Either templatic or harmonic

Rebrus, Péter and Szigetvári, Péter (2025) Either templatic or harmonic. ACTA LINGUISTICA ACADEMICA, 72 (1). pp. 1-19. ISSN 2559-8201

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Abstract

In addition to the common concatenative morphological system of Hungarian, there is a smaller portion of word forms that are templatic. These words satisfy requirements on their phonological shape. We here examine constraints on the number of syllables in templatic word forms. We observe that while the vowels in concatenative forms typically harmonize in backness (and in a more limited way also rounding), the vowels in nominal templatic forms often do not. On the other hand, the vowels in verbal templatic forms do harmonize. Furthermore, truncation is applied to satisfy the limit on word size in nominals, but truncation is generally not available as a repair for templatic verbal forms. We model our observations by a subsumption hierarchy of morphological layers: a concatenative layer, a (vowel) harmony layer, and a (stem) integrity layer.

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