[Lingtyp] words, bound forms, welded forms

[Martin Haspelmath]

On 25.01.19 11:29, Sebastian Nordhoff wrote:
> On 1/25/19 10:27 AM, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
>> *a welded form is one that shows segmental phonological interaction *with its neighbour.
> I can't help wondering whether "phonologically conditioned allomorphy"
> would not be an existing concept which has identical properties to the
> concept of "welding":
> - there are two or more forms to choose from
> - the choice of form depends on the shape of the "neighbour"
>
> Best wishes
> Sebastian

Yes, a welded bound form would always exhibit "phonologically 
conditioned allomorphy", but the latter notion is much broader and not 
well-defined. For one thing, the "allomorph" concept depends on the 
"morpheme" concept, on which there is no agreement, and much confusion. 
For example, are German /-er/ and /-en/ allomorphs of a single {PL} 
morpheme? Are English /-ness/ and /-ity/ allomorphs of a single 
{ABSTR.NOUN} morpheme? Are French /tomb(-er)/ 'fall' and /chute/ 'fall' 
allomorphs of a single {FALL} morpheme?

If one includes such suppletive alternants under "allomorphy" (as almost 
everyone does), then one also has phonologically conditioned allomorphs 
that are not welded forms according to the proposed definition (because 
these must be variants of the same form) (cf. Carstairs 1988 on 
"phonologically conditioned suppletion").

For example, Dutch has the plural forms /-s/ and /-en/, which are 
distributed according to phonological conditions, and the division of 
labour between the English suffixes /-ize/ and /-ify/ (/computer-ize, 
French-ify/) is also more phonological than anything else, it seems. 
There is no weldedness in Dutch /-s/ or English /-ize/.

I find the notions of "form" and "form variant" (= a form with a 
somewhat different shape due to a phonetically natural sound 
alternation) much more viable than the traditional "morpheme" and 
"allomorph" notions (the confusion of "morpheme" has not improved since 
Mugdan's (1986) paper, where he traced the diverse uses of this term 
since the 1880s).
Best,
Martin

-- 
Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10	
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
Institut fuer Anglistik
IPF 141199
D-04081 Leipzig





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