A phonological solution to allomorphy in Georgian nominal inflection

Abstract

Georgian features three patterns of nominal inflection, which are dependent on the structure of the stem. The stem can be consonantal, vocalic truncating, and vocalic non-truncating, with the consequences for the shape of the inflectional suffixes. However, variants of each individual case suffix differ across the three stem types in unique ways, with no single pattern being used for more than one grammatical case. This could suggest a solution based on traditional allomorph selection from a predefined list of stored forms. The paper argues, however, that a phonological explanation of the pattern is possible when rich autosegmental representations are employed. The analysis is couched within the CVCV model of phonology (Scheer 2004).