Morphological variation *

The principles of twofold vowel harmony and fourfold vowel harmony form, together with a number of consonant assimilations, the core of what at first sight looks like an enormous variation in suffixes. Since this apparent proliferation is largely predictable, it can neatly be reduced by adopting archetypical notations: –(y)E can be rewritten as four variants of the dative suffix: –ye, –ya, –e, and –a, and similarly, using –TE for the locative is more economical than spelling out –te, –ta, –de, and –da all the time. Another important issue is the question of how to deal with variable word stems. Only five noun classes exhibit stem variation: a dictionary form and an alternative stem; the latter being employed when a vowel follows via suffixation. The underlying mechanism is the process of re-syllabification, as set forth in the final section.