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Morphophonology (also morphophonemics or morphonology) is the branch of linguistics that studies the interaction between morphological and phonology or phonetic processes. Its chief focus is the sound changes that take place in (minimal meaningful units) when they combine to form words.
The origins of morphophonology trace back to the early 20th century with foundational works in structural linguistics. Notable contributions include Roman Jakobson's insights into phonological alternations and Noam Chomsky and Halle's The Sound Pattern of English (1968), which formalized the relationship between phonology and morphology within generative grammar. Subsequent theories, such as Autosegmental Phonology and Optimality Theory, have refined the analysis of morphophonological patterns
Morphophonological analysis often involves an attempt to give a series of formal rules or constraints that successfully predict the regular sound changes occurring in the morphemes of a given language. Such a series of rules converts a theoretical underlying representation into a surface form that is heard. The units of which the underlying representations of morphemes are composed are sometimes called morphophonemes. The surface form produced by the morphophonological rules may consist of (which are then subject to ordinary phonological rules to produce speech sounds or phones), or else the morphophonological analysis may bypass the phoneme stage and produce the phones themselves.
Morphophonology bridges the gap between morphology and phonology, offering insights into the dynamic interactions between word formation and sound patterns. It continues to evolve as a field, integrating innovative approaches and broadening our understanding of linguistic systems globally.
An example of a morphophonological alternation in English is provided by the plural morpheme, written as "-s" or "-es". Its pronunciation varies among , , and , as in cats, dogs, and horses respectively. A purely phonological analysis would most likely assign to these three endings the phonemic representations , , . On a morphophonological level, however, they may all be considered to be forms of the underlying object , which is a morphophoneme realized as one of the phonemic forms . The different forms it takes are dependent on the segment at the end of the morpheme to which it attaches: the dependencies are described by morphophonological rules. (The behaviour of the English past tense ending "-ed" is similar: it can be pronounced , or , as in hoped, bobbed and added.)
The plural suffix "-s" can also influence the form taken by the preceding morpheme, as in the case of the words leaf and knife, which end with in the singular/but have in the plural ( leaves, knives). On a morphophonological level, the morphemes may be analyzed as ending in a morphophoneme , which becomes voiced consonant when a voiced consonant (in this case the of the plural ending) is attached to it. The rule may be written symbolically as → αvoice / αvoice. This expression is called Alpha Notation in which α can be + (positive value) or − (negative value).
Common conventions to indicate a morphophonemic rather than phonemic representation include double slashes (⫽ ⫽) (as above, implying that the transcription is 'more phonemic than simply phonemic'). This is the only convention consistent with the IPA. Other conventions include pipes (| |), double pipes (‖ ‖) and braces ({ }). Braces, from a convention in set theory, tend to be used when the phonemes are all listed, as in and for the English plural and past-tense morphemes and above.
For instance, the English word cats may be transcribed phonetically as , phonemically as and morphophonemically as , if the plural is argued to be underlyingly , assimilating to after a voiceless nonsibilant. The tilde ~ may indicate morphological alternation, as in or for kneel~knelt (the plus sign '+' indicates a morpheme boundary).Collinge (2002) An Encyclopedia of Language, §4.2.
The purpose of both phonemic and morphophonemic analysis is to produce simpler underlying descriptions for what appear on the surface to be complicated patterns. In purely phonemic analysis the data is just a set of words in a language, while for morphophonemic analysis, the words must be considered in grammatical inflection to take account of the underlying morphemes. It is postulated that morphemes are recorded in the speaker's "lexicon" in an invariant (morphophonemic) form, which, in a given environment, is converted by rules into a surface form. The analyst attempts to present as completely as possible a system of underlying units (morphophonemes) and a series of rules that act on them, to produce surface forms consistent with the linguistic data.
It is often reasonable to assume that the isolation form of a morpheme provides its underlying representation. For example, in some varieties of American English, plant is pronounced , while planting is , where the morpheme "plant-" appears in the form . Here, the underlying form can be assumed to be , corresponding to the isolation form, since rules can be set up to derive the reduced form from this (but it would be difficult or impossible to set up rules that would derive the isolation form from an underlying ).
That is not always the case, however; the isolation form itself is sometimes subject to neutralization that does not apply to some other instances of the morpheme. For example, the French word petit ("small") is pronounced in isolation without the final sound, but in certain derived forms (such as the feminine petite), the is heard. If the isolation form were adopted as the underlying form, the information that there is a final "t" would be lost, and it would then be difficult to explain the appearance of the "t" in the inflected forms. Similar considerations apply to languages with final obstruent devoicing, in which the isolation form undergoes loss of voicing contrast, but other forms may not.
If the grammar of a language includes two rules rule A and rule B ordered such that A precedes B, a derivation may result in rule A creating the necessary environment for rule B to apply, even though that environment did not exist beforehand. In this case, the two rules are said to be in a feeding relationship.
If rule A is ordered before B in the derivation in which rule A destroys the environment to which rule B applies, both rules are in a bleeding order.
If A is ordered before B, and B creates an environment in which A could have applied, B is then said to counterfeed A, and the relationship is counterfeeding.
If A is ordered before B, there is a counterbleeding relationship if B destroys the environment that A applies to and has already applied and so B has missed its chance to bleed A.
Conjunctive ordering is the ordering that ensures that all rules are applied in a derivation before the surface representation occurs. Rules applied in a feeding relationship are said to be conjunctively ordered.
Disjunctive ordering is a rule that applies and prevents the other rule from applying in the surface representation. Such rules have a bleeding relationship and are said to be disjunctively ordered.
The above example involves active morphology (inflection), and morphophonemic spellings are common in this context in many languages. Another type of spelling that can be described as morphophonemic is the kind that reflects the etymology of words. Such spellings are particularly common in English; examples include sci ence vs. unconsci ous , prejudice vs. pre quel , sign signature , na tion vs. nationalism , and spe cial vs. species .
For more detail on this topic, see Phonemic Orthography, particularly the section on Morphophonemic features.
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