Morpheme Structure Condition

Morpheme Structure Condition (MSC) is a condition which expresses regularities about the phonological structure of morphemes. It is generally assumed that MSCs may be stated in two ways: either as positive MSCs or as negative ones. A positive MSC of English is that a morpheme may begin with up to three consonants where the first one must be /s/ (e.g. string). Negative ones are that English words may not begin with a velar nasal (*ngam), or end in /h/ (*pah). In recent theories of underspecification, conditions on the phonological shape of morphemes are sometimes expressed by lexical redundancy rules.

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Links

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

• Archangeli, D. & D. Pulleyblank 1986. The Content and Structure of Phonological Representations, ms. Univ. of Arizona and Univ. of Southern California.
• Chomsky, N. and M. Halle 1968. The Sound Pattern of English, Harper and Row, New York.
• Halle, M. 1959. The Sound Pattern of Russian, The Hague, Mouton.
• Kiparsky, P. 1982. From Cyclic Phonology to Lexical Phonology, in: Hulst, H. van der and N. Smith (eds.) The Structure of Phonological Representations (I), pp.131-175
• Stanley 1967. Redundancy Rules in Phonology, Language 43, pp. 393-436