modificationsregular

Modificationsregular is a theoretical category in morphology and morphophonology used to describe a class of modifications that are productive and governed by regular rules across a language. It denotes the uniform alterations applied to stems to form inflected or derived forms, including affixation and certain phonological adjustments that occur in predictable ways.

Characteristics of modificationsregular include productivity, regular conditioning by phonological or syntactic context, and broad cross-linguistic distribution. Analysts treat these modifications as rule-governed processes, often represented by a finite set of morphophonological or derivational rules. They are distinguished from irregular modifications, whose realizations cannot be predicted from the base form alone.

Examples commonly cited as instances of modificationsregular include English plural formation with -s (cat → cats) and past tense with -ed (walk → walked), vowel harmony and suffixation in Turkish plural formation with -lar/-ler, and the regular formation of adjectives and adverbs with common suffixes such as -ful and -ly in many languages.

In typology and computational morphology, the concept helps map where regular modification rules operate and how they interact with allomorphy, productivity, and phonotactics. It provides a framework for distinguishing systematic, rule-based changes from idiosyncratic forms and supports rule-based stemming and lemmatization in language technologies.