What is an allomorph?

Definition
	An allomorph is one of two or more complementary morphs which manifest a morpheme in its different phonological or morphological environments.

Discussion
	The allomorphs of a morpheme are derived from phonological rules and any morphophonemic rules that may apply to that morpheme.

Examples (English)
	The plural morpheme in English, usually written as '-s', has at least three allomorphs:
	[-s] as in [hQts] 'hats' [-z] as in [d&u0254;gz] 'dogs' [«z] as in [bŒks«z] 'boxes'

Generic
	An allomorph is a kind of
	What is a morph?

See also
	Comparison of morpheme-morph-allomorph and phoneme-phone-allophone

Sources
	Hartmann and Stork 1972 10
	Crystal 1985 13
	Payne, T. 1997a:23

Context for this page:

Concept module: allomorph
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): A
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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