PERCEPTUAL SALIENCE AND ANALOGICAL CHANGE - EVIDENCE FROM VOWEL LENGTHENING IN MODERN SWISS GERMAN DIALECTS

In the light of current morphological theory, this paper examines the analogical levelling of long/short vowel oppositions in certain inflec tional and derivational alternations in a number of modern Swiss Germa n dialects. The regular occurrence of levelling is shown to depend on the extent to which the alternation in question is 'perceptually salie nt' (Chapman 1994). That is, if the semantic relation between base and derivative is transparent and the derivative is uniformly marked, ana logical levelling occurs regularly. On the basis of this evidence it i s argued that all morphological alternations, both inflectional and de rivational, are listed in the lexicon and that each one is assigned a different status according to its degree of perceptual salience.