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Allomorphy or Morphophonology?

Chapter · January 1996

DOI: 10.1075/cilt.144.06kip

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Allomorphy or morphophonology?

Paul Kiparsky
Department of Linguistics
Stanford University

1
1 Locating the morphology/phonology boundary
According to classical grammar and traditional school grammar, words are inflected by modi-
fying the shape of a basic form; the results are described by listing model paradigms and assigning
each word to the appropriate paradigm. Modern morphology modifies this “word-and-paradigm”
model by one or both of the following ideas, both adopted in the early 19th century from Pān.ini’s
grammar of Sanskrit. The first is that morphology is a combinatorial system and that words are built
from minimal morphological elements (morphs, morphemes). The second is to make a distinction
between two sorts of contextual alternation of morphological form, morpholexical (allomorphic)
and morphophonological (morphophonemic) alternation, in terms of different kinds of alternation
processes and/or different modules of grammar responsible for the alternation. Since the two are
independent of each other, we get four theoretical positions:

Morphemes No morphemes
Morphophonology Item-and-Process Amorphous morphology
No morphophonology Item-and-Arrangement Word-and-Paradigm

In this paper I assume, with Item-and Process and A-Morphous morphology, that there is a
distinction between morphophonology and allomorphy, and examine the criteria by which it is
drawn. Like any taxonomy, its theoretical import comes from the general principles from which
they are derived, which associate each type with a set of defining properties.
The tradition of Item-and-Process morphology (Pān.ini, Kruszewski, Baudoin de Courtenay,
Sapir, Bloomfield’s Algonquian studies, Jakobson 1948, and much current work, e.g. Dressler
1985) distinguishes three types of rules: (i) morpholexical rules (also known as adjustment rules,
or allomorphy rules), (ii) morphophonological rules (morphophonemic rules, Bloomfield’s “mor-
phological modification”), and (iii) phonological rules (Bloomfield’s “internal combination”). In
most versions, morphophonology and phonology have narrowly circumscribed properties, with
morpholexical rules often serving as a “catchall" category for everything that is not tractable within
the others.
In Lexical Phonology and Morphology (LPM), a related though not identical three-way dis-
tinction emerges between (i) allomorphy (negotiated in the morphology), (ii) lexical phonology,
and (iii) postlexical phonology. The leading idea of this approach is that the properties of these
rule types can be derived from the organization of grammar depicted in (??).

(1) Syntax

Morphology

Semantics Postlex. phonology

Lex. semantics Lex. Phonology

2
 In particular, morphology shares certain principles with syntax on the one hand (including com-
binatorial principles governing subcategorization, feature percolation, and unification), and with
other lexical rules on the other (mechanisms for lexical specification of idiosyncrasy, blocking,
level-ordering, cyclicity). Lexical phonology is similarly governed by the intersection of phono-
logical principles and those which hold for lexical rules in general. According to this approach, the
properties of morpholexical alternations should be consequences of their morphological status, and
the properties of morphophonological rules should be consequences of their lexical phonological
status.
Modern “amorphous” morphology (Matthews 1972, Zwicky 1987, Anderson 1992) is in prin-
ciple compatible with the same rule typology. It differs from the abovementioned approaches
on another dimension, in that it retains — in a more sophisticated form — the classical word-and-
paradigm model’s assumption that words are formed not by combining morphemes but by applying
morphological processes to a base. In Zwicky’s formulation, each such process consists of one or
more operations, which add phonological material (e.g. affixation), delete it (subtraction), or mod-
ify it (e.g. ablaut). Nevertheless, unlike the classical Word-and-Paradigm model, most versions of
this theory assume that the output of morphological processes is subject to morphophonemic rules
which account for general alternations of word structure. Therefore, although I will not specifi-
cally refer to amorphous morphology, the issues addressed here potentially arise in that framework
as well, in ways that depend on the details of its articulation. On the other hand, my discussion
is squarely incompatible with models which reject the abovementioned rule typology and treat all
morpheme alternations in a uniform way, viz. pure Item-and-Arrangement morphology on the one
hand (post-Bloomfieldians, Hudson 1980), and classical Word-and-Paradigm morphology on the
other.
Terminological differences aside, there are many cases where the three-way division is unprob-
lematic or at least uncontroversial: morpholexical rules deal with suppletive, morpheme-specific
alternations such as go „ went, (box-)es „ (ox-)en, morphophonemic rules deal (at least) with
“general phonological changes which occur only in particular derivations” (Bloomfield), such as
keep „ kep-t, and (iii) phonological rules (Bloomfield’s “internal combination”) deal with auto-
matic phonologically conditioned alternations such as back-[s] „ bag-[z]. The picture is enriched
by the postulation of additional rule types and more fine-grained distinctions among morphophono-
logical rules (cyclic and word-level rules, level 1 and level 2 rules) and among phonological rules
(allophonic rules, rules of phonetic implementation). The validity of the fundamental morphol-
ogy/phonology distinction is of course not called into question by the discovery of further sub-
distinctions within each, and for purposes of the present discussion, it will be possible to abstract
away from them.
Once we look beyond the core cases, however, it is not always clear where to draw the bound-
aries between the three major rule types. There are important disagreements between the differ-
ent versions of IP morphology, and to some extent also unclarities within some of them, about
how to apportion the phenomena. The distinction between morphophonological and phonological
rules, and the roughly corresponding distinction between lexical and postlexical phonology, has
been debated fairly extensively (see Kiparsky 1985 and Mohanan 1986 for two views in the LPM
framework) and will not be addressed here. The distinction between morpholexical alternation
(allomorphy) and morphophonology (or lexical phonology) has received less scrutiny, at least in
the LPM literature. The topic of the present paper will be precisely this distinction.

