Inflectional morphotactics

The construction of words (morphotactics) can be defined on three levels, following the ILEX approach:

1. ID (Immediate Dominance) structure: lexical and morphosyntactic properties:
   1. Context. Distribution within higher level contexts, often coded as Parts of Speech (POS).
   2. Constituents. Stratified tree hierarchy of consituent parts, defining the framework for compositional interpretation of semantics, phonology and orthography.
   3. Meaning. The information required for semantic interpretation, in particular `idiosyncratic', non-generalisable lexical features.
   4. Surface (phonology and orthography). The information required for surface form interpretation, in particular a minimal specification in terms of `distinctive features'.

2. QLP (Quasi-Linear Precedence) structure: phonological and orthographic ordering relations, or in general temporal, spatial and other conceptual ordering relations, expressed as compositional operations which are interpretable in terms of space and time coordinates and other coordinates of our experience:
   1. Concatenation. Prefixation, Infixation, Suffixation, Circumfixation, Interfixation; `subtraction'.
   2. Modification. Vowels: Mutation (Umlaut), Ablaut, Abtönung; Consonants: stem final modification.
   3. Synchronisation. Prosodic superfixation of accent, tone and other prosodies.
3. CM (Coordinate Matrix) structure in real time, space, or other coordinates of our experience.

The application of the first two of three levels to morphology are dealt with in the following sections.