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Morphophonology in Assamese. Bipasha Patgiri Assistant Professor, (Program for Linguistics) EFL Department, TU. Morphophonemics.
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Morphophonologyin Assamese Bipasha Patgiri Assistant Professor, (Program for Linguistics) EFL Department, TU
Morphophonemics • Morphophonemics or morphophonology is the study of phonemic differences between allomorphs of the same morpheme; a description of variations in a particular language. • In English, the vowel changes in ‘sleep’ - ‘slept’ ‘bind’ - ‘bound’ ‘vain’ - ‘vanity’
Morphophonemics • And the final consonant changes in: ‘knife’- ‘knives’ ‘loaf’ - ‘loaves’ Points: • Allomorphs are not generally arbitrary, • But, they are not even completely irregular. • In languages, there exist exceptions so in morphophological patterns.
Assamese negative prefixation • In Assamese, the morpheme /nai/ is cliticised as /-nɔ/ to the base. • /kɔra/ = /nɔkɔra/ ‘Neg.do.2P.Pres Perf’ • /likʰa/ = /nilikʰa/ ‘Neg.write.2P.Pres Perf’ • /dɛkʰɛ/ = /nɛdɛkʰɛ/ ‘Neg.see.2P.Pres Perf’ • /sala/ = /nasala/ ‘Neg.see.2P.Pres Perf’ • /hɔba/ = /nɔhɔba/ ‘Neg.be.2P.Pres Perf’ • /pʰura/ = /nupʰura/ ‘Neg.loiter.2P.Pres Perf’
Assamese negative prefixation • State the distribution:
Assamese negative prefixation • What is the underlying form of the negative prefix or clitic in Assamese? • The process is called vowel copying as the first vowel of the root verb is copied exactly to the prefix.
Assamese derivational suffix /-ia/ • /pani/ ‘water’ + /-ia/ = /pɔnia/ ‘mixed with water, dilute’ • /lon/ ‘salt’ + /-ia/ = /lunia/ ‘salty’ • /dʱol/ ‘drum’ + /-ia/ = /dʱulia/ ‘one who plays on a dhol’ • /sɔka/ ‘wheel’ + /-ia/ =/sokia/ ‘wheeler’ • What is happening here?
Assamese derivational suffix /-ia/ • State the name of the process: Vowel harmony of height feature.
Assamese derivational suffix /-ɔnia/ • /sap/ + /-ɔnia/ = /sɔpɔnia/ ‘dependent’ • /bʱag/ + /-ɔnia/= /bʱɔgɔnia/ ‘emigrant’ • /bila/ + /-ɔnia/= /bilɔnia/ ‘distributor’ • What is happening? • Which vowel is changed?
Some example from Assamese Changes in the front vowels: • /pɛt/ ‘belly’ but, /petula/ ‘pot bellied’ • /xɛta/ ‘dull’ but, /xeteli/ ‘wet bed’ • /bʱekola/ ‘a kind of big frog’ but, /bʱekuli/ ‘frogs’ • /mɛl/ ‘to open’ but, /meli/ ‘having opened’
What is happening? • Which vowel is changed?