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Unit 21: Morphology: Morph, Morpheme, Allomorph

illustrated by the example of meet and meat, and cases in which a single morpheme is represented Notes
now by one phonemic shape, now by another. For example, the English plural mor-pheme is
represented by various allophones such as/s/,/-z/,/-iz/. Therefore the morphophonemics of a
language is never trivial; any systematic description o any language should cover it. According to
Hockett, the morphophonemic system is “the code which ties together the grammatical and the
phonological system.”
We will speak about morphophonemic changes and morphological processes in the chapter entitled
“Language Change” in this book.

Many would agree which the view: ‘Morphology, syntax, and lexicology interpenetrate
because every synchronic fact is identical. No line of demarcation can be drawn in advance.
Recently, Generative grammarians too have abolished the morphological component of
the linguistic theory. But we in this book have not followed any school of linguistics.
Our purpose is to offer insights into its varied developments and trends; hence this
discussion on ‘Morphology’ to facilitate the study of language.

21.10 Summary

• Morphology is the study of the ways and methods of grouping sounds into sound-complexes
or words, of definite, distinct, conventional meaning. Bloomfield calls it the study of the
constructions in which sound forms appear among the constituents. Broadly speaking,
morphology is the study of the patterns of word-forms. It studies how the words are formed,
where they originate from, what their grammatical forms are, what the functions of prefixes
and suffixes in the formation of words are, on what basis the parts of speech of a particular
language are formed, how the systems of gender, number, plural, etc. function, and how and
why the word-forms change.
• Morphology is not only the synchronic study of word-forms but is also the study of the history
and development of word-forms. So it is both a synchronic (in a given time) and a diachronic
(across time) study of the word-forms. When it is only synchronic, it is called morphemics.
• The morphological analysis is the observation and description of the grammatical elements in
a language by studying their form and function, their phonological variants, and their
distribution and mutual relationships within larger stretches of speech. It may be either
synchronic or diachronic, or may be both synchronic and diachronic.
• Morphemes may or may not have meaning, may or may not have a phonological representation,
[un-] has a negative meaning in unfriendly, unhealthy, unable, unemployed and many other
words, but is meaningless in under. {-er} has a constant meaning in teacher, heater, reader,
writer, speaker, pointer, leader, etc. But it would be difficult to pin down any constant meaning
for spect in respect, inspect, circumspect, for pro in protest, professor, prospective, process,
proceed, etc. In plural words like sheep, fish we have two morphemes in each words; the first
morpheme in each case has a phonological representation but the second one has no phonological
representation and is called zero morpheme. Morphologically the plural noun sheep is [sheep]+{
}, that is to say that the word ‘sheep’ is made up of two morphemes sheep plus a plural
morpheme which is present in the meaning but is not physically present in spelling or
pronunciation.
• Any phonetic shape or representation of a phoneme is a morph (Hockett). Each morph, like
each phone, or each person or each day, happens only once and then it is gone. To quote John
Lyons, “When the word can be segmented into parts, these segments are referred to as morphs.”
Thus the words shorter is analyzable in two morphs, which can be written orthographically as
short and er, and in phonological transcription /f t/ and / /. Each morph represents a
particular morpheme, but each morpheme does not have a morph. For example, the plural
e
e
noun sheep has one morph, but it has two morphemes [sheep] and [ ] went has one morph, but
two morpheme [go] and [ed.]

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