Allomorph and zero-allomorph

1. Allomorph

Allomorph is variant form of morpheme about the sounds and phonetic symbols but it doesn’t change the meaning. There are three types of allomorph, phonologically, morphologically and lexically conditioned allomorph. 

1.    Phonologically conditioned allomorph

The choice of allomorph is predictable on the basis of the pronounciation

·       Allomorph of the indefinite article : an (before vowels, ex : an elephant) and a (before consonant, ex : a dog) both of them have meaning one,single.

·       Allomorphs of the regular past tense morpheme

1. /id/ after d,t : hated
2. /t/ after all other voiceless sounds : picked
3. /d/ after all other voiced sounds : wedged
4. /im/ before bilabial sounds : impossible
5. /il/ before consonant /l/ : illegal
6. /in/ elsewhere : independent

• Some allomorph of the negative prefix in-

2.    Morphologically conditioned allomorph

The choice of allomorph is determined by particular morphemes, not just by their pronounciation, ex : the morpheme –sume in changes to –sumpt- in (consume = consumption)

3.    Lexically conditioned allomorph

The choice of allomorph is unpredictable, thus memorized on a word by word basis, ex : ox –plural- oxen, sheep-plural- sheep.

There are examples of allomorph.

Example :

Three different allomorphs

Cats /s/

Dogs/z/

Boxes/iz/

One different allomorphs

Disagreement /dis/

Discount /dis/

Disbelieve /dis/

 Two different allomorphs

Voiced /d/

Walked /t/

Stopped /t/

Kicked /t/

Note : allomorph occur at every morpheme, ex : agree (one morpheme, one allomorph
)

So, allomorph is variant form of a morpheme about the sounds and phonetic symbol but it doesn’t change the meaning. Allomorph has different in pronounciation and spelling according to their condition. It means that allomorph will have different sound, pronounciation or spelling in different condition.

2. Zero-Allomorph

 

References :

https://wiegecko.wordpress.com/2012/03/24/morph-and-allomorph/ 

http://www.slideshare.net/cuoila/linguistic-0608-office-2003