Lexical phonology Levels

English has between two and four levels of morphology in the lexicon. The levels within the lexicon are ordered so that, to get to Level 3 from Level 1, a word must pass through Level 2. A word cannot go back to a previous level once it has left one level and gone on to another level.Halle and Mohanan propose the following four levels of morphology in the lexicon:

• Level 1: Class 1 derivation, irregular inflection
• Level 2: Class 2 derivation
• Level 3: Compounding
• Level 4: Regular inflection