Chapter 9 Allomorphy: Books with more than one cover

1. Chapter 9Allomorphy: Books with more than one cover Morphology Lane 333

2. 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

3. 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’

4. 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)

5. 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-

6. 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).

7. 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)

8. 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)

9. Casual Allomorphy • Casual allomorphy occurs when allomorphy can’t be explained by the structure • When a pronunciation-based reason for the differences is disappeared

10. 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)

11. 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’

12. 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)

13. Allomorphy of spoken forms (plurals) • Consider the data in 9.5 • Plural nouns end in: • /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats) • /z/ after voiced sounds (dogs) • /ɪz/ after (s, z, tʃ, dʒ) (churches )

14. Exercises • 9.14 • 9.15 • 9.16 • 9.17