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Boundary markers in phonological theory21morphology is visible or parsable in that it defines the domains of phonologicalprocessing (Kaye 1995:305). In order to decide whether the morphologicalcomplexity is analytic or not, one has to look at the phonologicalcharacteristics of the string, e.g. phonotactic constraints, stress assignment,etc. The former may be illustrated by the English examplesixths. The final cluster, that is [ksTs], could never be found within a singleunderived form in the language. The fact that this form is grammaticalinforms us that it must be analytic. In short, the presence of such clustersprovides us with a parsing clue, i.e. that there is more that onedomain involved, viz. [[[siks]T]s]. It follows that phonotactic regularitiesobserved by non-derived forms can be violated by analytically complexforms. As for the stress assignment, the penultimate pattern observed inparent [ ® pe«r«nt] is switched into antepenultimate when the suffix -hoodis added, which means that the suffix is separated by the morphologicalboundary which is phonologically relevant, that is, [[ ® pe«r«nt]hud]. Thistype of morphological complexity is represented schematically as [[A]B],[A[B]] 5 and [[A][B]], which stand for analytic suffixation, prefixation, andcompounding respectively.As mentioned above, morphological complexity can also happen to beinvisible to phonology in which case it is called synthetic or non-analytic.The boundary separating the synthetic suffixes from the stem, in contrastto the analytic ones, does not block phonological processes fromapplying. It simply means that synthetically derived forms are not phonologicallyparsable, and hence form one phonological domain, whichcan be represented schematically as [AB]. Thus, when the suffix -al isadded to our initial example, that is, parent, the stress pattern is notaffected in that it remains penultimate. In other words, the stress patternof the derived form points to the fact that the boundary between theroot and the suffix is not visible, which yields the domain structure[p« ® rent«l]. 6 To conclude, synthetically derived forms become indistinguishablefrom non-derived forms in that both groups are subject to thesame phonological constraints and properties.A word of clarification concerning synthetically derived forms is inorder here. As indicated by Kaye (1995), synthetically derived forms5Kaye (1995) argues that analytic prefixation should have the same domain structureas compounds, that is, [[A][B]]. There are two reasons behind this claim, one general,the other theory-internal. The former concerns the asymmetry between the behaviourof prefixes and suffixes, while the latter the licensing of domain-final empty nuclei(cf. Gussmann and Kaye 1993, Polgárdi 1998, Rowicka 1999c).6Note that the influence suffixes have on the stress pattern brings to mind thetraditional classification of English affixes into two classes, see, for example, Siegel(1979), Selkirk (1982), Szpyra (1989), among others.