CHAPTER 4
VARIATION IN MORPHOPHONEMICS

4-] Introduction

Morphophonemics may be defined as the rules which
determine the phonological shapes of morphemes under dif-
ferent phonological, morphological, and syntactic condi-

tions. Ali three kinds of conditioning occur in Aymara.

All morphophonemic rules in the language are morphologically

conditioned in that they apply within morphemes or across
morpheme boundaries, and/or to certain morphemes or mor-
pheme classes and not to others. Some are also phono-
logically conditioned, involving (1) instability of cer-
tain phonemes; (2) permitted and unpermitted phoneme
sequences and the effects of phonemes on each other when
they occur in sequence; and (3) hierarchical ordering of
phonemes (i. e. predominance of one over another). Some
are syntactically conditioned by the sentence position
or function of the word that is subject to the rule in
question.

Of overriding importance in Aymara are the re-

gressive and progressive vowel-deleting and -retaining

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