Talk:Alternation (linguistics)

message: The article just needs separating into sections logically (perhaps by different types of alternation as specified in the article, eg phonological, grammatical, etc). Some parts are a little unclear too and could do with more examples to illustrate the point. KZF 14:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More specifically...

message: The processes described in this page are normally known as allophony and allomorphy, which are well described elsewhere; the pages that formerly linked here did so erroneously; aside from being currently incorrect all over, the very existence of the page lacks merit.  I think time spent to fix it up would be wasted. /blahedo (t) 17:39, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Allophony and allomorphy are not the same thing as alternations, though. Alternations are descriptive facts about data from which theoretical arguments for allophony and allomorphy can be made. —Angr 19:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And yet, the things described on this page are allophony and allomorphy.  Except that they're described poorly and with many errors here, and much better on the pages Allophone and Allomorph.  I'm not sure you even could break out a separate page for "alternation" by itself; for instance, you can't really say that aspirated and unaspirated 't' are "in alternation" in the words "top" and "stop" until you first identify them as allophonic variants of a phonemic /t/.  I think that the idea of "alternation" should just be discussed on the other two pages, possibly with a stub here. /blahedo (t) 08:08, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No, "top" and "stop" don't show an alternation particularly well, but the example I gave below of "wait" and "waiting" does. —Angr 09:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Actually, maybe just delete it 

message: So, if alternation is just a type of sound change for some conscious reason, wouldn't it include conjugation? If so, should it be mentioned? The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, Grammatical conjugation describes it as a phenomenon of alteration, so I'm adding a note here. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 21:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Conjugation is considerably more than the alternation of sounds though, at least in most languages. —Angr 22:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relation to other linguistic topics 

message: I've cleaned up the article now. It could use some more prose (at the moment it's little more than an extended dicdef with some examples), but it's coherent and correct. I'm removing the cleanup tags. —Angr 21:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Cleaned up

message: This article seems to be about alternation in morphophonology as opposed to e.g.
* syntax
** Causative alternation 
** Diathesis alternation
* Sociolinguistics
** Code-switching
** Code-mixing
More generally, there seems to be no clear boundary between the use of "alternation" and transformation (linguistics) or variation (linguistics). 
Dictionary entries:
* Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Longman; Jack C. Richards, Richard Schmidt 
* Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics Routledge, Larry Trask
* Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics Psychology Press; Larry Trask
* Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics Wiley; David Crystal
* A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics Routledge, Larry Trask
**alternation 
**morphophonemic alternation
* Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics OUP, Peter Hugoe Matthews
I'm not sure what changes to the article might address these points; at a minimum a hatnote would help. jnestorius(talk) 11:21, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Restricted to morphophonology? 

message: There is also a page for "phonological rule" which I think should be integrated more closely with this article. Here is the topic I created on that article: Talk:Phonological rule#Linking to or merging with "Alternation"
SyntaxZombie (talk) 20:58, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linking to or merging "phonological rule"