Phonological Conditions on Affixation

a situation is the plausibility of the proposed phonological rule. If the rule is item-specific
but is also phonetically natural and attested in a number of languages, this is an argument
in favor of rule-derived rather than suppletive allomorphy. On the other hand, if the
proposed rule would be phonetically unnatural and not attested in other languages, this
suggests that the pattern involves suppletion. This criterion does, of course, involve some
subjective judgment as to what constitutes ‘phonetic naturalness,’ but this notion in
combination with the frequency of such rules in other languages of the world should
provide some idea of the overall plausibility of the rule.
Criterion (b), which refers to the number of segments involved in the alternation,
is also relatively useful but not unproblematic. It is quite clear-cut when each of the
allomorphs has several segments and none of them are the same (or even similar) from
one allomorph to the other; in such a case, we would almost certainly analyze the pattern
as suppletive. This is not a common situation, however. More common is a situation
where one or two segments are different in the different allomorphs. If only one segment
differs, the pattern may be rule-derived, though in this case we would have to evaluate
the proposed rule based on the discussion above to decide whether its generality and
plausibility merit positing a phonological rule for the language. If two or more segments
differ, the pattern is more likely suppletive unless all the segments can be altered (or
deleted or inserted) via a single phonological rule. If multiple rules are required, is each
of the rules independently motivated in the language or do we have to posit multiple,
separate, item-specific phonological rules just to describe the pattern of allomorphy for
one morpheme (in which case it is probably suppletive allomorphy)?
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