ABSTRACT
In writing the previous Units of this book, I’ve made myself take very great care to select examples avoiding one major complication. Almost every example given so far is capable of neat analysis into separate morphemes with fixed shapes and clear boundaries (but note Exercise 7.12). However, it very common in most languages for morphemes to turn up in different shapes. Consider this example of a morpheme being pronounced in more than one way. The English verb LOVE has a derived noun-form LOVER. This has the suffix -ER which is found in very many other such derivatives: WASHER, BUILDER, HOUSEHUNTER, and so on. But when the -ER is added, what happens to the base? It loses its final -e, leaving just lov-. This fact, the appearance of a morpheme in more than one shape, is called ALLOMORPHY. (We can analyse this term: ALLO-is a bound root morpheme meaning ‘variant’, MORPH is a morpheme meaning ‘form’, as we know well by now, and -Y is a noun-forming suffix meaning something like ‘state, condition’, as in ORTHODOXY; so allomorphy is ‘the state of having variants in form’.) Each variant is called an ALLOMORPH. In this Unit we’ll start by looking at allomorphy with regard to spelling, then go on to allomorphy with regard to pronunciation. Allomorphy Allomorph Divide the following words up into their constituent morphemes. You need to do that before you can work out which ones come in different forms.
