12 morphophonemics

Morphophonemics
variation in the form of morphemes
because of phonetic factors, or the
study of this variation.
Morphophonemics
variation in the form of morphemes
because of phonetic factors, or the
study of this variation.
Thennarasu Sakkan
16th Aug 2019

The sound structure (phonology) and the word structure
(morphology) are two of the main components of a
language system.
However, many a times, these systems interact and affect
each other in some interesting ways and give rise to a
phenomenon which is known as ‘morphophonemics’.
Sometimes, due to this interaction, pronunciation of a
morpheme may get modified or completely changed.

These changes may be regular or irregular
and usually are context sensitive in nature.
In ‘morphophonemics’, we specifically
study the changes which occur at the
boundaries of morphemes.

Morphophonemics
Morphophonemics may be defined as analysis and
classification of the phonological factors which affect the
pronunciation of morphemes or, correspondingly, the
morphological factors which affect the appearance of
phonemes.
In morphophonemics, we basically study interaction between
morphological and phonological processes and how they these
factors affect each other.

Morphophonemic change usually occurs at
morpheme boundaries and it involves sounds
that are associated with separate phonemes.
One very obvious example to
morphophonemics would be the use of
indefinite articles in English language.

Indefinite article in English has two manifestations: a and
an. If a word begins with a consonantal sound then
indefinite article is manifested as ‘a’ (a mango or a cat),
while it is manifested as ‘an’ (an apple or an idiot) if
following word starts with a vowel sound.
Note: The term ‘sound’ refers to the way a phone
(consonant or vowel) is pronounced, not necessarily
written, in English.
Therefore, an hour is a correct phrase not *a hour and
a university is the correct phrase not *an university.

Morphophonemics Processes
Pluralisation in English
To understand the morphophonemics, it’s
very important to understand concepts A
to B not only in isolation but also as to how
they appear in a morphophonemic process.
Here, we will present regular pluralisation
process of English language.

Word (Singular) IPA Transcription Word (Plural) IPA Transcription
cut [kʌt] cuts [kʌts]
kick [kɪk] kicks [kɪks]
top [tɒp] tops [tɒps]
dog [dɒɡ] dogz [dɒɡz]
rib [rɪb] ribz [rɪbz]
kid [kɪd] kidz [kɪdz]
judge [dʒʌdʒ] judges [dʒʌdʒɘz]
wish [wɪʃ] wishes [wɪʃɘz]
church [tʃəːtʃ] churches [tʃəːtʃɘz]
shoe [ʃuː] shoes [ʃuːz]
day [deɪ] days [deɪz]
pea [piː] peas [piːz]

Upon careful observation of the data, it is
noticed that plural morpheme in English is
realized as /-s/, /-z/ and /-əz/ given different
phonological environment of the stem to which
plural morpheme gets attached to.
When one morpheme takes more than one
form (morph) in different phonological or
morphological environment, these morphs are
referred as allomorph to one another.

In this kind of situation, we need to set up a
single underlying representation from which
other morphs are derived for their
pronunciation in any particular context.
This underlying representation is achieved with
the help of some rules, usually referred as
morphophonemic rules.

Therefore, it is evident distribution of plural allomorph in
English is not random in nature but is conditioned by
phonological environment occurring at right boundary of
the morpheme.
Usually, the allomorph with the wisest distribution
qualifies as a suitable candidate for underlying
representation.
In this case, /-z/ qualifies to become underlying allomorph
as it occurs after most voiced consonants and after all
vowels.

And from allomorph /-z/, other allomorphs /-s/ and /-
əz/ have been derived by (a set of) rules.

morphophonemic changes.
There are some common types of
morphophonemic changes in English :
(a) Loss of phonemes
- The phoneme /n/ of the negative prefix{in-}
is lost before the morphemes beginning with
sonorant sounds /m/; /r/; /l/ and /n/.
e.g. immobile ; irregular, illimitable,
innumerous.

Morphophonemic behavior is predictable only
when the grammatical status of and the
grammatical relations between the given
morphemes are understood.
 puli+oodu -- > puliyoodu (with the tiger)
 Teru + il -- > teruvil (on the street)
 puuTTu+il -- > puuTTil (in the lock)
 Kaal + oodu -- > kaalloodu (with the stone)
 Naan + pl -- > naam

Morphophonemic rules in Tamil
• nāṉ + kaḷ = nāṅkaḷ ‘1p. Inclusive plural
form-nām’
• nī + kaḷ = nīṅkaḷ ‘You plural’
• vīṭu + il = vīṭṭil ‘in the house’
• pacu + iṭam = pacuviṭam ‘with/in the cow’
• peṭṭi + il = peṭṭiyil ‘in the box’

Could you come up with some
example in your language for
morphophonemic rules?

12 morphophonemics

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