Arabic root and pattern morphology without tiers

Abstract

This paper is an argument for the constraint on grammars known as the ‘true generalization condition’ (Hooper, 1976:13): all rules express generalizations true for all surface forms. I make this condition fully explicit by interpreting it to mean the prohibition of the three transformational rule-types: deletion, movement and feature-changing. The argument takes the form of a comparison of a recent autosegmental analysis of the intricate facts of Arabic root and pattern verb stem morphology with an alternative which observes the condition. I hope to show how the latter analysis in every empirical aspect is equivalent to the former in its claims about Arabic, and significantly differs, as the result of observing the true generalization condition, in its lack of numerous un-empirical claims made in the autosegmental analysis. In so far as both have descriptive adequacy, the analysis governed by the true generalization condition, termed ‘non-transformational’, has also explanatory adequacy in the sense of Chomsky, 1964: 28–9, since it is closely determined, or selected, by the true generalization condition.

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