On the Role of Allomorphy in Inflectional Morphology: Evidence from Dialectal Variation∗

In the domain of language variation the emergence of new, non-phonologically interpreted allomorphy patterns has not been sufficiently studied. In this paper, a survey of certain allomorphy phenomena from Standard Modern Greek and its dialectal variation, as is realized on the island of Lesvos, and in the Asia Minor areas of Kydonies and Moschonisia, provides a typical example of how systematic allomorphy patterns may affect the morphological system in a significant manner. More specifically, the paper deals with the issue of stem variation in inflectional morphology, and shows that non-phonologically conditioned allomorphy occupies a central position in morphology. It claims that this kind of allomorphy may assume a crucial role in paradigmatic structure, and is not a simple synchronic residue of historical processes. It is proposed that allomorphy may have a classificatory role, leading to the distinction of inflection classes, and paves the way for paradigmatic uniformity, contributing to the simplification of the linguistic system. It is argued, however, that allomorphy has an independent status as a basic morphological phenomenon, and may resist levelling forces when structure preservation is at stake. In this respect, allomorphy cannot be seen as a simple deviation from form uniformity, but as a central morphological propert