Morphological processes not covered by the above conventions comprise transfixation, internal modification, metathesis, subtraction and suprasegmental processes. These are like infixation in not being peripheral to the base, but they differ from it in that the grammatical meaning in question is not associated with a single string of segments which, if subtracted, leaves the base. The notation recommended here distinguishes them from the other morphological processes, but not from each other. Such a morph can hardly be signaled in the L1 representation. Its gloss follows the gloss of the base, separated by a backslash.

An example of transfixation is the Arabic broken plural, as in bujūt (house\PL) ‘houses’. Apophony, metaphony, e.g. German säng-e (sing\IRR-1/3.SG) ‘I/he would sing’, and tone shift, as in Yucatec Maya haats’ (beat\INTROV) ‘beat (unspec. object)’ are treated in the same way.

Rule 21. A grammatical meaning coded by a non-segmentable morphological process (transfixation, internal modification, metathesis, subtraction, suprasegmental process) is not identified in the L1 representation. Its gloss follows the gloss of the base, separated by a backslash (\).