Non-concatenative morphology as epiphenomenon

Abstract

Non-concatenative morphological phenomena appear on the face of it to require a powerful morphological component, capable of more than straightforward addition of affixes consisting of segmental material. The chapter proposes that the full range of non-concatenative phenomena may be completely accounted for in piece-based terms using analytical tools that are independently necessary. These phenomena include mutation, infixation, ablaut or melodic overwrite, subtraction, metathesis, reduplication, and templates. First, lexical entries for affixes may be underspecified, lacking information about segmental or featural content, which is then filled in by the phonology. Second, the way in which the content of affixes associates to the word may be prespecified in crucial respects, and phonology may be faithful to prespecified structure. In either case, non-concatenative effects are exclusively down to the phonology, not the morphology, which is purely additive.