Non-linear morphology

Non-linear morphology is a term which is used for theoretical frameworks in which the morphemes that make up a derived word are each represented at an independent, autonomous level of representation. These levels of representation are called (morphological) tiers or (morphological) planes. McCarthy (1979, 1981) has shown that this framework provides the necessary machinery to account for the intricate nonconcatenative morphology of Arabic languages. Furthermore, Marantz (1982) has shown that this framework is able to solve the long-standing problem of reduplication. Other terms used for this framework are Autosegmental Phonology/Morphology and Multilinear Phonology/Morphology.

Links
Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics