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Mythical Lady Posted 17 years ago
Linguistics Studies

A terrible phonological Anylsis (Latin alternations)..

hi there,

I've been on this phonological problem for about 3 days. All I got are a big question mark and a terrible headache... PLZ help:

I have three sets of data from Latin and i m asked to give underlying forms and write rules to account for alternations.
Nominative Gentive
1. murmur murmuris

fu:r fu:ris
far farris

os ossis
It seems to me that the genitive maker is -is and there's no nominative maker, and latin doent allow consonant clusters in the coda, so there is a deletion rule assuming that /farr/ and /oss/ are the underlying representations

2. o:s o:rs
flo:s flo:ris
mu:s mu:ris
There's a nominative marker here which is -s. Again there's a deletion rule which deletes r assuming that /o:r/, /flo:r/ and /mu:r/ are the underlying forms.

3. aktio: aktio:nis
bu:bo: bu:bo:nis
nepo:s nepo:tis
inku:s inku:dis
the first two, no nominative marker, if we assume /aktio:n/, /bu:bo:n/ are the underlying forms, then why it's deteted (particularly there is no nominative ending which would have caused clusters in the coda). and if i assume that /aktio:/ and /bu:bo:/ are the underlying forms then there's a rule of consonant insertion: n. i don't know why n in particular.
Could the nominative marking -s be underlyingly present: so for aktio:, the underlying form is aktio:n-s, then n is justifablely deleted, but how -s can be deleted?

for the 2nd two: -s is the nominative marker, there's a deletion rule of t, d assuming that they are underlyingly present. /nepo:t-s/

Unanswered questuins are left: what decides that the nominative marker is in some cases none and in other cases is -s?
i m thinking of assuming that these words with no overt nominative marker are the underlying forms ( the 1st data set and the 1st two of the 3rd set) and there is a rule of insertion instead, yet i couldn't come up with a plausible analysis to account for the insertions.

i write my thoughts as they are. I m horrible at alternations as you can see. Any suggestions are highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance
  

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3 Answers
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did you ever find out the answer?
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The problem here is that in Latin you have to distinguish between "stems" and "roots" and that stems may contain or be identical with or contain roots. With first and second declension nouns it is not difficult to distinguish between root/stem on the one hand and inflectional suffix on the other. With third declension nouns (to which all the nouns cited by Mythical Lady belong) it becomes trickie

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