Interleaving

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter discusses the phonological properties of morphologically complex words, i.e. those formed by more than one word-formation process. This chapter discusses both “cyclicity”, in the strict sense of the same phonological alternation or constraint applying at each step of word formation, and “layering”, in which phonology is imposed at each step of word formation, but the phonological mappings associated with the individual morphological constructions in question are not identical. Both types of interleaving share the same essential property that phonology applies to nested subconstituents in a word from the inside out: the output of applying phonology to a daughter is the input to the application of phonology to its mother. The best treatment of interleaving effects is the subject of hot theoretical debate; approaches covered include Lexical Morphology and Phonology, Stratal Optimality Theory, cophonology theory, indexed constraint Theory, and Output-Output correspondence theory.