We
noted that a single morpheme may have different pronunciations (that is,
different phonetic forms) in different context. For instence, sign is
pronounced [sãɪn] alone, but is pronounced [sɪgn-] when the suffix
–ify is added.
We also saw that in French a morpheme such as /noz/,
nos, meaning ‘our’ is pronounced [no] before words beginning with [+
consonantal] sounds and as [noz] before word-initial [- consonantal] sounds.
We also saw that in English, underlying phgonemic
vowels ‘reduce’ to schwa [ə] when they are unstressed. The particular phonetic
forms of some morphemes are determined by regular phonological rules that refer
only to the phonemic context, as is true of the alternate vowel forms of the
following sets :
The vowel rules that determine these pronunciations
are rather complicated and beyond the scope of this text. The examples are
presented simply to show that the morphemes in ‘melody’, ‘harmony’, and
‘symphony’ vary phonetically in these words.
Another example of a morpheme in English with different
phonetic forms in the plural morpheme. Consider the following nouns:
bang
call
bar
spa
boy
All the nouns in column A end in voiced non-sibilan
sounds, and to form their plurals you add the voiced [z]. All the words in
column B end in voiceless non-sibilant sounds, and you add a voiceless [s]. The
words in C end in both voiced and voiceless sibilants, which form their plurals
with the insertion of a sechwa followed by [z]. The nouns in column D are
irregular and the plural forms must be memorised.
Children do not have to learn the plural rule by
memorising the individual sounds that require the [z] or [s] or [əz] plural
ending, because these sounds form natural classes. A grammar that included
lists of these sounds would not reveal the regularities in the language or what
a speaker knows about the regular plural-formation rule.
The regular plural rule does not work for a word such
as child, which in the plural is children, or fox ox, which becomes oxen, or
for sheep, which is unchanged phonologically in the plural. Child, ox, and
sheep are exceptions to the regular rule. We learn these exceptional plurals
when learning the language, often after we have constructed or discovered the
regular rule, which occurs at a very early age. The late Harry Hoijer, a well-known
anthropological linguist, used to play a game with his two-years-old daughter.
He would say a noun and she would give him the plural form if he said the
singular and the singular if she heard the plural. One day he said ox [ɒks] and
she responded [ɒk], apparently not knowing the word and thinking that the [-s]
at the end must be the plural suffix. Children also often ‘regularise’
exceptional; forms, saying mouses and sheeps.
If the grammar represented each unexceptional or
regular word in both its singular and plural forms foe example, cat /kæt/ ;
cats /kæts/; cap /kæp/; caps /kæps/; and so on it would imply that the plurals
of cat and cap were as irregular as the plurals of child and ox. Of course,
they are not. If a new toy appeared on the market called a glick /glɪk/, a
young child who wanted two of them would ask for two glicks /glɪks/ and not two
glicken, even if the child had never heard the word glicks. The child knows the
regular rule to form plurals. An experiment conducted by the linguist Jean
Berko Gleason showed that very young children can apply this rule to words they
never have heard previously. A grammar that describes such knowledge (the
internalised mental grammar) must then include the general rule.
This rule,
which determines the phonetic representation or pronunciation of the plural
morpheme, is somwhat different from some of the phonological rules we have
discussed. The ‘aspiratiom rule’ in English applies to a word whenever the
phonological description is met; it is not the case, for example, that a /t/ is
aspirated only if it is part of particular morpheme. The ‘flap rule’, which,
for some speakers, changes the phonetic forms of the morphemes write and ride
when a suffix is added, is also completely automatic, depending solely on the
ponological environment. The plural rule, however, applies only to the
infectional plural morpheme. To see that it is not ‘purely’ phonological in
nature, consider the following words :
The examples show that the [z] in the plural is not
determined by the phonological context, because in an identical context an [s]
occurs.
