Theoretical aspects of Dakota morphology and phonology

This thesis investigates some morphological and phonological processes in Lakota, and American Indian language. It attempts to show that recent revisions of and additions to the theories of morphology and phonology will more adequately account for certain problematical processes in Lakota. A recent innovation, Lexical Phonology, is shown to be an effective way to account for the high degree of interaction between the morphological and phonological processes. It is argued that inflectional and derivational morphology are carried out in the same component. Extensions in phonological theory involving the content and internal structure of segments is shown to be of significant value in the construction of certain phonological rules of Lakota. The syllable structure of Lakota is discussed and is shown to be relevant for the characterization of certain morphological processes, specifically reduplication and infixation.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio