ABSTRACT
Morphological change is only special in the sense that it is change affecting the morphology of a language. It consists simply of the playing out of the general mechanisms of linguistic change within this particular component of the grammar, not in the working of distinctive processes specific to this domain. More central to the topic of morphological change is the fact that systematic regularities can arise historically in a variety of ways. Originally phonological alternations can become part of the morphology when they become opaque, or unnatural. The most commonly cited example of such a shift from phonology into the morphology of a language is provided by the history of Umlaut alternations in the Germanic languages. The formation of not is not per se an instance of the emergence of morphology from syntax, but it illustrates a general path that can have that result when one of the original forms that combine marks morphological properties.
