1. Morphophonology in Assamese
Bipasha Patgiri
Assistant Professor, (Program for Linguistics)
EFL Department, TU

2. Morphophonemics
Morphophonemics or morphophonology is the study of phonemic differences between allomorphs of the same morpheme; a description of variations in a particular language.
In English, the vowel changes in
‘sleep’ - ‘slept’
‘bind’ - ‘bound’
‘vain’ - ‘vanity’

3. Morphophonemics And the final consonant changes in: ‘knife’- ‘knives’
‘loaf’ - ‘loaves’
Points:
Allomorphs are not generally arbitrary,
But, they are not even completely irregular.
In languages, there exist exceptions so in morphophological patterns.

4. Assamese negative prefixation
In Assamese, the morpheme /nai/ is cliticised as /-nɔ/ to the base.
/kɔra/ = /nɔkɔra/ ‘Neg.do.2P.Pres Perf’
/likʰa/ = /nilikʰa/ ‘Neg.write.2P.Pres Perf’
/dɛkʰɛ/ = /nɛdɛkʰɛ/ ‘Neg.see.2P.Pres Perf’
/sala/ = /nasala/ ‘Neg.see.2P.Pres Perf’
/hɔba/ = /nɔhɔba/ ‘Neg.be.2P.Pres Perf’
/pʰura/ = /nupʰura/ ‘Neg.loiter.2P.Pres Perf’

5. Assamese negative prefixation
State the distribution:

6. Assamese negative prefixation
What is the underlying form of the negative prefix or clitic in Assamese?
The process is called vowel copying as the first vowel of the root verb is copied exactly to the prefix.

7. Assamese derivational suffix /-ia/
/pani/ ‘water’ + /-ia/ = /pɔnia/ ‘mixed with water, dilute’
/lon/ ‘salt’ + /-ia/ = /lunia/ ‘salty’
/dʱol/ ‘drum’ + /-ia/ = /dʱulia/ ‘one who plays on a dhol’
/sɔka/ ‘wheel’ + /-ia/ =/sokia/ ‘wheeler’
What is happening here?

8. Assamese derivational suffix /-ia/
State the name of the process:
Vowel harmony of height feature.

9. Assamese derivational suffix /-ɔnia/
/sap/ + /-ɔnia/ = /sɔpɔnia/ ‘dependent’
/bʱag/ + /-ɔnia/= /bʱɔgɔnia/ ‘emigrant’
/bila/ + /-ɔnia/= /bilɔnia/ ‘distributor’
What is happening?
Which vowel is changed?

10. Some example from Assamese
Changes in the front vowels:
/pɛt/ ‘belly’
but,
/petula/ ‘pot bellied’
/xɛta/ ‘dull’
/xeteli/ ‘wet bed’
/bʱekola/ ‘a kind of big frog’
/bʱekuli/ ‘frogs’
/mɛl/ ‘to open’
/meli/ ‘having opened’

11. What is happening?
Which vowel is changed?