An Unnatural Process

This paper presents an experimental study of the productivity of the /k/-/s/ alternation exhibited in derivational pairs such as electric, electricity. This alternation is exemplified in numerous word pairs in English involving various suffixes, among them -ity, -ism and -ist. The Collins on-line English dictionary includes 108 clear examples of words ending in -ity, -ism, or -ist which have a stem-final /k/ softening to /s/ before the suffix. The largest single group, and the main topic of this paper, is words formed with the suffix -ity. There are only twelve stems ending in /k/ which fail to soften before one of these three suffixes (e.g. anarchy, anarchism, soliloquy, soliloquist). All of these involve affixes other than -ity. The productivity of the alternation is disputable for a number of reasons. First, there are very few forms which would support extension of the alternation beyond an orthographic ”ic” followed by one of the triggering suffixes. The only such pairs listed in the Collins are Greek/Grecism, opaque, opacity , it raucous, raucity, reciprocal/reciprocate, reciprocity, and pharmacology, pharmacist. A few additional pairs, most of which would only be known to individuals with a high vocabulary level, are presented in Myers (1999). Second, as Myers also notes, the /k/-/s/ alternation as presently found in English is not natural (in the sense of Anderson, 1981). Though it originates historically in lenition and fronting of the velar stop before a front vowel, in the synchronic phonology, suffixes with surface high front vowel do not in general trigger the softening of /k/ to /s/. The dictionary includes more than a hundred pairs such as cheek, cheeky in which /k/ does not soften before -y, and none in which it does. In contrast, the suffix -ize, beginning with a low vowel, does trigger velar softening. Secondly, any phonetic pressure which turned /k/ to /s/ would presumably also affect /t/. However, the affixes -ity and -ism never soften /t/ to /s/, as we see from /the uniform preservation of /t/ in the 82 examples in the dictionary such as mute, mutism and sanctum, sanctity.

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