According to Bartholomae (1885:206–7), when an Indo-European aspirated stop was followed directly by one or more unaspirated obstruents, the aspiration was transferred from the beginning of the cluster to the end, as in the conventionally cited example IE PGk. *pat-skhō > Gk. páskhō ‘I suffer’ beside Gk. páthos ‘suffering, disease’. Bartholomae's formulation stipulates further that the entire cluster became voiced when its first component was voiced, e.g. IE *lubh-tós > * lub-dhós > Skt. lub-dhás ‘covetous’ beside lubh-yāmi ‘I yearn’. As textbook descriptions of the process regularly indicate, the Indo-European languages as a group honor Bartholomae's Law considerably more in the breach than in the observance. Thus, on purely phonologic grounds, IE *légh- + -trom might be expected to become *lég-dhrom, but the corresponding historic Greek form léktron shows the reflex of IE /kt/, not /gdh/. In such instances, which are so numerous as to constitute the rule rather than the exception, the absence of change is generally ascribed to analogy. Thus, IE *légh-trom, under the influence of related forms like *légh-os, would not become *lég-dhrom, but would merely undergo devoicing and de-aspiration of /gh-t/ to /kt/, hence Gk. léktron ‘couch’ beside lékhos ‘bed’.

In order to clarify the phonemic status of Gmc. i and e, it is necessary to reach some conclusion regarding the disputed historical development of IE i in Germanic. The assumption of a regular change of IE i to Gmc. e before a, ō, or is refuted especially by the evidence of the i in the past participles of first-class strong verbs and in adverbs such as OHG hina, nidana, but a considerable number of e-forms in the various Germanic dialects must be explained. It can be shown that the partial overlapping in Germanic of the two phonemes /i/ (represented in all environments by [i]) and /e/ (with the allophones [i] and [e]) led to the occasional development of an e-allophone of /i/ by a type of systemic analogy.

This limited treatment of French verb morphology is intended to exemplify the principles of generative phonology. The finite verb is represented as a sequence of morphemes: stem (+ conjugation vowel) + tense marker + person ending. For each morpheme there is a unique underlying phonological representation, exhibiting structural regularities which are not overtly marked at the phonetic level. A sequence of morphemes thus represented is then subjected to the ordered set of morphophonemic rules, the end result being the phonetic representation of the sequence in question. The rules, in addition, furnish an explanation for certain morphological and phonological phenomena observable within the verb conjugation.

Nez Perce vowel harmony involves two groups of co-occurring vowels: /i e u/ and /i a o/. Most words contain only one of the two groups of vowels. Certain morphemes are variable and may have vowels of either group, while others have only the second group. The latter type of morpheme, whether stem or affix, dictates the vowel harmony. Three analyses, one in terms of prosody, and two in terms of distinctive features, are given, in an attempt to derive the modern Sahaptian vocalic systems from that of Proto-Sahaptian.

1. The ease or difficulty of learning phonological categories, experienced by a speaker of language X attempting to learn language Y, has been attributed by linguists to (1) the competing phonemic categories of native language (N) and target language (T) systems, (2) the allophonic membership of these phonemic categories, and (3) the distributions of these categories within their respective systems. It has been noted that the higher the degree of similarity between the N and T phonological categories, the easier it is for the speaker to learn the T phonological categories, and the converse has been held to be true.