. As we discussed, sometimes both types of allomorphy
need to be invoked in describing the full range of surface realizations of a particular morpheme.
Central to the formal discussion is the notion of competition or disjunction, and the associated
notions of underspecification and elsewhere ordering. When distinct forms compete (whether
distinct exponents, or distinct phonological processes) to effect the realization of a single
morpheme, the more specific forms take preference over the less specific. This ordering is
reflected in the ordering of exponents in a lexical entry, a key piece of the formal apparatus that
we will make use of again in what follows, both in this chapter and elsewhere in the book.

At this point, it may seem to you that the idea of allomorphy undermines our definition of a
morpheme. An intuitive understanding of a morpheme is a “pair” of a particular sound with a
particular meaning. But that understanding seems to break down in cases like the Tzeltal one,
when there is no consistent sound to go with the meaning ‘belonging to the speaker’, but rather
two different sounds, [h] and [k]. A better (more general) notion of a morpheme is this:
Morphemes are not (necessarily) pairs of sound and meaning, but rather they are systematic
correspondences of sound and meaning. The simplest correspondences are one-to-one
correspondences (i.e. pairs), but the correspondences as we have just seen can also be one
meaning matched with several forms. This is fine, as long as the forms are used
systematically—for example, meeting the criterion of complementary distribution. We can
diagram some of our key examples as such. Note that the Tzeltal possessive example does give a
reliable mapping from sound to meaning, just as the more familiar case of dog does; it is just
slightly more complex. That is the key to our notion of a morpheme, in the more general case.

1.1.4 Lexically Conditioned Allomorphy

The basic criterion for invoking allomorphy is complementary distribution. A single morpheme
may have distinct surface realizations, but the distribution of the various allomorphs is governed
by a set of rules or conditions. When the alternation is not describable in phonological terms,
distinct exponents are posited, and listed in the lexical entry for the morpheme in question, along
with a formal characterization of the contexts in which they occur. This formalism is a powerful
device that allows us to provide a clear and concise description of a large range of morphological

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alternations. In the cases we have examined thus far, all of the contexts we have examined are
phonological contexts, even in the examples where we have invoked distinct exponents. But
there is no forma reason why the environments should be limited to phonological contexts. We
will see now that considering the possibility that other types of context are relevant will allow a
large array of facts to be neatly characterized as allomorphy via exponent selection. We will
introduce the concept here, and return to it in more detail in the chapter on inflection.

To start with, let’s return to the topic of English plurals. In section 1.1.1, we treated the
(phonological) allomorphy in the regular plural of English. This is not all there is to be said. In
addition, English has a range of irregular plurals that are not formed with the /z/ suffix (written
as “s”). Some of these “irregular” plurals are given in (13). Note: we will come back to
ablauting pairs such as goose~geese and suppletive pairs like person~people later on.

(13) singular plural

a. ox oxen *oxes
child children *childs (we will return to the /r/ at a later point)

b. die dice [dajs] *dies [dajz]

c. deer deer *deers

sheep sheep *sheeps
aircraft aircraft *aircrafts
series series *serieses

d. cherub cherubim (cherubs)

stigma stigmata (stigmas)
formula formulae (formulas)
…

Before we get to the analysis, a couple of brief remarks should be made about this list.

First, we should check that the forms in (13c) are indeed plural, even though there is no overt
mark of plurality. In some descriptions, these words are listed as having no plural. But this is not
quite correct. The words in (13c) can be used in contexts that are grammatically plural, for
example, occurring with a plural demonstrative these deer and/or plural copula: the sheep are
wild. They can also serve in expressions that require a plural noun (phrase), for example in
construction with the reciprocal expression each other: The deer bit each other. Words like deer
and aircraft are different from words that really do lack a plural term, including mass nouns like
air and oxygen, and certain abstract nouns, like health. Thus, one can say: My fish is big, your
fish is big, and together, our fish are big, but contrast: My health is good, your health is good,
and together our health *are good. (The noun health truly has no plural, and only is can be used
in this context.)

Next, a word about the list in (d). This list could be expanded, and is made up of loanwords, for
which a plural form from the source language is recognized as acceptable in English. There is a
great deal of variation (and sometimes spirited debate) surrounding the use of these foreign-

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source irregular plurals, and the details raise interesting and complex issues of sociolinguistics.
We include some here for illustrative purposes, but we take no stand on matters of “correct” or
“incorrect” usage in this domain—our primary goal is to show how the grammars of speakers
who use such plurals, as well as those who do not, can be modeled.

Back to the main thread:

One thing to note is that the contexts for the irregular plural endings are not phonologically
defined. Phonologically similar words take the regular plural: ox~oxen, but fox~foxes, box-boxes,
ax-axes, etc. More importantly, we note that the irregular plurals are in complementary
distribution with the regulars. Every singular count noun of English has a corresponding plural,
but not all nouns use the regular plural. As indicated in (13), when a noun has an “irregular”
plural forms, the regular suffix cannot normally be used. A term you will frequently encounter in
the literature on this topic is blocking: the irregular morphology somehow prevents (blocks) the
regular morpheme from being used, even though that morpheme otherwise attaches to all kinds
of roots, even newly made up words. Blocking phenomena of this sort are a common feature of
inflectional morphology. We can also see the same thing in verbal inflection. For example, the
past participle of quake is quaked, by normal affixation, but the past participle of shake is
shaken, and *shaked is impossible, blocked by the existence of shaken.

The framework we have developed already has the tools to provide a formal characterization of
blocking, as a special case of the complementary distribution that characterizes allomorphy. We
already know that in a statement of allomorphy, as in a list of exponents in a lexical entry, the list
is ordered from the special cases to the general case. This tool quite neatly characterizes the
interaction between irregular and irregular plurals, if we list the irregulars as exponents in the
lexical entry of the plural morpheme, as in (14).

(14) English plural

label PLURAL
allomorphy -en / ox] __
(-ta / stigma] __)
(-im / cherub] __)
Ø / {fish, sheep…}] __
-z / __ (elsewhere)

attachment [ N __ ]

The only new move we have made here is to allow the environments that define the contexts for
the various exponents to refer to individual lexical items (or lists of lexical items), rather than
just phonologically-defined contexts. But the working of the list of exponents is otherwise just
like all the other allomorphy we have considered: the plural exponent –en is chosen after the
specific root ox, -ta after stigma, -im after cherub, Ø after certain other roots, and –z otherwise.

We should pause for a moment to note that we are using the zero (empty set) symbol Ø to
indicate the absence of overt material in a position it would otherwise be expected. This is
sometimes called a zero morpheme (or in this case, as we shall see, a zero exponent). This has an

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important role to play in the statement of allomorphy. Consider what would have happened if we
were to have just left nouns like fish, sheep, deer off the list and not included a zero exponent. In
that case, nothing would block the appearance of the elsewhere form and the plurals would be
predicted to be fishes, deers [z], and sheeps. The zero is needed in examples of this type as a
positive signal to insert no phonological material, but to block the appearance of the regular
exponent.

In the interest of tying up loose ends, let’s come back to those among us who say cherubs and
not cherubim for those cute little Cupids on the Valentine’s Day cards. The only change we need
to make for such speakers is to leave out the third line in the allomorphy statement in (14). With
no special ending listed, the plural form will default to the elsewhere case, ensuring the correct
exponent /z/ is chosen. In fact, we already snuck a slightly more subtle version of this into (14)
by listing the irregular endings for stigma and cherub in parentheses, a common device for
indicating optionality. Technically, this is a slight retreat from our notion of complementary
distribution, but it provides an accurate description of the distribution of such plurals for many
speakers of contemporary English.

Expanding the scope of our statements of allomorphy to include lexically conditioned exponent
selection allows for a straightforward means of incorporating description of “irregulars” within
the approach developed here. From this perspective, the fact that an irregular plural “blocks” a
regular plural is just another example of the general rule that an exponent with a restricted
distribution blocks the appearance of the elsewhere exponent.

