Stratal phonology and Russian morphophonology

Abstract

This paper analyses a fragment of the morphophonological grammar of Russian, namely the so-called e ~ ’о alternation, within a Lexical Phonology-style stratal model. The aim is to demonstrate that the rule shows a range of properties usually associated with stem-level phonology. Thus, on the one hand, Russian data provides further support for a stratal model of morphophonology, and on the other hand stratal models appear to be a productive approach to Russian morphophonological alternations that explicitly links morphophonology with both phonological patterns and the morphological and semantic structure of Russian words.