3
 The main difficulty with drawing a principled boundary between morpholexical and mor-
phophonological phenomena is that the various criteria which have been considered relevant to
the distinction, while nicely converging in the core cases, diverge in different ways at the margins.
This situation is not unusual in linguistics. Two obvious solutions present themselves: either we
select one criterion or conjunction of criteria as necessary and sufficient and deny the rest a theoret-
ical role — as Aronoff 1976 does in positing morphological conditioning and morpheme-specific
application as the criterial properties — or we retain all criteria but treat the distinction as an es-
sentially gradient one — as Dressler 1985 does.1 Both types of solutions pay the price of giving
up a clean theoretical explanation of the convergence observed in the core cases.
I will here explore a third solution, based on the observation that it is primarily one of the puta-
tive criteria for identifying allomorphy which tends to fall out of line, and this same criterion is that
this same criterion is also theoretically unmotivated. When it is eliminated from the diagnostics,
the remaining ones converge in an empirically fairly consistent way, which, I will argue, allows a
principled explanation. While this obviously cannot claim to provide an automatic resolution of
every problematic borderline case, it does at least reduce the indeterminacy substantially.
The criterion which I propose should be eliminated is one which has often received the great-
est emphasis, though for largely unexamined reasons, namely the contextual conditioning of the
process. Many authors hold that morphological or lexical conditioning is a necessary condition
for an alternation to be morpholexical. For example, Aronoff (1976: 87) defines adjustment rules
as those which “are restricted to specific morphemes and take place only in the environment of
specific morphemes”. Some even argue that morphological conditioning is sufficient to make an
alternation morpholexical. For Ford and Singh (1993) and for Spencer (1991, section 4.4), all
morphologically conditioned rules are morpholexical. Anderson (1992:346) seems to be taking a
similar position when he states that “once a rule is morphologized in some environment, the result
is a rule whose formal properties are those of a Word Formation Rule, and not those of a purely
phonological rule.”
I shall defend the contrary view that morphological conditioning is neither necessary nor suffi-
cient to render an alternation morpholexical (or morphological). There are both purely phonologi-
cally conditioned morpholexical alternations, and conversely, morphologically conditioned phono-
logical rules. Neither of these claims is new, of course. What I hope to do here is to support them
with some new arguments, and to show that by taking both points seriously we can achieve a
fairly tidy and theoretically principled separation between morpholexical and morphophonemic
alternations.
On the view I shall argue for, the essential criteria have to do with the nature of the alterna-
tion, the locality relation between the focus and the triggering context, and the relationship of the
process to other rules of the system. Morpholexical alternations are accounted for by the com-
binatorial mechanisms of the morphology, which for reasons stated below I take to be based on
selection, following Lieber 1982 and Zwicky 1986. This entails (i) that morpholexical alternations
1
Dressler proposes a spectrum of rule types:

Phonology Morphophonology Allomorphy

Non-neutralizing Neutr. No fusion Fusion Regular Weak suppletion Strong suppl.

4
are idiosyncratic (item-specific), (ii) that they may involve more than one segment, (iii) that they
obey morphological locality conditions, and (iv) that they are ordered prior to all morphophone-
mic rules. Thus, the core properties traditionally attributed to “allomorphy” follow trivially from
assuming that “allomorphy” is simply morphology, and rejecting the structuralist picture on which
the selection of “morpheme alternants” is distinct from the selection of the morphemes themselves.
If this is the right view of the matter, these four properties should bundle together in a system-
atic way, whereas there is no real reason to expect them to be related to the nature of the condi-
tioning of the alternation. If it were in fact the case that morpholexical alternations were limited to
the environment of specific morphemes, this would have to be imposed as an unexplained super-
venient constraint. The truth seems to be simpler, though: just as a “morpheme” can be restricted
to a particular phonological environment, so can an “allomorph”. In other words, morpholexical
alternations can be phonologically conditioned.
Morphophonemic alternations, on the other hand, are accounted for by phonological rules,
applying subject to constraints on the lexical module. In consequence, they are (i) general (not
item-specific), (ii) involve a single segment, (iii) observe phonological locality conditions, and
(iv) follow all morpholexical processes. All these core properties of morphophonological rules
follow from the assumption that they belong to (lexical) phonology. Once again the nature of their
conditioning environment falls out of line. And here too there are good independent reasons to
believe that the conditioning factor is not a decisive criterion: morphophonological rules can be
conditioned by specific morphological elements or features, or by phonological environments, or
by a combination of the two.
At this point let us recall that two fundamentally different ways of accounting for morpholex-
ical alternations have been advocated in the literature: selection and replacement. The selection
method (Lieber 1982, Zwicky 1986) treats morphemes as listed sets of alternants, with one basic
(default, “elsewhere”) alternant, and the other alternants lexically marked as restricted to appro-
priate contexts. The Elsewhere Condition or its equivalent ensures that each context gets the most
specific alternant compatible with it, and the basic unmarked allomorph only appears where not
blocked by any of the others. The replacement method (Aronoff 1976, Corbin 1987) posits a
single underlying form for each morpheme, and allomorphy rules which substitute for it other al-
lomorphs (or zero, in the case of “truncation”) in the appropriate contexts. On the replacement
approach to morpholexical alternation, all selection takes place at the level of the morpheme, and
there is a fundamental difference between the way the distribution of a morpheme is determined
and the way the distribution of its allomorphs is determined. For this approach, the morpheme
is thus an essential theoretical construct, and morphological elements are listed in the lexicon as
morphemes. For the selectional approach, on the other hand, lexical entries are morphs. In that
approach, the “morpheme” could be characterized derivatively as a set of morphs in a blocking
relationship, though it is not so clear that there remains any theoretical need for that concept. One
key prediction of the selectional approach is that “morphological conditioning” can be triggered
by particular morphs (stems and affixes), and/or by morphological categories (feature complexes),
but not by “morphemes”, in the structuralist sense of sets of “(allo)morphs” in complementary
distribution.
I begin with a discussion of the reasons for adopting the selectional approach, which my sub-
sequent argument is built on. Lieber (1982) provides evidence that allomorphs must be listed as

5
lexical entries. Many of her arguments for the selectional approach are however based on templatic
phenomena (such as reduplication), and these arguments are superseded by the nonlinear approach
to templatic morphology (McCarthy and Prince 1993). Zwicky’s (1986) correctly notes that the
selectional approach is to be preferred because it is more restrictive. Here I shall provide some
additional arguments of an empirical nature in support of the selectional approach.

2 Types of morpholexical selection

In this subsection I review the factors that condition allomorphy. I argue that they can be
either contextual (syntagmatic) or internal (paradigmatic). Both can involve morpholexical or
phonological conditions. Crossing these, we get four cases.
(1) Contextual morpholexical selection is the most familiar case (e.g. ox-en).
(2) Contextual phonological selection is also common, and many discussions of morphology
explicitly recognize it (e.g. Spencer 1991:121):

(2) a. though- /TO:/ before {-t} (past tense, perfect participle, nominalizing suffix), think else-
where.
b. Sanskrit Instr.Pl. -ais after stems ending in short -a, -bhis otherwise, e.g. /vr.ks.a-ais/
vr.ks.aih. “trees”, /pad-bhis/ padbhih. “feet”, /agni-bhis/ agnibhih. “fires”.
c. Sanskrit asthan- “bone” before vocalic case endings, asthi- otherwise.
d. Warlpiri Ergative -ngku after disyllabic stems, -rlu after longer stems.
e. In Finnish, the 3P Possessive ending -nsa has an optional alternant -Vn after a short
vowel that is part of a case ending: kirja-ssa-nsa, kirja-ssa-an “book” (Iness.Sg.), but
only kirja-nsa (Nom.Sg., directly follows stem), kirja-a-nsa (Part.Sg., long vowel pre-
cedes), vastuu-nsa “responsibility” (both conditions fail).
f. Finnish Illative Sg. -seen after a stem ending in an unstressed long vowel, -(h)Vn oth-
erwise (vapaa-seen, maa-han, kirja-an).
g. German ge- before a stressed syllable, H otherwise.
h. Hungarian 3.Sg. -ja in back harmonic contexts, -i in front harmonic contexts, e.g. vár-ja
“waits”, kér-i “asks”.

(3) Internal morpholexical selection: inherent prespecification of a morphological feature of a

stem or affix: went is intrinsically specified as [+Past], which blocks *goed, *wented, *wents, for
a stem intrinsically specified as [+F] cannot receive an inflectional affix that is specified as [– F]
(because of feature conflict), nor an affix that is specified as [`F], (because of blocking/no vacuous
affixation).2
(4) Internal phonological selection: inherent phonological specification of a phonological prop-
erty in a morph blocks it from appearing in a context which requires a contradictory phonological
property to be assigned to it. The Italian paradigm of andare “go” is made up of a stressed root
vad- and an unstressed root and-:3
2
This requires the assumption that inflectional affixes can’t change inherent feature specifications of the stems they
are added to; this follows from the assumption that they are not heads.
3
Cases like this have been considered problems for morpheme-based morphology, see in particular Carstairs 1989.

6
 (3) Sg. Pl.
1. vádo andiámo
2. vái andáte
3. vá vánno
We can represent this regularity by prespecifying the allomorph vad as intrinsically stressed in the
lexicon, restricting it to contexts in which it can be stressed in the lexical phonology. That excludes
it from appearing before the stressed endings -iamo, -ate, since words with two lexical stresses are
not allowed in Italian. It seems, then, that morpholexical selection is one of the ways in which
phonological constraints can be manifested.4
The four types of selection are summarized in (??):
(4)
$ morpholexical phonological
& though ´ { ___t .
, $ ,
& ´s .
contextual
´en { toxu___ think$
% - % -
W
$ , ,
’
’ went / /
’
’
’
/
/
/
`P ast
& . & .
internal and
’
’ /
/ ’
’ /
/
go
% - ’ /
vad
% -

3 Allomorphy as morphological selection

Having summarized my case for the claim that morpholexical alternations can be conditioned
phonologically as well as morphologically, I turn to the arguments for the selectional approach to
morpholexical alternations, which does away with “allomorphy rules”.
3.1 The parallelism with morphological gaps
The first argument for the selectional approach as opposed to the replacement approach is
that the distribution of “allomorphs” is governed by exactly the same kinds of conditions as the
distribution of “morphemes”. If morpholexical alternation is handled by replacement processes,
this identity remains unexplained. But it follows if morpholexical alternation is handled by the
apparatus responsible for generating the right morphological combinations, since this must, on
independent grounds, involve a selectional mechanism.
The evidence is that the four types of conditions governing suppletion summarized in the pre-
ceding section are exactly those that are found defining the conditions for morphological gaps. The
following oft-cited examples are representative:
4
An alternative might be to conversely prespecify and as inherently unstressed. We would then have to block two
other potential outcomes. First, the stress rule must not simply override the lexical specification. This would follow
because it is feature-filling (Kiparsky 1993). Secondly, the stress rule must not simply be blocked by the inherent
specification. In the present case, this would be impossible because of the prosodic requirement that every word must
have a stress. Formally, we can reconstruct the relationship between paradigmaticity and blocking through underspec-
ification of morphological features. Both result when a language has an underspecified morph for a morphological
category. In the paradigm representing that category, such a morph functions as the default form. In any cell of the
paradigm, it is blocked by a more specified morph if there is one, and otherwise supplies the form. In the absence of
such an underspecified morph, on the other hand, there is neither blocking, nor any guarantee of paradigmaticity.

7
 (5) a. Contextual morpholexical (category selection): e.g. adverb-forming -ly goes only on
adjectives.
b. Contextual phonological: noun-forming -al goes only on verbs that end in stressed
syllables (remóv-al, *depósit-al). Comparative -er goes on one-foot adjectives (where
-y as usual does not count as a syllable).
c. Internal morpholexical: people, cattle are inherently [+PLURAL], so no overt plural
affix is added.
d. Internal phonological: the modern Greek diminutive ending - áki must be stressed. So
diminutives in -aki can’t be inflected in the genitive case, where the stress would shift to
the ending by the stress rules of the language: aγor-áki, Gen.Sg. *aγor-aki-ú, Gen.Pl.
*aγor-aki-ón “little boy” (cf. aγóri, Gen.Sg. aγori-ú, Gen.Pl. aγori-ón “boy”).5
A similar example is the Spanish verb abolír, which has a defective paradigm defined
by the condition that the stem must be unstressed. So those forms of the paradigm
where the stress would have to fall on the stem are not allowed to occur: *abólo/*abuélo.

The selectional approach offers an immediate explanation for this parallelism: gaps of the sort
seen in (??) result from the absence of a default morph. Note especially the parallelism between
phonological suppletion of the vádo/andáre type in (??) and gaps like *abólo vs. abolír ((??)d]). If
suppletive forms are treated as replacements, the conditions governing suppletion cannot be related
to the conditions governing gaps, and so we have no account of why they work the same way.
3.2 Optionality
The other deviation from the ideal complementary distribution pattern, overlapping distribu-
tion, also supports the selectional approach to some extent. In the replacement model, overlapping
distribution would involve optional morpholexical replacement. In the selection model, it would
involve suspension of blocking. It has been observed that such overlapping distribution of mor-
phemes is rare in paradigmatic (inflectional) morphological categories and relatively common in
derivational categories, especially unproductive ones, e.g. speciousness and speciosity (van Marle
1985, Carstairs 1988).6 This generalization argues for the selectional approach, because it is to be
expected that blocking should be connected with the productivity and paradigmatic character of
a morphological category, but there is no reason why the optionality of allomorphy rules should
have anything to do with those things.
3.3 Locality
The proper locality constraints follow only on the selectional approach. Carstairs shows that
allomorphs can’t be “outwardly sensitive” that is, that the shape of B cannot be morphologically
dependent on the identity of C in the configuration (??):

(6) [ [ A + B ] C ]
5
It is not possible to satisfy both the lexical requirement that the first syllable of -áki must be stressed and the
phonological rule that requires the following syllable to be stressed because Greek prohibits stresses on adjacent
syllables.
6
Carstairs convincingly interprets it as a consequence of the “cell-filling” imperative of paradigmatic subsystems
in the morphology.