1.1.5 Diacrticis and inflectional classes

Many examples of lexically conditioned allomorphy show much more regularity than the English
plurals. In English, we listed individual stems in the contexts for the special allomorphs. It is
quite common to find that the choice of exponent refers to whole classes of stems, sometimes
semantically definable, and sometimes not. Here is one such example:

<This is a stand-in pending a better example>2

Sierra Popoluca is a Mixe-Zoquean language of Mexico. In this language there are two suffixes
that can be used to make plurals from nouns, as shown in (15).

(15) sg. pl.

a. house: tʌk tʌkjah
tree: kuj kuyjah

2 To MB: From Elson (1960). ‘Single’ forms posited by stripping off affix (source gives only plurals). These need to
be rechecked or replaced. There’s a wrinkle here which makes this the wrong example to show what I want: the
distribution is not complementary, as the human nouns can also take the –yah plural. What I’m trying to find is an
example where distribution is governed by something non-phonological, but is not arbitrary in the way it is in
English. Plurals will set the stage for the English. The example will also be something to refer back to later in that it
sets the stage for treating gender as allomorphy. Using an unfamiliar language rather than gender right off the bat
will avoid common preconceptions.

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 Baker & Bobaljik, Morphology: Basic Concepts

chair: ko:nkuj ko:nkujjah

pig: jo:ja jo:jajah

b. woman: jo:m jo:mtam

child: cʌ:ʃ cʌ:ʃtjam
little.girl: wo:nj wo:ntjam
his brother: itjʌ:wʌ itjʌ:wʌtam

Although we have presented only a limited data set here, it turns out that the choice between -jah
and –tam is not determined by the phonology of the stem, but rather (roughly) whether the stem
refers to a human or not. (The alternation between –tam and -tjam is a case of phonologically
conditioned allomorphy.) Thus, at least as a first approximation, we could set up the lexical entry
for the Sierra Popoluca plural morpheme to include two exponents, as in (16). Here, we have
compressed the notation for the lexical entry still further. [Though we don’t need this]

(16) PL  -tam / ]N,HUMAN ___

 -jah / ___ (elsewhere)

Note that the form of the statement of allomorphy here is the same as in the phonological cases,
but in this example, the focus bar defines a grammatical (ultimately semantic-based), rather than
a phonological environment: specifically: “immediately following a human noun (N)”.

Distinctions similar to human vs. non-human distinction (or animate vs. inanimate) play a role in
determining allomorphy in other languages as well. Another language that shows a nuanced
version of such a distinction is Chukchi, spoken in the far northeast of Russia. In Chukchi, there
is a special suffix, called the “ergative case” that marks the subject of a transitive verb. In the
singular, there are two primary exponents of the ergative case. The basic division is as follows:
the suffix –ne is used with personal names (and certain other nouns and pronouns) while the
suffix –te is used with all other nouns. Each exponent is subject to additional phonological rules,
including vowel harmony (which changes /e/ to [a]) and a rule that deletes the consonant –t after
stems ending in a consonant. Some illustrative examples are given here.3

(17) noun stem ergative

a. personal names
Mama əmmemə əmmeməne
Nutekew (name) nutekew nutekewne
Roclow (name): roclow roclowəna (with vowel harmony e  a)
Michael (name): majkəl majkəlna (with vowel harmony e  a)
Jare (name): jare jarena (with vowel harmony e  a)

3 Complications: what’s going on here is syncretism. Erg = Loc for certain pronouns, and proper names (including
appellations of older relatives). Source: Dunn, also Skorik (via Spencer). Note: the ‘noun stem’ is what it says, it’s
not (always) the same as the absolutive singular, since there are a variety of factors that change its surface form.

