Re: [Conlangs-Conf] Conference Overview
| From: | Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, May 8, 2006, 8:47 |
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staving David J. Peterson:
>fish = FISH, singular
>fish = FISH, plural
Of course, here the perfectly regular plural suffix -s has been lured into
a dark alleyway and mugged by phonotactic constraints.
*[fISs] assimilates to *[fISS], but gemmination is not phonemic in English,
therefore [fIS].
Alternatively, the problem can be dealt with by epenthesis and
dissimilation, thus giving [fISIz] "fishes", which is more regular but less
common.
This isn't meant as a criticism of W/P morphology, but there's always more
than one plausible model in linguistics!
Pete
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