Metathesis in Costanoan Grammar

0. Metathesis, as a marker of grammatical categories, appears to occur rather infrequently in languages of the world. As Thompson and Thompson pointed out,1 metathesis is far more common as a form of morphophonemic alternation than as a grammatical process in its own right. Among those languages exhibiting synchronic metathesis are the various Sierra Miwok languages2 in which alternating stem shapes are based in part on quantitative ablaut and in part on an interchange of stem-final VC and CV. To a large extent, this metathesis is morphophonemic, the shape of the stem being determined by the following suffix. Nevertheless, metathesis may also serve a grammatical function, since it may distinguish noun stems from verb stems even in the absence of further suffixation. Within Penutian, Miwok forms a subfamily with Costanoan, and, because of 1 Laurence C. Thompson and M. Terry Thompson, "Metathesis as a Grammatical Device," IJAL 35 (1969): 213-19. 2 Sylvia M. Broadbent, The Southern Sierra Miwok Language, UCPL 38 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), pp. 37, 89; L. S. Freeland, "Language of the Sierra Miwok," IUPAL Memoir 6 (1951): 12, 93-96.