Some Notes on English Vowel Morphophonemics

Morphophonemically related differences in vowel quality, as Illustrated by pairs of English words like five : fifth, sleep : slept, bathe : bath, punitive : punish, know : knowledge, hooves : hoof, south ; southern , can be accounted for by reference to an underlying system of seven Tense and seven Lax vowels, Tenseness being assigned by rules not discussed. From this sytem the actually occurring forms are derived as follows. A first rule analyzes into The second makes Tense vowels into central vowels plus off‐glides and changes Tense high vowels to low, mid to high, and low to mid. Next, non‐low Tense vowels assimilate to their off‐glides. Thus: A last rule accounts for the quality of the Lax vowels, changing to and to and to with and remaining as In the underlying system

Linguistics · Mid vowel · Past tense · Present tense · Pronunciation · Quality (philosophy) · Verb · Vowel · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology