Summary of Phonolist responses Noah Elkins (last updated 1/24/20) The “prefix - suffix asymmetry” refers to the generalization that cross - linguistically, suffixes are much more likely than prefixes to be phonologically integrated (“cohere”) to their roots M y MA work aims to help the formalize this asymmetry by first c reating as comprehensive a typology as possible of this phenomenon ; this is to determine which phonological processes , and which languages and l anguage families are sensitive to this generalization I am thankful to those researchers who responded to my recent Phonolist post which solicited examples of languages which either conform to the generalization, or else provide counterexamples to it. This document will briefly summarize the responses I’ve r eceived. Paicî , an Oceanic language spoken on New Caledonia , has prefixes which do not get incorporated into the prosodic word of the root T he morphological prefix - root boundary is matched by a PrWd boundary , as evidenced by the presence of a PrWd - initial high tone on the first syllable of the prefixed root Prefixes are likewise not given a tonal specification from the root whereas suffixes are Non - tonal evidence also comes from vowel harmony, which affects and can be triggered by either root s and /or suffixes , but not prefixes. References : http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/36/abstract3469.html https://tinyurl.com/ruv2urr Balantak , an Austronesian language of Sulawesi, disregards prefixes for the purposes of stress assignment, however the root - suffix boundary does show more phonotactic possibilities (as evidenced by nasal and glottal stop alternations). This is argued to arise from constraints enforcing faithfulness at right - edges. References : https://tinyurl.com/rmnl7ph Kukuya , a Bantu language spoken in the People’s Republic of the Congo, treats prefixes as exterior to systems of lexical accent placement , and additionally are not included in lexical tone patterns. Prefixes are only sensitive to tonal interactions post - lexically 1 References : https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/BF00134552.pdf European Portuguese , the variety of Portuguese spoken primarily in Portugal , demonstrates that the left - right edge asymmetry typically considered as just applying to prefixes and suffixes also extends to clitics. Among EP clitics, which are all less phonologically cohesive than true affixes , p roclitics are nonetheless less cohesive than enclitics , as diagnosed by stress and vowel reduction References : http://www.bermudez - otero.com/bermudez - otero&luis.pdf http://www.bermudez - otero.co m/Brugmann7.pdf The prefix - suffix asymmetry has also been argued to be a stem - word asymmetry, necessitating the (re - )introduction of the Phonological Stem (PStem) into the prosodic hierarchy . The PStem must include the root and any suffixes, and provides a formalization of the fact that in many languages, there is a distinction between stem - bounded and word - bounded phonology. Case studies are provided from the languages Limbu (Sino - Tibetan, Nepal ) and Shona (Bantu, Zimba bwe) Reference s : Downing, Laura J. & Maxwell Kadenge (accepted). Re - placing the PStem in the Prosodic Hierarchy. The Linguistic Review 2 1 For a description of similar systems among Bantu languages more generally , please see : Hyman, Larry (2008). Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu. Linguistics 42(2), 309 - 350. http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman/papers/2008 - hyman - directional.pdf 2 As this paper has not yet been published, online access is no t pub licly available