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b. common nouns
brother-in-law: əntuuɬpəre əntuuɬpərete
sister: ŋeekke ŋeekkete
mother: ətɬʔa ətɬʔata (with vowel harmony e  a)
wolf: wolk wolkata (with VH; Russian loan)
duck: jokwa jokwata
cord: ŋiɬɣ ŋiɬɣe
friend: tumɣ tumɣe
youth: ʔaatcek ʔaatceka (by vowel harmony e  a)
little dog: ʔəttʔəqej ʔəttʔəqeje
dog: ʔəttʔ ʔəttʔe

That the key factor here is semantic and not phonological is shown by minimal pairs, where one
and the same word can be used as a proper name or as a common noun (just as in English, for
example, where the common profession nouns like smith, tailor or baker also occur as proper
names). The form of the ergative depends on how the word is being used. This is particularly
clear, for example, with (some) kinship terms, and also in folk tales where animals are
anthropomorphized and their names are used as a proper names.

(18) disobedient person: aalomkəɬʔənata

(same word as name) aalomkəɬʔəna 4

Uncle ənjiw ənjiwe (p. 163)

Uncle-dim ənjiwqej ənjiwqejəne (p.103)
bad uncle: ʔeqenjiwe (p.103, 205)

Spider epeepeqejəne
Harness Doe wenqorajŋə-na

<Clear minimal pairs not given in Dunn; check Skorik, Volodin & Kämpfe etc>

Like in Sierra Popoluca, for Chukchi, we may tentatively posit two exponents of the ergative
case, distinguished by whether the noun they are attached to is a proper name or not. Note that
in these cases, we list only one underlying representation for each exponent, allowing the rules of
Chukchi phonology to derive the other phonological allomorphs seen in the data.

(19) -ne / ]NAME ___

-te / ___ (elsewhere)

4 This is from Dunn, but he doesn’t provide the full phonological derivation here. I think I can reconstruct it, but it
might not be worth the effort.

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In Chapter 6, we will return to this topic, and show how this provides an account of gender and
declension class morphology, such as the theme vowels of Italian, and of many aspects of
inflection more generally.

1.1.6 Loose ends: more on irregularity

In the discussion so far, we have looked at allomorphy in affixes, where this is sometimes
determined by phonology, and sometimes by a choice among listed exponents. But a leading idea
throughout this chapter has been that affixes and roots are essentially the same kind of linguistic
entity (morphemes), and they differ primarily only in their attachment properties. If this is true,
we should expect to find allomorphy in roots as well. And indeed we do. In this section, we will
look briefly at a few cases of root allomorphy, spanning the range from phonological to
grammatically conditioned allomorphy. Along the way, we will basically complete our tour of
the English irregular plurals (though we will return to the topic in Chapter Exotic). The most
extreme types of root allomorphy have a special term in morphological description, namely
suppletion. It is important to become familiar with this term in reading the lieterature, but as we
will see, the formal description of suppletion requires no tools or concepts that we have not
already made use of above.

Let’s start with the following group of nouns in English. For each of these words, our plural rule
appears to make incorrect predictions. Since all the singulars end in voiceless consonants, we
predict the plurals indicated in the third column, but the actual plurals are those given in the third
column.

(20) orth sg. predicted plural actual plural

house [hæws] *hæwsɨz hæwzɨz

bath [bæθ] *bæθs bæðz
calf [læf] *kæfs kævz
wife [wæjf] *wæjfs wæjvz
leaf [lijf] *lijfs lijvz

But the problem is not with our description of the allomorphs of the plural. If you look closely at
the third column, you will see that the forms of the plural in that column are just as they should
be: [ɨz] after a sibilant, and [z] after a (non-sibilant) voiced consonant. What’s irregular about
these plurals is a property of the roots, namely, that the final consonant becomes voiced in the
plural. We conclude that the grammar of English contains a special phonological rule (sometimes
called a minor phonological rule, or readjustment rule) that changes the voicing of a limited
class of nouns in the plural (and also in the corresponding verb, for many of these: to house [z],
to bathe [ð], to calve [v]…). Once that rule applies, the formations of the plural is entirely
regular. The application of this readjustment rule thus generates a type of phonological
allomorphy of roots.

