2007/10/31, Dirk Elzinga <dirk.elzinga@...>:
> It is not true that sound changes do not take morphological boundaries
> into account. Consider the following examples from a non-standard
> variety of English:
>
[snip examples]
>
> Here the final clusters have *not* been simplified. The difference
> between the two sets of examples is the presence of a morpheme
> boundary between the consonants of the cluster in the second set;
> there is no such morpheme boundary in the clusters of the first set of
> examples (with the possible exception of 'told', which the past
> tense/past participle of 'tell'.)
>
> So it seems that morphological information is crucial to understanding
> this change, and your statement that "sound changes don't care the
> least of the morphological structure
> of the word" is not true, or is at best overstated.
>
> Dirk
>
It might have been that this variety retained the schwa in the
past-tense ending long enough for the cluster simplification not to
have affected it. Also I observe that the second set of words involves
historical geminates which could have resulted in a different
simplification: that of [rolld] > [rold] vs. [told] > [tol], for
example. It isn't a perfect example.
Eugene