[…] the morphemic segment ‘male’ which consists of dropping /r/ occurs after 'fermière' […], while that which consists of dropping /t/ occurs after 'chatte', 'poulette'. All these are complementary as to the morphemes after which they occur; and we can recognize from the phonemic form of the preceding morphemic environment which member of the ‘male’ morpheme occurs: if the preceding morpheme ends in /t/, the morpheme ‘male’ consists in dropping /t/, and so on. In the morpheme {drop final phoneme} ‘male’, we can tell which member segment occurs in each environment from the phoneme which precedes that morpheme.
- Harris (1951), a pag.209