A split approach to the selection of allomorphs: Vowel length alternating allomorphy in Dutch

In this article it is argued that the selection of allomorphs is distributed over two modules, viz. Vocabulary Insertion and Phonology. This is done on the basis of a case study of vowel length alternating allomorphs in Dutch. The data show a split pattern: some empirical domains can be fully captured by phonological principles. For these cases, the phonologically most optimal allomorph will be selected. In other empirical domains, phonological principles still account for many of the attested data. Yet, one attests lexicalised exceptions as well, which are clearly phonologically non-optimal.... Mehr ...