A Constraint-based Approach to Affixation in English : Vowel Alternation and Stress Change

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to account for vowel-laxing and tensing by suffixation in English through constraint-analyses on the assumption that a vowel was inserted before some suffixes, with or without stress change depending on certain contexts. There is a view that while vowel-initial suffixes cause such phonological phenomena, consonant-initial suffixes are not responsible for them. When we examined some instances, it was observed that several Class I suffixes begin with /i/, such as -ity, -ify, -ic, -ial, -ian, and -ious which were associated with vowel-laxing (Yip 1987:465). Therefore, we identify a possible cause of complex phonological effects as being vowel-insertion in some suffixes (Aronoff 1976, Fudge 1984, Yip 1987, Raffelsiefen 1998), resulting in allomorphs, and -ic containing a stem-forming vowel. To present the basis of vowel-insertion in some suffixes, we consider the suffixes from historical and theoretical perspectives. As for vowel-laxing in suffixation, we look into rule-based approaches, such as Halle and Mohanan’s (1985) collapsed Shortening, Yip’s Pre-Cluster Shortening, and Roca and Johnson’s (1999) mora-based analysis, but these analyses do not provide a satisfactory explanation for vowel-laxing with stress change. Regarding vowel-tensing in suffixation, we also review Halle and Mohanan’s rule, but it does not give us an appropriate explanation for tensing, not to mention the stress change. Therefore, we look for constraint-based approaches as an alternative, and finally can account for the complex phonological phenomena more consistently and concisely than the rule-based approaches.