Extended Level Ordering Hypothesis

Extended Level Ordering Hypothesis is a hypothesis proposed in Allen (1978) which can be represented as in (i).

(i)	Level I		(Class I affixation)
	Cyclic phonological rules (e.g. stress rules)
	Level II		(Class II affixation)
	Level III	(root compounding)
	Level IV	(regular inflection)

This hypothesis is intended to replace Siegel's Level Ordering Hypothesis. Like Siegel's hypothesis it embodies the claim that affixation takes place at two linearly ordered levels, which are separated by the cyclic phonological rules. The Extended Level Ordering Hypothesis (ILOH) furthermore claims to explain the following observations: (a) the members of (English) root compounds such as houseboat and passion fruit behave like Class II affixes, in that they fail either to condition or to undergo the cyclic phonological rules; (b) such compounds cannot undergo Class I and Class II affixation (*[com [passion fruit]], *[[passion fruit] y]), and (c) they do accept regular inflection ([[house boat] s]).
The ELOH is of great importance in the development of the theory of Lexical Phonology/Morphology (e.g. Kiparsky (1982)). However, the claims of the ELOH have not remained unchallenged (e.g. Halle & Mohanan (1985), Halle & Vergnaud (1987)).

Link

Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics

References

• Halle, M. & J.-R. Vergnaud 1987. An Essay on Stress, Cambridge, MIT-Press.
• Halle, M. & K.P. Mohanan 1985. Segmental phonology of Modern English, Linguistic Inquiry 16, pp. 57-116
• Kiparsky, P. 1982. From Cyclic Phonology to Lexical Phonology, in: Hulst, H. van der and N. Smith (eds.) The Structure of Phonological Representations (I), pp.131-175