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Jochen Geilfu-Wolfgang

Stammkonstanz ohne Stützformen

Keywords: constant spelling of stems, interaction of writing rules, optimal paradigms theory, paradigm uniformity, spelling of strong verbs

In German as in several other languages, the written forms of stems are often more constant than their spoken forms. This has traditionally been described in at least two different ways. In one approach, spelling encodes the abstract sound representations of morphemes, therefore ignoring sound variation at successive levels; in another approach, the spelling of the stems is determined by privileged base forms. In this paper, I analyse the constant spelling of stems in inflection as a case of paradigm uniformity, doing without abstract sound representations and privileged base forms.

Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 0721-9067
Volume: 26, 01/2007
Pages: 133 - 154

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