What is lexical phonology?

Definition
	Lexical phonology is an approach to phonology that accounts for the interactions of morphology and phonology in the word building process.
	The lexicon plays a central, productive role in the theory. It consists of ordered levels, which are the domain for certain phonological or morphological processes.

Discussion
	Here is a diagram of the overall structure of the lexical phonology model:

Components

The following are crucial components of lexical phonology:

Lexical and post-lexical rules

Here is a table that compares lexical and post-lexical rules:

Lexical rules …	Post-lexical rules …
Apply only within words.	Apply within words or across word boundaries.
Are prone to exceptions.	Do not have exceptions.
Require morphological information.	Require syntactic information, or no grammatical information at all.
Must be structure-preserving.	Are not necessarily structure-preserving.
Will not be blocked by pauses.	Can be blocked by pauses.
Apply first.	Apply later.

Levels

English has between two and four levels of morphology in the lexicon. The levels within the lexicon are ordered so that, to get to Level 3 from Level 1, a word must pass through Level 2. A word cannot go back to a previous level once it has left one level and gone on to another level.

Halle and Mohanan propose the following four levels of morphology in the lexicon:

Level 1: Class 1 derivation, irregular inflection

Level 2: Class 2 derivation

Level 3: Compounding

Level 4: Regular inflection

We will consider the first two levels of affixation because they differ significantly. Here is a table that compares affixation on Levels 1 and 2:

Level 1

Level 2

Affixes include:

-ate, -ion, -ity, -ic, sub-, de-, in-

Affixes include:

-ly, -ful, -some, -ness, re-, un-, non-

Affixation causes stress shift:

photograph/photographic

Affixation does not affect stress:

revenge/revengeful

Trisyllabic shortening occurs:

divine/divinity

No trisyllabic shortening occurs:

leader/leaderless

Nasal assimilation occurs:

in + legal -> illegal

Nasal assimilation is blocked:

un + ladylike -> unladylike, not *ulladylike

Affixes may attach to stems:

re-mit, de-duce

Affixes attach only to words:

re-open, de-regulate

Affixation is less productive and more exception ridden.

Affixation is more productive and less exception ridden.

Source:

Durand 1990 178

Bracket erasure convention

The bracket erasure convention is an important convention in lexical phonology. It ensures that the morphological brackets introduced within a certain level are erased before entering the next level.

Example:

Here is an example of the bracket erasure convention. The brackets in pressurize are erased before it enters Level II.

Level I	[press] [-ure] [-ize]
+sfx	[press] [-ure]
+sfx	[[[press] [-ure]] [-ize]]
Level II	[re-] [pressurize] (Bracket erasure)
+pfx	[[re-] [pressurize]]

Examples (English)

Here is an example of an application of lexical phonology:

Here are the words to be considered in this example:

sane [sejn] / sanity [sQnIti]
neighbor [nejb«&u0279;] / neighborhood [nejb«&u0279;hUd] *[nQb«&u0279;hUd]

The following rule applies across level 1 morpheme boundaries:

A tense vowel becomes lax when a short word is lengthened by adding a suffix, so that the words ends up having at least three syllables.

Source:

Katamba 1989 139

This derivation demonstrates affixation in lexical phonology accompanied by the application of a phonological rule, trisyllabic shortening.

Sources
	Durand 1990
	Katamba 1989
	Mohanan 1986

Context for this page:

Concept module: lexical phonology
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): L
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004