| Title: | The allomorphy of the transitive suffix in pijin |
| Author: | Andrei A. Avram |
| Publication: | Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics, XI (1) |
| p-ISSN: | 2069-9239 |
| Publisher: | Universitatea din București |
| Place: | București |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Abstract: | This paper looks at the factors accounting for the occurrence of the various allomorphs of the transitive suffix in Pijin, an English-lexified pidgin spoken in the Solomon Islands. Unlike previous descriptions of the phonology and/or the morphology of Pijin, this analysis of the allomorphy of the transitive suffix starts from the assumption that the selection of its various allomorphs depends on the type of root, consonant-final or vowel-final, from which transitive verbs are derived. The allomorphs occurring with consonant-final roots consist of both phonologically and lexically conditioned ones. It is demonstrated that the former contain a vowel whose quality is due to the phonological processes of vowel copying and labial attraction, and to the use of two default vowels. Consequently, the rules of vowel harmony posited by previous analyses play no part in the choice of the vowel of these allomorphs. There is, however, considerable inter- and intra-speaker variation with respect to this vowel. Vowel-final roots are shown to combine with one allomorph. Finally, one type of base, previously considered to be vowel-final, is analyzed as a consonant-final root exhibiting allomorphy. |
| Key words: | Pijin, transitive verbs, transitive suffix, suffix allomorphy, root allomorphy |
| Links: |  pdf  html |
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