In fact, a wide range of phonological processes can affect roots in many languages in
morphologically complex words, blurring the boundary between the study of phonology and
morphology (or better: demonstrating that it is hard to study one without studying the other). For
example, the vowel harmony process in Chukchi, mentioned above, applies in roots as well as

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affixes. Roots containing the vowels /i,e,u/ all have phonologically predictable allomorphs with
the corresponding vowels /e,a,o/ when they are used in particular vowel harmony environments.5

(21) gloss root (UR) ABS SG COMIT (+VH)

needle /titi/ titi-ŋe ɣa-tete-ma

tree /uttu/ uttu-ut ɣ-ottə-ma
rabbit /milute/ milute-t ɣa-melota-ma
whale /rʔew/ rʔew ɣa-rʔaw-ma

Another set of English irregular plurals which shows root allomorphy is the longish list of so
called ablauting plurals (see also Chapter Exotic) which we put aside earlier in this discussion.
We may return to them now:

(81) Singular Plural

tooth tuwθ tijθ

foot fʊt fijt
goose guws gijs
mouse maws majs
man mæn mɛn

For these nouns, the plural is formed by a change in the vowel of the root. (These plurals also
take no overt plural affix, so we would add these roots to the list of nouns taking the zero affix in
(14); we return to this apparent conspiracy later). Here, we are faced with an analytical choice.
The vowel alternations can be described in terms of phonological features alone, so we could
posit a unique UR for each noun, and derive the plural by means of readjustment rules. On the
other hand, the particular singular:plural correspondences in the vowels are not entirely
predictable. Another option would be to simply list the two forms of the root as alternate
exponents in the lexical entry. There is undoubtedly a fact of the matter to be learned, but the
question of whether to treat irregularity of this sort as involving minor rules or listed forms is one
of the hot questions of our time, and has sparked a great deal of exciting work in
psycholinguistics (including neurolinguistics). Luckily for us, whichever analysis turns out to be
correct is consistent with the goals of morphological analysis in this textbook, so we do not need
to take a stand here.

5 Krause 1979:4; < Skorik.

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(22) Root allomorphy in an irregular noun (one way

label MAN
allomorphy mɛn / __ PLURAL
mæn / __ (elsewhere)
attachment [N]

Finally, we note that there are cases where listing two allomorphs of the root does seem to be
entirely appropriate, where phonology alone does not seem up to the task of describing the
alternation in the root. Such cases are known as root suppletion. In the realm of English plurals,
two are given here. The second one is interesting, since it shows the combination of root
suppletion (a listed exponent for the plural allomorph) with an irregular plural affix, drawn from
the list in (14). The suppletive form people combines with the zero allomorph of the plural.

(23) Singular Plural

person pərsən pijpəl

child tʃajld tʃɪldr-ɛn

Root suppletion is generally limited to a handful of lexical items in any particular domain, but
the phenomenon is wide spread, especially in Indo-European languages, though also beyond.
One point to note about suppletion is that it typically causes a change in the exponent of the root,
but leaves all other morphology (such as affixes) intact. While there are some cases (like the
English suppletive plural person) that combine with a zero exponent (think of English: bad-
worse), the normal case is a change in root, with the regular affix added outside it (as in English
superlative wor-st).

The following examples show root suppletion in Icelandic, a language that is related to English.
Adjectives in this language, as in English, mark three grades: positive “big”, comparative
“bigger” and superlative “biggest”. Note that some of these examples show a phonological
change in the roots (compare the ablaut in English plurals), alongside the addition of an affix.

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(24) Icelandic Adjectives (Comparative and Superlatives Degree) XX MAKE IPA

gloss Stem Comparative Superlative

strong kná knárri knástur

thin mjó mjórri mjóstur
thick þykk þykkri þykkstur
expensive dýr dýrri dýrstur
long lang lengri lengstur
big stór stœrri stœrstur
old gamall eldri elztur do s.th about “z”?
good góð betri beztur
míkill great meiri mestur
vond bad verri verstur

Exercise: Write out lexical entires for the comparative and superlative morphemes in Icelandic,
and for the adjectives that show suppletion.

1.1.7 Summary

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