The chameleon [−r] in Yanggu: Morphological infixation or phonological epenthesis?
✍ Scribed by Matthew Y. Chen
- Book ID
- 104633897
- Publisher
- Springer Netherlands
- Year
- 1992
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 687 KB
- Volume
- 1
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0925-8558
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Unlike the garden variety suffix [-r] in Beijing and many other better known Mandarin dialects, the "diminutive" morpheme in Yanggu is noteworthy in its mercurial behavior, showing up sometimes as a suffixal [ r], I-R] (raised [r]) or [ L] (lateral retroflex) and sometimes --more surprisingly --as a "circumfixar' [-1 ... r] consisting of an infixal [-1-] plus a suffixal [-r]. All previous analyses, including Yip (1992), take a morphological approach, treating [-I ... r] either as an infix-cumsuffix, or as suffixal [-r] with a floating [lateral]. Here I propose a purely phonological analysis, according to which the diminutive morpheme is an unadorned suffix [ r], while the "infixal" [-1-] is seen as a transitional lateral release between two antagonistic articulatory gestures. Infixation or circumfixation, therefore, in Yanggu is best regarded not as a morphological process, but as a by-product of ordinary. suffixation.