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Stem alternations in Kiranti and their implications for the morphology–phonology interface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2020

BORJA HERCE Open the ORCID record for BORJA HERCE [Opens in a new window]
BORJA HERCE*
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Author’s address: University of Zurich, Plattenstrasse 54, 8032Zürich, Switzerlandborjaherce@gmail.com
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Abstract

Stem alternation is present in the verbal inflection of all documented Kiranti languages, where it ranges from the straightforward phonologically conditioned (e.g. Athpariya and Chintang) to the purely morphological and baroque (e.g. Khaling and Dumi). This paper surveys stem alternation patterns across the whole family. Its main finding is that, unlike the morphological stem alternations of West Kiranti, the phonologically-conditioned stem alternations of East Kiranti are characterized by a very striking distributional similarity (often identity) across languages, even in the presence of quite drastic affixal changes. This and other findings suggest that these stem alternation patterns should be regarded as a (morphomic) grammatical phenomenon of its own right, despite being derivable from the forms of suffixes. Furthermore, comparison with West Kiranti suggests that this coextensiveness with a coherent phonological environment actually enhances some typically morphomic traits such as diachronic resilience and productivity.

Keywords

diachronyKirantimorphomesparadigmphonological conditioningstem alternation
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 321 - 363
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Thanks are due to three anonymous referees of the Journal of Linguistics and to JL editor Marc van Oostendorp for feedback that has helped to improve this paper. Earlier versions of it were presented at the Workshop on Non-canonicity in Inflection at the University of Surrey, and at the 13th Conference of the Association for Linguistic Typology at the University of Pavia. I thank the audiences of those events for various comments and suggestions, particularly Matthew Baerman, Balthasar Bickel, and Erich Round. The financial support of the Basque Government scholarship PRE_2015_1_0175 and of TECHNE are also gratefully acknowledged.

Abbreviations in this paper follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules.

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