Morpheme Boundaries and Syllable Boundaries: A Case for Natural Phonology

Abstract

In generative phonology, syntactic considerations have traditionally played a considerable role in the formulation of phonological rules at the level of the word. Somewhat paradoxically, this tradition has obscured rather than clarified the issue of the relationship between phonology and morphology. A case in point is the way boundary symbols have been used. I will argue in this paper that a number of phonological rules of Dutch refer to syllable boundaries and not to morphological boundaries. As an illustration of that claim, I will discuss at some length the role of the syllable boundary in one particular rule of Dutch word formation. The framework of the argument is Natural Generative Phonology, which imposes highly restrictive conditions on phonological rules and underlying forms and strongly advocates the separation of phonology and morphology. For a comprehensive introduction to NGF, I refer to Hooper 1976; a survey in Dutch is Van der Hulst 1978.