Realization of Gemination in Malayalam Past Tense Morphology

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of geminate stops in the morpho-phonology of pasttense inflection in Malayalam verbs. Malayalam has two allomorphs that mark past tense: [-i] and [-u]. While the former attaches to stems with the phonological structure CVCC, CVC and CV without any morpho-phonological sandhi between the stem and affix, the latter allomorph only attaches to CVCC stems with two kinds of morpho-phonological assimilation patterns. Further, the past tense of the causative form of all verbs in Malayalam is uniformly marked by the [-u] allomorph. In the light of these observations, we propose that the past tense morpheme [-u] Malayalam is underlyingly two distinct morphemes with a consonant that is not linked to the skeletal tier. So, underlyingly these are [-Cu]. The properties of the C emerge on affixation. Using Element Theory (Backey 2011) we propose that this “floating” C is of two types. It is either a dental stop |Iʔ| or a dental nasal stop |IʔL|.