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In linguistics, an alternation is the phenomenon of a phoneme or morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant. The variation may be conditioned by the phonological, morphological, and/or syntactic environment in which the morpheme finds itself.
Alternations provide linguists with data that allow them to determine the allophones and allomorphs of a language's phonemes and morphemes and to develop analyses determining the distribution of those allophones and allomorphs.
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An example of a phonologically conditioned alternation is the English plural marker commonly spelled s or es.[1] This morpheme is pronounced [s], [z], or [ɪz], depending on the nature of the preceding sound.
An example of a morphologically conditioned alternation is found in French, where many adjectives have a consonant at the end in the feminine gender that is missing in the masculine:[2]
Syntactically conditioned alternations can be found in the Insular Celtic languages, where words undergo various initial consonant mutations depending on their syntactic position.[3] For example, in Irish, an adjective undergoes lenition after a feminine singular noun:
In Welsh, a noun undergoes soft mutation when it is the direct object of a finite verb: