Web Lecture 2.2

LING150/University of Oregon

Web Lecture 2.2
Recognizing Allomorphs

2.2.1. The Key Features of Unpredictable Allomorphs

2.2.1. The Key Features of Unpredictable Allomorphs

We've seen five different types of unpredictable allomorphy. The table below gives examples of each type; the sounds in the morpheme which are affected by the allomorphy process are highlighted.

Ablaut	`gon / gen / gn` (NO VOWEL)
Weakening	`tag / teg / tig`
Nasal Insertion	`frag / frang`
Metathesis	`cer / cre`
Latin / Greek Doublets	`hemi / semi(and others)`

Ablaut

Ablaut involves the alternation of the vowel in a root: the vowels vary between e, o or Ø (no vowel).

The prehistoric Indo-European language (spoken more than 5,000 years ago) did not rely solely on suffixes to inflect its verbs; it changed the vowel of the root to show certain inflections. These vowel changes were a regular and predictable grammatical process, in same way that adding the inflectional suffix -ed to show past tense is a regular and predictable grammatical process in Modern English. Over time, one branch of the the prehistoric language developed into early Germanic languages and later English. As this happened, the ablaut process died out and new suffixes such -ed arose to take its place. English still has a small set of verbs which are inflected by changing the vowel; they are relics of the ancient ablaut process. One example is shown below.

e-grade

o-grade

zero-grade

Indo-European

sengwh 'to sing'

songwh

sngwh

Modern English

sing(s) (present tense)

sang (past tense)

song (a noun formed from a verb)

sung (participle form)

Weakening

Weakening involves the alternation of the vowel in a root: the vowels vary between a, e, and i.

We'll discuss weakening again in WebLecture 2.4, after we study the phonetic characteristics of the vowel sounds. Weakening only affects vowels formed near the front of the mouth (vowel formation is discussed in more detail in WebLecture 2.3).

Nasal Insertion

Nasal insertion involves the insertion of n or m after the vowel in a root.

Nasal insertion is a relic of a regular grammatical process in the prehistoric Indo-European language. It was somewhat like ablaut, in that it involved changing the internal structure of a root for grammatical purposes. It serves no grammatical purpose in English, but leaves us with word pairs like tactile and tangible (from the tag/tang pair).

Metathesis

Metathesis involves the switching of any two sounds.

Usually, the two letters are side by side, though in a few roots, such as spec and scep 'look,see', they are not.

Metathesis is found in many languages and has occurred repeatedly throughout the history of English. Children often metathesize, saying for example, psgetti instead of spaghetti. Adults also metathesize at times and occasionally these "new words" become part of the language. Our modern word "third" comes from the Old English word "thridda." Early in English history, the metathesized word caught on and eventually displaced the original form. The native words third, three, and the Latin morpheme tri 'three' can all be traced back to the same prehistoric morpheme, but metathesis has only affected the first word. Before literacy was so widespread, these new words were more likely to become part of the language than they are now. Today, in some dialects of English, the word ask is pronounced aks, but it doesn't seem likely that this will catch on in Standard English any time soon.

Metathesis is impossible to predict, although some combinations of sounds seem especially prone to it. The sk combination, as well as the VOWEL + r combination, are more likely to be reversed than others. But words with this combination of sounds do not necessarily have metathesized allomorphs.

Latin / Greek Doublets

There are several regular correspondence between the sounds in Latin morphemes and those in Greek. One example is Latin swhich corresponds to Greek h.

English often borrowed the same morpheme from both languages. If you know the sound correspondences, you can easily recognize these allomorphs. In this unit, we will pay close attention to the s / h correspondence, as well as two others given in Unit 2 Exercises A. In later units, we will add a few more sound correspondences.

As you are memorizing morphemes, see if any of the variant forms fit one of these five types of unpredictable allomorphy. Many will, though not all. We'll talk about other kinds of variations later, and of course, some allomorphs are just unique.

Continue with Unit 2 Exercises A

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