Morphological processes

There is little evidence of morphophonemic processes in Tok Pisin. Unlike Bislama, the -im suffix appears to be unchanged with differing root vowels. However, the case of epenthetic vowels separating consonant clusters described above may be worth investigating further. Pawley (1975) noted that a number of processes could be considered as possibilities for determining the nature of epenthetic vowels. The first is simply echoing an identical form of the stressed vowel, thus producing alternations such as the following:

However, in other cases, this could not explain the choice of vowel, as in

Similarly, clusters in final position may insert epenthetic vowels which differ from than the stressed vowel:

In cases such as these it appears that /i/ is inserted in certain specifically defined phonetic environments, for example, in final clusters where /s/ is one element, or vowels other than /a/, unless immediately followed by /i/ or /u/ (Pawley 1975: 224).