Level-ordered morphology and phonology in Manipuri

Abstract

A number of phonological rules in the Tibeto-Burman language Manipur! 1 cannot be characterized without making reference to word formation processes in the language. In this paper, I give a description of such phonological rules and show that the interaction between morphology and phonology in Manipuri can be represented by postulating that the lexicon of language is level ordered (Kiparsky, 1982: Mohanan, 1986). As the linguistic literature available on the phonology and morphology of Manipuri is limited2, I will first present a description of the phonemic contrasts and a sketch of the word formation processes available in the language. This will be followed by a list of the relevant phonological rules and with an explanation of how these interact with word formation processes. This list will be used to illustrate the existence of level-ordering in the lexical phonology and morphology of Manipuri.