Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The central issue I wish to explore in this article is the nature of the relation between subsystems of grammar, in this instance the subsystems of phonology and morphology. This issue has close links with two other issues: (1) the classification and formal expression of regularities in representations in terms of systems of rules/ constraints, and (2) the levels and content of representations. The first question on the issue of the relation between subsystems is: do phonology and morphology interact? One can identify two answers to this question in the literature. The first is that they do not interact: regularities of sound patterning sensitive to morphology are part of morphophonology, not phonology. This was the position held, for instance, in neo-Bloomfieldian classical phonemics. A varient of this claim is that phonological regularities must be classified into two types on the basis of interaction with morphology: the phonological rules/ constraints that interact with morphology from a separate subsystem independent of the phonological rules/ constraints that do not interact with morphology. An example is the distinction between rules and processes in natural phonology (Stampe 1972), which correspond in classical phonemics to morphophonological and phonological rules respectively. The second, answer, in contrast, is given by classical generative phonology (Chomsky and Halle ... log in or subscribe to read full text