Alternation (linguistics)

Alternation or Alternation is a term used in phonology. Alternation means that a morpheme depending on the context has varying or alternating pronunciations. This phenomenon is known as Morphemalternanz. The different modes of pronunciation called alternants or allomorph of the morpheme in question. When that realization of morphemes occurs is by phonetic rules, phonological rules predictable.

Examples

• Phonological alternation, for example, in German: The underlying phoneme / d / is voiceless or voiced articulated depending on the environment, eg in [ hunt ] ( "dog", Sg ) versus [ hundə ] ( "dog ", Pl ). This debate usually is described in German as devoicing (Final Devoicing ). Underlying voiced plosives and voiceless obstruents are therefore very end of the word.
• Morphological alternation, for example, in French: The personal pronoun of the first person singular ( " I " ) is in French or per moi. The distribution is predictable, depending appears when the pronoun is unstressed, moi, if a special emphasis and a focus should be placed on the pronoun.

In the mental lexicon only the assumed underlying form (eg, / dog / for " dog " ) listed, while the respective alternative forms are derived by phonological rules, for reasons of economy description.