8
Note that while Bracketing Erasure can block nonlocal morphological dependencies in both direc-
tions, it cannot block outward dependencies of the kind just mentioned. Bracketing Erasure must
be formulated as erasure of the internal structure of embedded constituents. For example, it erases
the morphological constituency of the derived stem [ A + B ] in (??) as soon as C has been added.
It must be accessible up to that point because the choice of C may depend on the morphological
identity of B. Even so, the choice of B may not conversely depend on the morphological identity
of C. This directional asymmetry would be mysterious on the replacement approach, but follows
from the well-supported assumption that the selectional requirements of morphemes must be met
at the point at which the morpheme is introduced, which itself might be subsumed under a more
fundamental morphological version of the Projection Principle.

(7) Morphological Projection Principle: Selectional requirements of morphemes must be met

at all stages of the derivation.

A class of systematic apparent exceptions to morphological locality, where a morpheme seems

to be selected by an outer affix or by a nonadjacent inner affix, really involves dependencies be-
tween a morpheme and a morphological category. In Turkish, the Potential suffix is normally -ebil,
but it is -e when a negative morpheme follows. In Hungarian the plural suffix is normally -k, but
it is -ai when a possessive suffix follows. This is evidently not selection of one morpheme by an-
other but dependency of a morpheme on a morphological category. Specifically, we can consider
Turkish -e a “negative polarity item”, like -couth and -sufferable, and the Hungarian plural suffix
-ai an obligatorily possessed element, like “inalienable” nouns (dnoting body parts etc.) in certain
languages.
Other apparent cases of nonlocal dependencies yield to reanalyses, in some cases independently
motivated. For instance, the Ancient Greek optative could be seen as violating locality (Carstairs
1980):

(8) a. [ [ [ tīm - ā ] oi ] ēn ] (Theme verb) “honor”

b. [ [ [ lū ] oi ] mi ] (Root verb) “loose”

On the indicated morphological analysis, the choice of the person/number suffixes (-ēn, -mi) seems
to depend on whether the optative morpheme is in turn preceded by a theme ((??a)) or directly
by the root ((??b)). This would be a nonlocal dependency, in that it crosses over the optative
morpheme. But a better segmentation of the Greek verb forms (suggested to me by Michael Inman)
is the following:

(9) a. [ [ [ tīm + ā ] oiē ] n ]

b. [ [ [ lū ] oi ] mi ]

On this analysis, the optative has two allomorphs, -oi after roots, and -oiē elsewhere, and some
of the person endings have different allomorphs after the two. This reduces the apparently long-
distance morphological dependency to two local dependencies. In addition to vindicating mor-
phological locality, it also simplifies the morphology by eliminating massive allomorphy of per-
son/number endings, as is clear from examination of the complete optative paradigm.

9
 “loose” “honor” (alternative paradigm)

Sg. 1. lūoimi tīmōiēn tīmōimi

2. lūoio tīmōiēs tīmōis
3. lūoito tīmōiē tīmōi
Du. 2. lūoiton tīmōiēton tīmōiton
3. lūoitēn tīmōiētēn tīmōitēn
Pl. 1. lūoimen tīmōiēmen tīmōimen
2. lūoite tīmōiēte tīmōite
3. lūoien tīmōiēsan tīmōien

3.4 The interaction of morphology and phonology

The selectional approach also automatically rules out unwanted interactions between morphol-
ogy and phonology, namely (i) selection of allomorphs conditioned by a derived phonological
property, and (ii) triggering of a phonological process by a “basic” allomorph which is then re-
placed by a derived allomorph. Thus, it excludes derivations like (??), where A —> A’ is crucially
triggered by B’, and B —-> B’ is crucially triggered by A.

(10) [ A + B ] Ñ (phonology) [ A + B1 ] Ñ (allomorphy) Ñ [ A1 + B1 ]

The generalization is that allomorphy is always “ordered before” phonology on a given cycle. This
would have to be stipulated under the replacement approach but follows automatically under the
selectional approach.
“Truncation” phenomena illustrate the point particularly clearly. On the replacement approach,
which treats truncation as deletion of the underlying basic allomorph, we would expect that in a
structure [ [ A + B ] C ], cyclic phonological rules should apply in the first cycle to [ A + B ] before
C is added on the second cycle, causing truncation of B. For instance, in Aronoff’s derivation of
invent-ive from /invent-ion-ive/, the t Ñ s and s Ñ š rules should apply on the first cycle, yielding
*inven[š]ive. This sort of interaction is never observed,7 a fact correctly predicted on the selection
approach, where “truncation” is simply non-insertion of an affix, so that no phonological effect of
the “truncated" element could ever materialize.
Cyclically derived properties, on the other hand, can determine morpholexical selection, as
correctly predicted by LPM:

(11) a. The Finnish possessive and illative allomorphy (see items (2e) and (2f) in section ??,
p. ??) show this kind of interaction. The allomorphy critically depends on the phono-
logical representations phonologically derived on the previous cycle (Kiparsky 1993).
b. In Spanish, cyclically derived secondary stress is erased postlexically, hence is available
in the lexical phonology to determine the choice between the two forms of the article
(el „ al), e.g. el almíta like el álma (Harris 1989). The cyclically assigned stress on al-
counts for selection of the article, word-level destressing does not.
7
“Morphemes are truncated before they can cause phonemic modifications of the preceding phonemes.” (Isačenko
1973).

10
 c. German míss-be-hàndel-t ‘mistreated’, míss-interpretìer-t ‘misinterpreted’. The rhyth-
mic primary stress assigned to miss before unstressed syllables at the word level does
not count for purposes of the selection of ge- (see section ?? on -ge).
d. Italian àndiriviéni ‘going back and forth’ (an example cited by Dressler in discussion).
Rhythmic secondary stress is apparently ignored for purposes of the selection of the
root form and- (for the morphology, see section ??).

A range of apparent exceptions to these claims are artifacts of old-style segmental phonology
and disappear under a nonlinear formulation. Thus “overapplication” in reduplication, as in San-
skrit pari-s.a-s.vaj-e, from svaj ‘embrace’, with the ruki-rule apparently applying after a, follows
because the “copying” mechanism that spells out the reduplication morpheme is part of the phonol-
ogy. The generalization is that the copied melody is always determined at the end of the cycle at
which the reduplication takes place.

4 The existence of morphologically conditioned phonological rules

We are now ready to return to the “allomorphy or phonology?” question. The classic cases on
which the debate turns are rules like German umlaut and English Trisyllabic Shortening, whose
conditioning environment has become opaque through attrition by sound change, but which con-
tinue to effect phonologically characterizable alternations.8 From the present vantage point, the
answer is unequivocally that they are not morpholexical alternations, but morphophonological al-
ternations, governed by rules of lexical phonology. Except for their conditioning environment, all
their properties are clearly phonological. And once we recognize that phonological rules can be
morphologically conditioned (just as allomorphy can be phonologically conditioned), there is no
reason to question their phonological status.9
In support of the claim that umlaut in German is morpholexical it has been claimed that each
morphological category involves a distinct Umlaut process (Janda 1982, Anderson 1992:344 ff.).
This claim appears to be incorrect. What is true is that the the comparative and superlative forms
of adjectives have the peculiarity that the diphthong au is never umlauted in them: braun-er
“browner” vs. bräun-lich “brownish”, Bräun-e “brownness”, bräun-e-n “to brown”. This is the
only idiosyncrasy of these suffixes with respect to umlaut. Janda claims that umlaut in the com-
parative and superlative does not apply across a syllable with a schwa+sonorant rhyme. But the
relevant adjectives of this form either have the nucleus au, thus falling under the constraint just
mentioned (sauber "clean", lauter "pure"), or they resist umlaut in any context (mager "skinny",
hager "lanky").
For example, the back vowel is retained not only in the comparative mager-er, but also in the
derived verb mager-n “to lose weight” (contrast änder-n “to change”. These two adjectives are
8
For ablaut, reduplication, and similar templatic phenomena I assume the prosodic morphology account (McCarthy
and Prince 1993), according to which they are morphological elements whose phonological content is realized by prin-
ciples of autosegmental phonology. Ablaut patterns are morphs consisting of vocalic melodies which are superimposed
on the lexically specified vowels of the base. Reduplication morphs are morphs defined by their prosodic shape which
obtain their melody from the base. Thus, ablaut and reduplication are neither morpholexical nor morphophonemic
rules, and should be set aside for purposes of the present discussion.
9
See Wiese 1994 for further arguments for a similar view of German Umlaut.

11
then simply not umlaut-susceptible, and do not show a different type of umlaut at work.10 If there
were a separate Umlaut process for each suffix, they should all have different effects on their stems,
but this is not the case. All thirty-odd other umlaut-triggering suffixes actually cause the identical
set of changes.
The phonological nature of Umlaut is shown by the following facts:

a. The target is a single segment, phonologically defined (vocalic nucleus).11

b. The structural change is the assignment of a phonological property ([–Back]).

c. The triggering context must be in part phonologically defined (the triggering suffix must
have a nonback vowel).

d. It obeys phonological locality conditions and disobeys morphological locality conditions.

