phonemes in affixes

[Paul J Hopper]

Dear Joan,

I think the first to propose this was Roman Jakobson, who noted the
tendency in English and Russian. The reference is: "Quest for the essence
of language," Diogenes 51.21-37, esp. page 29. See also some discussion
in my paper on "Phonogenesis" (W. Pagliuca, ed., Perspectives on
Grammaticalization), where Jakobson is credited with this point.

Paul

 On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Joan Bybee wrote:

> Dear typologists,
>
> I am trying to find out who has written about the hypothesis that affixes
> tend to have fewer phonemic contrasts than lexical roots or stems. This is
> an idea that has floated by me several times, but never with a definite
> reference attached. I assume some revered typologist or historical linguist
> of yesteryear first discussed the idea, but I don't know who that was. The
> OT phonologists have picked it up recently and used it to justify a certain
> ordering of constraints. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Joan
>
> Joan Bybee jbybee at unm.edu               phone:  505-277-3827
> Department of Linguistics               fax:    505-277-6355
> Humanities 526
> University of New Mexico
> Albuquerque, NM 87131-1196
>
>