Explaining phonological conditions on affixation: Evidence from suppletive allomorphy and affix ordering

Abstract

This paper examines two domains in which phonology may exert an influence on morphology: suppletive allomorph selection and affix ordering. Cross-linguistic facts about both phenomena are examined and ultimately argued to provide evidence for a phonology-morphology interface in which morphology precedes phonology at each level of the grammar in a cyclic-type approach, and phonological conditions on affixation occur when an affix subcategorizes for a particular phonological unit. This is contrasted with an Optimality Theoretic (OT) approach to the phonology-morphology interface in which phonological effects in morphology are modeled by ranking phonological constraints over morphological ones (i.e. ‘P ≫ M’) within a single component of the grammar. It is argued that the former approach makes better predictions for the two phenomena in question as well as for other areas previously discussed in the literature (e.g. infix placement) and that phonological and morphological constraints should not be interranked in an OT grammar.