Umlaut never crosses a full vowel; for example, in words like Attentat “assassination (at-
tempt)”, Europa “Europe”, only the last back vowel is capable of umlauting: Attentät-er
(*Ättentat-er) “assassin”, Europä-isch (*Euröpa-isch “European”. In fact, if I am right in
believing that there are no cases of the type Bubi Ñ *Bübi-lein “little Bubi”, Dorit Ñ *Dörit-
chen “little Dorit”, we can say that German Umlaut never crosses a phonological syllable;
for disyllabic stems in sonorants, such as Vater, Väter-chen “father”, are phonologically
monosyllabic, with predictable schwa-epenthesis.
Since phonological rules can be either iterative or local, we would expect as another possi-
bility that Umlaut could spread to front a sequence of back vowels. This kind of umlaut is
attested in Icelandic; similarly, morphologically triggered palatalization is reported to spread
in iterative fashion in a class of Latvian diminutives (Rūk, e-Dravin, a 1959). What is excluded
by phonological locality principles (but permitted by morphological locality principles) is
the “skipping” of an eligible fronting site. Any umlaut process which behaved in this way
would have to be considered a morpholexical rule, in which case all the other attendant
consequences should hold.
The fact that umlaut disobeys morphological locality conditions is shown by cases where it
crosses a morpheme, e.g. “jumping” over the -t- suffix in past subjunctive bräuch-t-e “would
need”.12
10
German appears to present a similar bifurcation of comparative and superlative endings as English does, with
frequent words taking a level 1 type of ending and the residue of productive cases derived with regular phonology at
level 2. In English this is manifested in the well-known contrast between retention of g in a few common adjectives
(lo[ng]er, lo[ng]-est, stro[ng]-er, stro[ng]-est) versus deletion in productive formations like winni[n]-est. In German
there is a contrast between umlaut in common adjectives versus lack of umlaut in rarer adjectives, including in partic-
ular compounded forms of some of the same adjectives: klüg-er “smarter”, alt-klug-er “more precocious”, kält-est-e
“coldest”, eis-kalt-est-e “ice-coldest”. Similarly, the consonantal alternation in näch-ste “nearest” (from nah “near”)
does not apply in the compound haut-nah-st-e “nearest to the skin”.
11
In the case of the diphthong au, the immediate output of fronting is subject to a rule which transfers the rounding
and backness from the diphthong’s second element to the first (äu Ñ oi).
12
Zwicky 1967 and Wiese 1994 argue that cases like Fahr-er-in (*Fähr-er-in) “female driver” demonstrate that
Umlaut does not cross an affix; such examples however are also excluded by the phonological constraint mentioned
in the preceding item.

12
 e. It is fed by phonological rules (on the same or previous cycles): given the constraint that
Umlaut does not cross a syllable, in /jude-isch/ Ñ jüd-isch “Jewish” shows that it is fed by
schwa-truncation.

f. Finally, the application of umlaut depends on the specific allomorph of the triggering context.
For example, of the two plural allomorphs -s and -er, the former does not trigger Umlaut and
the latter does. Thus, the Umlaut process has to “follow” the selection of the appropriate
allomorph of the plural morpheme. This is what is predicted by the claim that umlaut is a
morphophonological rule. If umlaut was a morpholexical (allomorphy) process, it could not
be triggered either by the plural “morpheme” per se, or by the feature [+Plural]. A mutual
selection of allomorphs would be required; it is not clear how this would be expressed in the
replacement approach.

Exactly the same arguments apply to Trisyllabic Shortening:

a. The target is a single segment, phonologically defined (vocalic nucleus).

b. The structural change is the assignment of a phonological property (shortening).

c. The triggering context must be in part phonologically defined. E.g. there is no shortening be-
fore a stressed syllable (grād-at-ion, vāc-at-ion vs. grăd-u-al, e-văc-u-ate, or directly before
a vowel.

d. It obeys phonological locality conditions and disobeys morphological locality conditions.

In Myers’ analysis, it is simply the shortening of a vowel before an immediately following
tautosyllabic consonant, in line with a general quantitative condition on English syllable
structure. Considered as a morpholexical rule, however, it would violate the morphological
locality conditions otherwise valid for such rules. This can be seen in cases like prĕ-sid-ent,
prĕ-par-at-ion, dĕ-riv-at-ion, with an obligatorily short vowel (compare prē-side, prē-pare,
dē-rive, which can be pronounced with a long vowel, which to be sure can be reduced). In
such words the shortening, if formulated as a morpholexical rule triggered by the suffixes
-ent, -at-ion, would have to apply across the root in order to shorten the prefix vowel.

e. It is fed by phonological rules (on the same or previous cycles), specifically by stress and re-
syllabification. The stress condition on Trisyllabic Shortening holds rigorously and must be
worked into any formulation of the process, independently of whether Myers’ morphophono-
logical analysis is adopted or not.

f. Finally, the morphological triggering of umlaut depends on specific allomorphs of the con-
text. The lexical conditioning is by specific morphemes, not morphological categories, e.g.
obesity vs. obeseness.

