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<p>Hi Randy and David,</p>
<p>assume that you form the set of sandhi forms (say, allophonic
variants of a word form) of a base by a set of rules; then the
methodological problem is to determine the base which allows for
the most simple and general set of rules. It seems to me that it
is a prelinguistic idea to assume that this base is the citation
form. The citation form is necessarily a form in pausa. But pausa
is a rather specific context. Just for another example, you would
not want to derive the variants of the nominative singular of a
Sanskrit masculine noun from the citation form. It may be an
interesting methodological question to investigate whether there
is something like a neutral phonological context in which a word
form appears which may serve as our base form.</p>
<p>Christian<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<p style="font-size:90%">Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann<br>
Rudolfstr. 4<br>
99092 Erfurt<br>
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Deutschland</span></p>
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