Underlying shape

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In phonology, the underlying form describes the phonological form of a lexeme as it exists before a phonological rule is applied. The morphophonology assumes that always exists an underlying form, from which the application of general phonological rules lexical alternations are generated.

example

  • For the German word Haus (genitive of Haus ) the underlying form is / haʊz /.
  • In lemmatization , the inflected ending of the last element is sometimes added to the underlying form, as is the case with AGs for stock corporations

See also : metaphysics (Aristotle) , allomorph

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