ABSTRACT
Martinet's critique notwithstanding, many discussions of supposedly 'morphonological' phenomena have continued to appear. Wurzel defines morphonology as a 'field of tension between morphological and phonological naturalness', and claims that: 'the range of morphonology begins where the phonological naturalness of a Phonological Rule gets restricted in any way.' Matthews challenges Martinet's synchronic dichotomy between morphological and phonological alternation by identifying a set of phenomena in Classical Latin which clearly form part of a morphological description, yet are partly synchronically explicable in phonological terms. A rule is deemed morphonological to the extent that it attains a degree both of phonological and of morphological 'naturalness', where naturalness is measured by the rule's efficiency in fulfilling the fundamental functions of supporting linguistic production and perception. The semiotic principles invoked in the analysis of morphological naturalness are extended to phonological theory, with the expressed aim of defining a domain of metatheoretical interaction between principles of phonology and morphology.
