Patterned Exceptions in Phonology - UCLA Department of Linguistics

The conundrum is, if Labial Attraction does no “work” in the grammar of
Turkish, why had speakers internalized any version of it at all?
1.1.2. Regularities within morphologically complex words
Regularities are also to be found in morphologically complex words. For example,
English words suffixed with -ic generally have penultimate stress, regardless of the stress
pattern in the base.
(2) Stress in English words with -ic
artíst-ic cf. ártist
laparoscóp-ic cf. láparoscope
cholerá-ic cf. chólera
There are a few exceptions to this generalization, such as chóler-ic (cf. chóler) and Árab-
ic (cf. Árab).
Regularities in polymorphemic words are “productive” in the sense that if a
speaker knows only the related base, it is up to her to create a word that follows or does
not follow the generalization. (By contrast, if a speaker knows the word slill, she has no
choice but to pronounce it slill.) For example, should the -ic form of carob be carób-ic or
cárob-ic (or something else)? Compared to morpheme structure constraints, regularities
in polymorphemic words thus have more opportunity to make themselves felt in the
language, as new affixed forms are coined much more frequently than new morphemes.
Regularities in morphologically complex words might seem at first glance to
naturally belong in the grammar (and so Zimmer’s conundrum would not arise), but when
there is evidence that the words are listed as separate lexical entries (see §2.2.3), the
situation is the same as with morpheme structure constraints: speakers would not need to
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