Linguistics

Can you tell me if this is an example of Morphology or Phonology?

Irregular Verbs:

Think
Thank
Thunk

??
I believe it is Morphology, but I am not 100% sure.
Can you confirm or deny please?

Thank you
SR

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by SLRomero

Can you tell me if this is an example of Morphology or Phonology?

Irregular Verbs:

Think
Thank
Thunk

??
I believe it is Morphology, but I am not 100% sure.
Can you confirm or deny please?

Thank you
SR

Morphology: rules pertaining to words e.g., add -ed to form the past tense.

Phonology: rules pertainging to sounds e.g., pronounce -ed as [d] after voiced sounds, as [t] after voiceless sounds:

tanned = tanne[d]
walked = walke[t]

Note, sink, sank sunk are irregular in form. That is, -ed is not added: *sinked. Note also, -i-, -a-, -u- occur in the same phonological environment: between [s] and [n]. They are fixed sounds: -i- doesn't change to -a- or -u-.

Morphology: (hypothetical word) frink (Present). What's the Past? frank, frunk. Notice that -i-, -a-, -u- follow a morphological pattern: -i- for Present and -a-, -u- for Past.

All the best, :D

It could well be a question of phonology where a set of minimal pairs (in this case 3) are being presented to demonstrate the meaningfulness of phonemes, that is, how changing just one sound in a word can change its meaning.

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by bigjohn

It could well be a question of phonology where a set of minimal pairs (in this case 3) are being presented to demonstrate the meaningfulness of phonemes, that is, how changing just one sound in a word can change its meaning.

Welcome.

Minimal pairs. Right! 8) In addition, we are dealing with morpho-phonemics and morpho-phonemes. :wink:

All the best, :D