Chapter 9Allomorphy: Books with more than one cover

Morphology

Lane 333

Allomorphy

It’s very common in most languages for morphemes to turn up in different shapes

Allomorphy: the appearance of a morpheme in more than one shape (the state of having variants in form); e.g. ‘love’ ‘lover’; adding –er to lov

Allo: a bound morpheme meaning ‘variant’ Morph: means ‘form’ Y: noun-forming suffix meaning ‘state, or condition’ allomorphs: are variants of the same phoneme

Alternation Some words contain morphemes which are related by

allomorphy (the base –forms are not spelt in the same way)

The letters distinguish the pairs of allomorphs alternate with each other

For example, ‘sheep’ & ‘shepherd’ -ee- & -e- alternate (alternation) Sheep/shep (allomorphs/ alternants) Other examples, ‘pig’ & ‘piggy’, ‘long’ & ‘length’, ‘divide’ & division’

Alternations (allomorphy)

Base/Bas-IC State/stat-IC Decide/decis-ion

‘class’ ‘classy’ NOT related by allomorphy ‘comedy’ ‘comic’ NOT related by allomorphy Exercises (9.4, 9.5, 9.6)

Distribution & Process

Allomorphs have different distribution (that one allomorph occurs under certain conditions while the other occurs under different conditions)

Process: a rule which affects an allomorph & makes it into something else.

e.g. ‘carry’ & ‘carrier’ (if a suffix is added to a

base or stem ending in –y, the –y is changed to –i-

Process

Exercise 9.7 Why do some words have a single

consonant-letter in the spelling & others a double one? As in ‘stop’, ‘stopping’; ‘slim’, ‘slimming’

Single consonants are basic while double

ones occur in certain conditions (at the boundary between two morphemes where the vowel sound in the first one is short).

Process

Exercise 9.8 Words with –ing are segmented after the pair of

double letters

There is allomorphy of the stem; i.e. the stem appears in more than one form (e.g. stop & stopp-)

If the boundary is made between the consonants, that make the second instance a part of the suffix (e.g. – *ping, - *bing)

Principled Allomorphy

Allomorphy is related to principles of the structure of the language we are investigating

It’s a general fact about English spelling that –ITY

can’t be added to a base ending in –e; e.g. ‘sane’ & ‘sanity’

Some spelling-allomorphy is completely general ( no exception to the rule)

Stems must not end in a consonant-letter plus –e when the suffix –ing is added (bake, baking)

Casual Allomorphy

Casual allomorphy occurs when allomorphy can’t be explained by the structure

When a pronunciation-based reason for the differences is disappeared

Casual Allomorphy

Exercise 9.9

Nouns with – ve in the plural follow an old pattern

All words which are in –f has lost allomorphy- there is no difference between stem form of the singular & plural (e.g. ‘roof’ & ‘roofs)

English has no rule demanding the singular noun with – f (e) & plural nouns –ve

(when there is allomorphy for NO structural reason, change in the language tends to remove it)

Written & spoken allomorphy

Spoken allomorphy is possible

For example, In ‘sign’ & ‘signature’ ,(the root is spelt the

same, but it’s not pronounced the same)

There is spoken allomorphy, but not written

‘create’ & ‘creation’

More about explaining allomorphy Consider the negative prefix / in-/ in these

words: Interminable, imbalance, ingratitude, /in-/ before homorganic sounds /im-/ before bilabial sounds /iŋ/ before velar consonants

(-in shows allomorphy)

Allomorphy of spoken forms (plurals) Consider the data in 9.5

Plural nouns end in:

1. /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats)

2. /z/ after voiced sounds (dogs)

3. /ɪz/ after (s, z, tʃ, dʒ) (churches )

Exercises

9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17