Query Details

Query Subject:	Homophonous Affixes
Author:	Mike Maxwell
Submitter Email:	click here to access email

Linguistic LingField(s):	Morphology Phonetics Phonology Syntax

Query:	Somewhere in the last year, I ran across several articles that claimed that in most languages with any degree of morphology, there tended to be a considerable amount of homophony among affixes--more than one would expect, given the number of vowels and consonants in the language. Two examples of homophony that I recall, both from English, were the -er suffix (comparative on adjectives, and agentive nominalizer on verbs); and the various -s suffixes (3sg. present tense on V, plural on N, possessive clitic, and contracted form of ''is''). There were many other examples of homophonous affix sets, from an assortment of languages. Unfortunately, I can't find the articles now that I need them. A web search turned up nothing (perhaps because I couldn't think of many appropriate words to search for). I seem to recall that one of the articles dated back to the '50s, while the others were fairly recent. Does someone have a better memory than mine? I'm not looking for a list of homophonous affix sets, just the refs for the claims. I'll post a summary if there's interest. Mike Maxwell Summer Institute of Linguistics Mike_Maxwell@sil.org
LL Issue:	10.1663
Date posted:	03-Nov-1999
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