Talk:Alternation (linguistics)

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then no wonder this article sucks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.160.233.164 (talk • contribs) 17:16, 25 June 2005.

work

this article needs work. – ishwar  (speak) 13:06, 2005 September 9 (UTC)

More specifically...

The article just needs separating into sections logically (perhaps by different types of alternation as specified in the article, eg phonological, grammatical, etc). Some parts are a little unclear too and could do with more examples to illustrate the point. KZF 14:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, maybe just delete it

The processes described in this page are normally known as allophony and allomorphy, which are well described elsewhere; the pages that formerly linked here did so erroneously; aside from being currently incorrect all over, the very existence of the page lacks merit. I think time spent to fix it up would be wasted. /blahedo (t) 17:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Allophony and allomorphy are not the same thing as alternations, though. Alternations are descriptive facts about data from which theoretical arguments for allophony and allomorphy can be made. —Angr 19:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

And yet, the things described on this page are allophony and allomorphy. Except that they're described poorly and with many errors here, and much better on the pages Allophone and Allomorph. I'm not sure you even could break out a separate page for "alternation" by itself; for instance, you can't really say that aspirated and unaspirated 't' are "in alternation" in the words "top" and "stop" until you first identify them as allophonic variants of a phonemic /t/. I think that the idea of "alternation" should just be discussed on the other two pages, possibly with a stub here. /blahedo (t) 08:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

No, "top" and "stop" don't show an alternation particularly well, but the example I gave below of "wait" and "waiting" does. —Angr 09:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

cleanup

the s/z pluralization is far more common than the -en pluralization. There are two ways of analyzing this type of difference, depending on the specific case. One option is to call one alternative (-s/-z, in this case) the default and to say that for certain words the other alternate (-en) overrides it.

I reworked this into Because the -s/-z pluralization is far more common than the -en pluralization -s/-z is sometimes called the default and it can be said that, for certain words, -en overrides it.

I've left it out, because I'm not sure what the rule is that this is an example of, so I don't know where to put it.

In this "defaults and overrides" approach, neither form "comes from" the other. The other option for analyzing alternations is in terms of underlying and derived forms. This is similar to the defaults and overrides approach (with the underlying form as the default and the derived form as the override), except that the derived form is derived from the underlying form. This is the relation between -s and -z, which are exactly the same sound except for voicing.

I've chopped this, because I don't understand it. It's the alternative to the first bit, but I don't know what it means so I can't improve it.

A good example of an alternation that is not automatic is that between 'a' and 'an'; while we typically say 'an apple,' we are not forced by the phonology to do so. We can, for instance, easily say 'sofa application,' in which the sounds on the word boundaries are the same as in the illegal 'a apple.'

And I've chopped this, because, frankly, it doesn't feel right. "Sofa apple" doesn't 'sound wrong' in the same way that "a apple" does.

Regards, Ben Aveling 07:28, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Automatic alternation

And I've chopped this, because, frankly, it doesn't feel right. "Sofa apple" doesn't 'sound wrong' in the same way that "a apple" does.

But that was the point! It could have been stated more clearly, but the intention was to say that although a becomes an before a vowel, this is not an automatic alternation, precisely because it doesn't happen in the phrase sofa application. —Angr 08:23, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Assume I know nothing, you'll not be too wrong.  :-) But isn't the 'a' in "sOfa" different to the standalone "a"? Being preceeded by the f changes it slightly. At the least, it changes what sounds right. This may be a stupid question, but why can't it be automatic in the case "an apple" while not being automatic in the case of "sofa apple"? Also, how does that fit with English tending not to have the pronunciation of words impacted by neighbouring words, at least not when compared to a language like French?

To restate the question, why does our ability to say "sofa apple" mean that we are not forced by the phonology to say "an apple". Assuming you agree that we can't say "a apple", what is that if not automatic alternation?

I'm not trying to be difficult. I fear that I may nonetheless be being difficult. If so, sorry. Just try to help me here. Regards, Ben Aveling 10:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

The /f/ in sofa doesn't change the fact that you have the vowel /ə/ before another vowel in the phrase "sofa application", and yet no /n/ gets inserted between them. The point is that English phonology does not have a general rule inserting /n/ every time a word ending in /ə/ precedes another word starting with a vowel; only the indefinite article a does that. —Angr 10:48, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

So it's not 'automatic alternation' unless it always applies to a given combination of letters? What if it applied to some words, but not others? Can you give an example of automatic alternation in english? And how do we describe -a/-an? Is it simply "gramaticaly conditioned"?

