Keywords - L323.7
Morphology
╩-Writing a grammar: Irregular forms.
Nouns
Irregular endings: -en; (the Latinate and Greek endings).
Must be marked in each lexeme.
Lexically conditioned.
Irregular stems.
Must be marked in each lexeme.
Grammatically conditioned.
Sometimes both are irregular (children = child-r+en)
Must be marked in the lexicon to be introduced next. 
Verbs
Ditto as for nouns.
Irregularities must be marked in the lexicon
The lexicon is introduced next. 
Strong vs non-strong verbs.
past tense and non-prog. participle are always different. If they are the same, the belong to the default regular class.
Include verbs such as ‘sing, sang, sung; write, wrote, written.’
Strong: [+Past, -Suffix]
[-Suffix] means that the grammatical category, here [-Past], is in the word form: e.g. ‘sang.’
Strong: [-Prog] = [▒Suffix].
[+Prog] is never irregular.
always [+Suffix].
Default: all grammatical features in English are by default a suffix. Irregularities apply first. 
The rule:
		[SEE, [+Past]] -> saw 
Grammatically conditioned rule must be applied first. 
[+Past] must be marked [-Suffix], so that the default affix forming rule will not apply.
The regular ending “-ed” is spelled out after all irregular rules have been applied.
Since [+Past] is marked as [-Suffix] in SEE, it cannot be spelled out as *’sawed’. 
The regular verb SAW can be as its lexical entry does not mark the verb irregular in any way.
Weak Verbs
Fall into three classes:
marked with -t- in the past and the non-progressive forms.
dream, dream+t, dream+t.
The root vowel is phonologically replaced for tense vowels:
			/drEmt/ (lax vowel)
The first of two final obstruents is deleted:
			MEK+D --> /me+d/.
marked with -d- in the past and the non-progressive forms.
hold, hel+d, hel+d.
regular: ‘-ed’.
conjugate, conjugat+ed, conjugat+ed
Spelling rules
mute ‘e’ ∙ {} / ___ V, V an orthographic vowel which is phonetically [+Syl]. 
‘rake’ ∙ ‘rak + ed’ (drop the mute ‘e’, 
‘raked’ (erase the plus sign).
Adjectives
Three grammatical categories
positive, comparative, superlative
positive = unmarked or the empty set {}.
comparative = ‘er’
superlative = ‘est’
the latter two have a paraphrastic alternate:
more: more inscrutable
most: most inscrutable
Irregularities
suppletive
good, better, best
bad, worse, worst
----, more, most

Course Outline 323

Keywords - L323.4
Keywords - L323.6
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This page last updated 20 FE 2005
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