Description

This book offers a formally coherent theory of the interaction of phonological and morphological processes. Heinz Giegerich investigates the way in which alternations in the sound patterns of words interact with the processes of word formation in a language. He develops a coherent theory of 'base-driven' stratification, which offers accounts of some central phenomena in the phonology of English. Heinz Giegerich investigates the way in which alternations in the sound patterns of words interact with the processes of word formation in a language. He develops a coherent theory of 'base-driven' stratification, which offers accounts of some central phenomena in the phonology of English. In Lexical Strata in English, Heinz Giegerich investigates the way in which alternations in the sound patterns of words interact with the morphological processes of the language. Drawing examples from English and German, he uncovers and spells out in detail the principles of 'lexical morphology and phonology', a theory that has in recent years become increasingly influential in linguistics. Giegerich queries many of the assumptions made in that theory, overturning some and putting others on a principled footing. What emerges is a formally coherent and highly constrained theory of the lexicon - the theory of 'base-driven' stratification - which predicts the number of lexical strata from the number of base-category distinctions recognized in the morphology of the language. Finally, he offers accounts of some central phenomena in the phonology of English (including vowel 'reduction', [r]-sandhi and syllabification), which both support and are uniquely facilitated by this new theory. Acknowledgements; 1. A requiem for lexical phonology?; 2. Affix-driven stratification: the grand illusion; 3. Principles of base-driven stratification; 4. Deriving the strict cyclicity effect; 5. Phonology and the literate speaker: orthography in lexical phonology; 6. [r]-sandhi and liaison in RP; 7. Input vowels to [r]-sandhi: RP and London English; 8. Syllables and strata; Notes; References; Indexes.