Patterns of allomorphy in Benabena

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I discuss recurrent allomorphic splits in Benabena verb morphology, and argue, following Young (1964), that both motivated and unmotivated splits permeate the system in highly systematic ways. I conclude that this phenomenon necessitates generalisations about allomorphy across heterogeneous rules of exponence and show that multiple inheritance type hierarchies over rules, as proposed in Crysmann & Bonami (2016), readily provide the expressive means to capture the generalisations, offering two simultaneous views on the relatedness of rules, i.e. in terms of allomorphic conditions, or in terms of expression. Conversely, I argue that once such an abstraction is in place, mapping of morphosyntactic features to morphomic features becomes unnecessary. If morphomic features can be limited to lexical properties, this will provide for a more transparent interface between syntax and morphology.