Morphological structure of words Plan What is morphology.? 2

Internal Change/Alternation

Internal change is the process which substitutes one non-morphemic part for another to mark a grammatical contrast. This is characteristic of irregular verbs and the plural form of some nouns, e.g., sing-sang-sung, sink-sank-sunk, goose-geese, foot-feet, man-men, and others. The term ablaut is used for vowel changes to mark grammatical contrast. However, for goose-geese and foot-feet, there is a different explanation. This type of change in English and other Germanic languages is called umlaut. The original vowel in the words goose and foot was “fronted under the influence of the front vowel in the old plural suffix, which was subsequently dropped in the course of the language development.

Some verbs show both an alternation and the addition of an affix to one form:

Break broke broken

Speak spoke spoken

Bite bit bitten

Fall fell fallen

Suppletion

Suppletion is a morphological process that replaces one morpheme with an entirely different morpheme to indicate a grammatical contrast. The examples of this phenomenon in English are the following: go-went-gone, good-better-best, bad-worse-worst, is-are, and others.

There are examples of suppletion in some other languages: