149

4-2.3 Phonological and syntactic conditioning

Phonotactic (canonical form) considerations such
as (1) the number of preceding vowels on a stem, or (2)
avoidance of final consonant clusters caused by syntac-
tically-determined final vowel-deletion, condition regres-
sive vowel-deletion or -retention by certain noun and
verbal derivational suffixes. (See 4-3.22.16 on the
three-vowel rule; 5-3.24 on the personal possessive noun
suffixes; and 7-4.21.23 on the suffix combination

-fia.taki ‘in order to'.)
4-2.4 Morphological and syntactic conditioning

Nonfinal independent suffixes specify the pre-
ceding environment but allow the previous morpheme,
syntactic considerations, and/or the following suffix
to override their basic morphophonemics. Final suffixes
(except -lla ~ -ya politive which requires a preceding
vowel by phonological conditioning) allow previous mor-
phemes and syntactic considerations to decide their pre-
ceding environments. The retention or loss of their final

vowels is subject to stylistic conditioning.
4-3 Phonotactically Conditioned Rules (Canonical
Form Conditions)

The following rules are conditioned by position

of the phoneme or phoneme sequence in the word and involve