moglibymy

Moglibymy is a theoretical morphophonemic concept used in linguistics to describe a proposed pattern in which iterative reanalysis of morpheme boundaries during word formation can produce systematic phonological alternations that are not predictable from the current inventory of morphemes alone. The term is not established as an empirical phenomenon in real-world languages and is primarily used in speculative, pedagogical, or thought-experiment contexts.

Proponents describe moglibymy as arising in languages with rich affixation and cycles of morphosyntactic attachment, where affixes interact with vowel harmony, consonant mutation, or other phonological processes across generations of speakers. In such scenarios, a boundary between stem and affix can shift over time, leading to surface forms that differ by dialect, age cohort, or historical moment. This shifting can yield multiple related allophones for what is analytically a single morpheme.

Example: in a fictional language, a root tama- meaning “star” takes a plural suffix -ya. Under moglibymy, successive layers of affixation and phonological interaction can reattach the suffix in different phonological environments, producing surface forms such as tama-ya, tamaya, or tamy-a depending on surrounding vowels and historical conditions. The result is a set of related surface forms that defy straightforward prediction from the current morpheme set.

History and reception: Moglibymy was coined as a teaching device to illustrate how morphophonemic patterns might emerge through boundary reanalysis. It has been cited in discussions of language change and morphophonology as a hypothetical pointer to the kinds of processes that can complicate historical reconstruction, though it remains a speculative construct rather than an empirically verified phenomenon.