Where a particular alternate is used because the alternative would 'sound wrong', it is called an automatic alternation.

Is this sentance is wrong? Or am I just reading too much into a/an sounding wrong to me?

Last stupid question (for tonight); under phoneme it says that "A phonemically "perfect" alphabet is one that has a single symbol for each phoneme" which implies, though it's not made particular explicit, that in most real languages at least some letters have multiple phonemes? Or is it that different letters can share a phoneme? Or both? Regards, Ben Aveling 09:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Still unclear

Right, it's an automatic alternation if it always applies to the same sound(s) under the same circumstance(s). An example from American English is flapping, the alternation between the voiceless t-sound [t] in a word like wait and the voiced ultrashort d-like sound [ɾ] in waiting and waiter. You get the same alternation whenever a word ending in the [t] sound receives a suffix that starts with a vowel, as in hot/hotter, bite/biting. The sentence you quote above is wrong to suggest that only the failure to apply an automatic alternations "sounds wrong", because the failure to apply non-automatic alternations "sounds wrong" too. Also, the failure to apply an automatic alternation doesn't necessarily "sound wrong" either; in the case of wait/waiting, it doesn't actually sound wrong to use the voiceless [t] of wait in the word waiting, it just sounds a little stiff or formal, or just very carefully pronounced. —Angr 13:10, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

When a rule exists for determining which alternate to use, based on the surrounding sounds, the alternation is called a phonologically conditioned alternation. Absent such a rule, the altenation is grammatically conditioned. Such alternations must simply be memorised. Where a particular alternate is used because the alternative would 'sound wrong', it is called an automatic alternation.

and

it's an automatic alternation if it always applies to the same sound(s) under the same circumstance(s)

I'm not sure I see a difference between 'phonologically conditioned alternation', as currently described, and 'automatic alternation', as you've just described it. Regards, Ben Aveling 11:48, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Some people would say they're completely identical, that all automatic alternations are phonologically conditioned and all phonologically conditioned alternations are automatic. Other people would say that while all automatic alternations are phonologically conditioned, some non-automatic alternations are phonologically conditioned as well (i.e. it's the phonology of English rather than allomorphy that changes a to an before a vowel, even though it doesn't apply to any other word). —Angr 13:31, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you change the introduction to say something like that? And add your examples further down? Gotta run, Ben Aveling 21:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Relation to other linguistic topics

So, if alternation is just a type of sound change for some conscious reason, wouldn't it include conjugation? If so, should it be mentioned? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, Grammatical conjugation describes it as a phenomenon of alteration, so I'm adding a note here. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Conjugation is considerably more than the alternation of sounds though, at least in most languages. —Angr 22:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Cleaned up

I've cleaned up the article now. It could use some more prose (at the moment it's little more than an extended dicdef with some examples), but it's coherent and correct. I'm removing the cleanup tags. —Angr 21:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Restricted to morphophonology?

This article seems to be about alternation in morphophonology as opposed to e.g.

• syntax
  • Causative alternation
  • Diathesis alternation
• Sociolinguistics
  • Code-switching
  • Code-mixing

More generally, there seems to be no clear boundary between the use of "alternation" and transformation (linguistics) or variation (linguistics).

Dictionary entries:

• Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Longman; Jack C. Richards, Richard Schmidt
• Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics Routledge, Larry Trask
• Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics Psychology Press; Larry Trask
• Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics Wiley; David Crystal
• A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics Routledge, Larry Trask
  • alternation
  • morphophonemic alternation
• Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics OUP, Peter Hugoe Matthews

I'm not sure what changes to the article might address these points; at a minimum a hatnote would help. jnestorius^(talk) 11:21, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Linking to or merging "phonological rule"

There is also a page for "phonological rule" which I think should be integrated more closely with this article. Here is the topic I created on that article: Talk:Phonological rule#Linking to or merging with "Alternation"

SyntaxZombie (talk) 20:58, 10 March 2024 (UTC)