Inflectional paradigms have bases too: Arguments from Yiddish

Abstract

Abstract It is well known that the phonological form of a word can depend on its morphological structure. In serial approaches, this follows naturally from the fact that words have derivational histories: morphologically complex words undergo successive levels of phonological derivation as they are constructed, making them eligible for different phonological processes along the way. A crucial distinction is typically made, however, between derivational and inflectional morphology. Whereas derived forms usually have clear “bases of affixation”, inflected forms are usually not obviously constructed from one another. For this reason, they are generally not held to have the same formal influence on one another.