LINGUIST List 6.1781

Sat Dec 23 1995

Sum: The Law that Analogy Operates on Phonemes

Editor for this issue: Ljuba Veselinova <lveselinemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Alexis Manaster Ramer, Sort-of Summary: The Law that Analogy Operates on Phonemes

In the past couple of years I have more than once posted queries
asking if anybody knew who prosed this law, which I have been
defending (against Kiparsky and others) in several recent
publications. The earlier reference I had until recently was by the
Polish linguist Stieber from 1938 but it was clear that he was not
claiming to have come up with it. It now appears that the earliest
tentative statement of this is due to another Polish linguist Nitsch,
and the first explicit assertion of it to the Czech linguist Bohumil
Trnka (1936).