Non-concatenative allomorphy is generalized prosodic affixation: The case of Upriver Halkomelem

•The non-concatenative allomorphy in Upriver Halkomelem is best analysed as affixation of a segmentally empty prosodic foot.•Generalized Nonlinear Affixation is able to predict all kinds of non-concatenative morphology.•Alternative accounts based on some concept of RealizeMorpheme suffer from an economy and an overgeneration problem.

I argue that the continuative aspect in Upriver Halkomelem is marked by a morpheme consisting of a segmentally empty prosodic foot. Since there are different strategies to fill a prosodic foot with segmental material, such an analysis predicts the non-concatenative allomorphy between epenthesis, stress shift, vowel lengthening, and reduplication that we find in the continuative formation of Upriver Halkomelem. The analysis is situated in the line of research termed ‘Generalized Nonlinear Affixation’ by Bermúdez-Otero (2012) that strives to derive all instances of non-concatenative morphology without any additional assumptions simply from affixation of nonlinear phonological representations that are independently motivated.