In fact, in the tightly argued and compelling analysis of Myers 1987 (pursuing a suggestion
of Stampe 1972) “Trisyllabic” Shortening is simply a special case of closed syllable shortening.
Myers shows that much of the apparent idiosyncrasy of the process is eliminated if we take into
account the lexical distribution of final extrametricality, which is independently shown by stress.
For example, the reason shortening normally does not apply in the penult (see (??a)) is that final

13
syllables in nouns and derived adjectives are normally extrametrical, as the antepenultimate stress
patterns illustrated in (??b) show:

(12) a. Length:
1. glōb-al, fōc-al, pōr-ous
2. arōma, arēna, ōpal, ēvil
b. Stress:
1. nátion-al, devótion-al, vénom-ous, ódor-ous
2. América, chólera, Tímothy

And the reason derived adjectives in -ic diverge from the general pattern and normally do cause
shortening (see (??a)) is that unlike other adjective-forming suffixes -ic is not extrametrical, as the
stress patterns in (??b) show.

(13) -ic is usually not extrametrical:

a. cŏn-ic, cy̆cl-ic, măn-ic, stăt-ic (some exceptions: scēn-ic, bās-ic)
b. acíd-ic, económ-ic, metáll-ic, Icelánd-ic, alcohól-ic (rare exceptions: Árab-ic, Cáthol-
ic)

The suffixes -id and -ish tend to behave in the same way.
By the same logic, the consistent penultimate stress of verbs, as opposed to the antepenultimate
stress of nouns and adjectives (recall (??)), shows that final extrametricality does not apply to verbs,
which correctly predicts the consistently short quantity of their penult vowel:

(14) replenish, discover, inhibit, inhabit, inherit, credit, edit, deposit, ravage, develop, sever,
covet, finish, wallop, follow, hover, rsvish, listen, famish, shiver, quiver, cavil, menace, con-
tinue, admonish, vanish, visit

The data in (??) show that Shortening is cyclic.

(15) a. cȳcle cy̆cl-ic cy̆cl-ic-ity

b. trībe trīb-al trīb-al-ity

The conditions which correctly distinguish [??a] and [??b], as we have just seen, hold after the
first layer of affixation. The suffix -ic is non-extrametrical, so both syllables of cy̆cl-ic are visible,
hence shortening applies. But -al is extrametrical, so the last syllable of trīb-al is invisible, so
shortening is inapplicable. When the second suffix -ity is added, the stress shifts forward, the
stem-final consonant is syllabified to the stressed syllable, and there is no question of Shortening
in either of the words.
Myers’ analysis further explains the phonological conditions to which the process is subject:
(1) the shortened vowel must be in a stressed syllable; (2) the following syllable must be un-
stressed (i.e. no shortening in words like cīt-āt-ion); (3) there must be an intervening consonant

14
(i.e. no shortening in words like rīot-ous). These are of course exactly the conditions under which
resyllabification (the “Left Capture” rule of Kahn 1976) can apply, which on Myers’ proposal
is what feeds Shortening. Note also that the formulation preserves the phonological locality of
“Trisyllabic” Shortening, in that no three-syllable window is required.
The evidence thus clearly supports the phonological status of German Umlaut and English
Shortening. A similar demonstration could, I think, be given for most other classic instances of
opaque rules for which the question “allomorphy or (morpho)phonology?” has been raised, such
as Finnish consonant gradation, and the palatalizations of Sanskrit and Slavic. In each case, the
single-segment target of the process, the phonologically defined nature of the alternation, the strict
obedience to phonological locality, and the way the processes interact with uncontestable cases of
allomorphic and phonological alternations of the language all diagnose a rule of lexical phonology
rather than an allomorphic alternation. This bundle of properties, then, seems to be systematically
correlated in languages. On the other hand, the nature of the context does not seem to corre-
late systematically with anything else. The correlation between the properties we have taken as
identifying morpholexical alternations and morphological conditioning is at most statistical. Al-
ternations which by every other criterion are morpholexical can be phonologically conditioned,
and alternations which by every other criterion are morphophonological can be morphologically
conditioned. In addition, the nature of the conditioning environment has no sound theoretical basis
as a criterion for the typology of rules.
The version of the rule typology proposed is independently supported on the morphological
side. Carstairs (1992) finds that predictable alternations don’t count for purposes of the gener-
alizations he proposes for the universal constitution of inflectional paradigms. In particular, his
principle of Paradigm Economy only works properly if English given and spoken, and Warlpiri
kurdu-ngku “child-Erg” and ngajulu-rlu “I-Erg” (see (??d)), are combined into a single paradigm
each. Carstairs introduces for this purpose the concept of macroparadigm. On the proposal pre-
sented here, morphophonological alternations are abstracted away from morphology and the notion
of paradigm itself becomes correspondingly more abstract, in a way which I believe make it ap-
propriate as a basis for principles of inflectional morphology such as those proposed by Carstairs
and others. In particular, I conjecture that Carstairs’ "macroparadigm" is simply the morphological
paradigm, minus morphophonological alternations.
I conclude that the conditioning of an alternation is irrelevant to its status as morpholexical
versus morphophonological, and should be eliminated from the diagnostics for this distinction.
Since the remaining core criteria are theoretically motivated and generally converge, the upshot
is that morpholexical and morphophonological rules can then be sorted out in a principled and
consistent way.

15
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