Page 288 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes 1. /id/ occurs after morphs ending in alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ as in wanted/w: ntid/and
wedded/wedid.
2. /d/ occurs after voiced phonemes except /d/ as in loved /I Λ vd/ called/k: Id./.
3. /t/ occurs after voiceless phonemes except /t/ as in helped/helpt.
21.5 Morphological Conditioning

In pairs such as man-men, child-children, and deer-deer, in which second item can be said to contain
the “plural” morpheme, we cannot state the variation, if any, between the two forms in terms of
phonetic environments. Instead we must refer to each morpheme separately or, alternatively to their
phonemic shapes, and specify the allomorph of the ‘plural morpheme’ separately for each. This kind
of variation among allomorphs is called morphological conditioning. The morphologically conditioned
allomorphs of a morpheme are regarded as irregular in contrast with the phonologically conditioned
allomorphs, which are regarded as regular. Men, children and deer are therefore irregular English
plurals, just as are alumni, criteria, mice, women and oxen. The “past tense’ morpheme also has its
irregular allomorphs, as in drank, brought, swam, was, had, put, took, fled, built, and so on likewise,
the “past participle” morpheme has irreuglar alomorphs, as in drunk, brought, sum, been, broken,
stood, put and on.
Let us analyze some of the words stated above:
Oxen-oz+/- n/
e
Deer-+/ ∅ /
We noticed in the earlier section on “phonological conditioning” that the linguist was making some
very useful generalization. But in cases of ’oxen’ and ‘deer’ his prediction went wrong: we did not
have “oxes” and “deers.” On the other hand we found the sense of plural was retained in “oxen” and
“deer.” Though the sense is retained yet the form is puzzling. So he concludes that the morpheme ox
itself is perhaps the condition factor and not the sound sequences of which it is composed for this
new plural marker. So he calls this morphological conditioning.
Zero Suffix
There are certain forms which have the same singular and plural forms such as sheep, deer, cattle.
Such forms in the singular and the plural are not different. They are homophonous. However, the
linguist, for the sake of uniformity assumes that the plural morpheme is present but its phonetic
manifestation or representation is zero. It has no visible marker in the environment of sheep, deer, or
cattle. He would therefore, analyze these in the following manner:
sheep+/ ∅ /
deer+/ ∅ /

cattle+/ ∅ /
Replacive
There is no obvious way to analyse forms like geese, mice, lice, etc. Some linguists suggest that the
plural vowel /i:/ in geese, /gi: s/ which replaces the /u: / in goose /gu: s/ should be regarded as a
special type of morphemic element called a replacive. And they would analayze the plural as:
/gu: s+/i:/-(/u:/)
Here the formula /i: /-(/u:/) means ‘/i:/ replaces /u: /’. Such a morpheme is called “replacive”
because it invovles the replacement of a vowel.
But this is somewhat a strained explanation. It may be stated simply that the form /gi:s/ (geese)
represents two morphemes
goose+plural
and so do mice, and lice.

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