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Unit 21: Morphology: Morph, Morpheme, Allomorph

Note that a similar explanation can be offfered for forms such as went, took which represent Notes
go+past tense
take+past tence
21.6 Problem of Morphemic Cutting

Different problems of morphemic divison are presented by words such as plate,late/ate, etc. Should
the linguist divide them as/pl/+/eit/and/eit/ on the basis of the morpheme [ate]? If he does so on
a basis, he can go wrong, and may destroy the meaning. He is baffled where to place the right cutting.
Occasionally problems of still another kind can arise, as in cran-berry, blackberry, strawberry etc .At
the first sight such words appear to consist of two morphemes: cran-berry rasp-berry, black-berry,
straw-berry. On second sight it is difficult to justify cran and rasp—as independent morphemes but
it is possible to establish (black) (straw), and (berry) as independent morphomes in case of blackberry
and strawberry. Cranberry along with words such as respberry, represents the so called ‘cranberry
morph’ problem.
A similar problem is raised by the English wh- and th- words: where-there, when-then, whither-
thither. Should these be analysed as two mor-phemes, wh-ere, the-ere and so on? Perhaps this would
be a good solution if there were only wh-words English possessed. The situation is complicated by
the existence of who, why, which cannot be divided, it may be more satisfactory to keep where,
when, whither as single morphemes also.
There are numerous problems of other nature too. Hence morphemic cutting is not as simple as it
seems to be. Many a linguist would not be happy with concepts like the replacive morpheme, the
zero morpheme and the zero allomorph. There are some languages in which several meaning categories
are represented by single stretch of speech. The correspondence then is one to many between form
and meaning. This is called syncreticism. Then there are homophonous forms. There is always a
possiblity of over or under analysis. Because of these pitfalls, linguists have begun to doubt whether
they can describe the arrangement of morphemes of an unknown language, and whether it is correct
to go on from the phonological level to the morphological level with the ultimate goal of describing
the syntax and semantics of a language. Chomsky, for example, abolished the morphological
component in his revised model of transformational grammar in Aspects of a Theory of Syntax
(1965) and merged morphology with phonology. Others would like to merge it with syntax; some
others would look for a new name such as “ Wordology” or Lexicology to account for words as well
as morphemes. Nevertheless, the area of morphology is one in which languages tend to display a
considerable amount of irregularity.

21.7 Classification of Morphemes

Lexical and Grammatical Morphemes

Ronald W. Langacker in his book Lanaguage and its Structure has divided morphemes into two
classes: lexical and grammatical. Lexical mor-phemes are forms like boy, write, paper and pen.
Grammatical morphemes are forms like some, with, a, an, the, to, and from. Lexical morphemes
are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They have more or less independent meaning, so that one
or a series of lexical forms in isolation can be fairly meaningful. Pen suggests something quite definite
to us, as do boy, paper and write. Lexical morphemes are very large in a language; the number may
go up to ten millions as in English. Grammatical morphemes are elements like prepositions, articles,
conjunctions, forms indicating number, gender or tense, and so on. Grammatical morphemes, by and
large, do not change frequently: new members in their family in any language are added rather
infrequently. But lexical morphemes go on changing freqquently; new members are added to the
lexicon quite often.
However, the distinction between lexical and grammatical morphemes is artificial and inadequate.
‘Hood’ is lexical morpheme in she wears a hood, but is not so in boyhood. Prepositions are classed as
grammatical morphemes, yet they are not all empty of semantic content. Even small grammatical

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