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Linguistics

Notes
v
(16) geef [γ e: f] “to give”gaf [ γ Yf] “gave” gegeven γ γc[ e : cn] “given”
help [help] “to help” hielp [hilp] “helped” geholpen γ c] c[ h lp n] “helped”

c
schiet [sxit] “to shoot” schoot [sxo:t] “shot” geschoten γ c[ sxo : tn] “shot”
Vowel alternations also play a role in the derivation of deverbal nouns of such verbs, as shown by the
related Dutch deverbal nouns hulp “help” and schot “shot”. They only differ from their verbal bases
help and schiet with respect to the root vowel.
Ablaut is not the only kind of vowel alternation with a morphological function. German exhibits an
alternation between back vowels and front vowels in singular-plural noun pairs:

Word formation is a process, as we have said, where you combine two complete
words, whereas with inflection you can combine a suffix with some verb to change
its form to subject of the sentence. For example: in the present indefinite, we use
‘go’ with subject I/we/you/they and plural nouns, whereas for third person singular
pronouns (he/she/it) and singular nouns we use ‘goes’. So this ‘-es’ is an inflectional
marker and is used to match with its subject. A further difference is that in word
formation, the resultant word may differ from its source word’s grammatical
category whereas in the process of inflection the word never changes its grammatical
category.

(17) Apfel [Ypf l] ?pfel [epf l] “apple(s)”
e
e
Bach [bYx] B@che [beH ] “brook(s)”
e
Buch [bu: x] Bhcher [by:H r] “book(s)”
e
This kind of alternation is called umlaut (also called vowel mutation or metaphony). Historically it
is a case of assimilation: back vowels of roots are fronted before a high front vowel in the following
syllable (the plural suffix contained a high vowel originally).
If we only take the first example of (17) into consideration, we might conclude that plural formation
in German is a case of non-concatenative morphology: the plural is created by the replacement of the
back root vowel by its front counterpart. However, an alternative analysis in terms of affixation is
also possible. Given the three examples in (17), we might conclude that there are at least three different
plural suffixes in German: φ (zero), -e, and -er. In addition, the plural nouns may exhibit stem
allomorphy, a vowel alternation triggered by the attachment of the plural suffix. Such morphologically
conditioned alternations may also affect consonants (Lieber 1987, 2000). English has cases of consonant
modification as well, for instance defend-defence, offend-offence, belief-believe, and proof-prove.
An interesting kind of non-concatenative morphology is found in, among others, Semitic languages:
root-and-pattern morphology. The basis of each lexeme is a skeleton of consonants, in most cases
three, which functions as the root of the lexeme. The abstract pattern of consonants is combined with
one or more vowels which are intertwined with the sequence of consonants. In addition, the lexeme
may contain a prefix and a suffix. In the words of Modern Hebrew in (18) (Clark and Berman 1984:
545) the roots g-d-l “grow” and k-t-b “write” have been used (the k and b may surface as x [x] and v
respectively). The vowel patterns that are intercalated with the consonantal skeletons are called
transfixes since they are spread across the consonantal sequence.

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