A Catalog of Basic Linguistic Symbols
Sym
bol
FunctionExample
¡'is replaced by'x ¡ y = 'x is replaced by y'
>'was replaced by'
(historically)
x ¡ y / z__ = 'x became y after z'
/'in the context:'x ¡ y / z__ = 'x is replaced by y after z'
___ context (distribution)x ¡ y / __z = 'x is replaced by y before z'
/x/phoneme boundaries/d/ ¡ [t] / [-Voiced] ___ = '/d/ is replaced by [t]
after voiceless consonants'
[x] (allo)phone boundaries[a] = the (allo)phone 'a'
¤null: Insertion rules¤ ¡ /-øü/ = 'insert the suffix -ing'
¤ null: Deletion rules: /n/ ¡ ¤ / ___ [+Liquid] = 'delete /n/ before /r/ or /l/
#word boundary [+Voiced] ¡ [-Voiced] / ___# = 'Voiced consonants
are replaced by voiceless ones at the end of words'
-morpheme boundarypre- 'the prefix /pri/'; -ing = 'the suffix /-øü/'
CAPS VariablesV = 'any vowel'
C = 'any consonant'
S = 'any syllable'
[+X] Morphological or
phonological feature
[+Agent] = 'Agent noun': cook, baker
[+Front] = 'front vowel' = /i ø À e ê a/
*ungrammatical
unattested (historical)
*edbake = 'edbake is ungrammatical'
*bher- = 'bher- is unattested in writings'
?questionable ?unstoppable by hand= probably ungrammatical

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Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837
©1997 Robert Beard