Faculty of Arts

English Department
Morphology
Talib M. Sharif Omer
Asst. Lecturer,
Talib.Omer@soran.edu.iq

December13, 2015
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Outline
Infixes and types of infixes
Morphs and allomorphs
Quality of morphemes

:Infixes
Infixes are bound morphemes that have
been inserted within a word.
They have two types:
1-Addition: for example get at able from able
where the preposition at get is kept as infix
in able as adjective, although the preposition
is removed like accountable from (account
for). However, in English morphology this
rarely happens.
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:Infixes
2-Replacement: This type of infixes in
English language is most commonly used.
They occur in a few nouns plural for
example, goose becomes geese.
It also happens in some irregular past
tense participle, such as chose, choose.
The verb chose {o} is replacing double
{oo} of choose. All of this is called
replacement or replacive allomorph.
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:Allomorphs
Allomorphs are defined in different
ways but all of them have the same
purpose of allomorphs.
For example, Scotthuranbery (2009)
defined that allomorphs are variants of
a morpheme.
Apparently, an allomorph is any 2 or 3
morphemes that have the same purpose
but are spelt or sound differently.
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Types of Allomorphs:
Allomorphs have different types:
Phonological conditioned allomorph:
For example, English morpheme(s) can appear /s/
as in books. /z/ as in dogs, /iz/ as in boxes.
Or e.g. {D pt} this morpheme has three phonemic
forms: such as wanted (id), ended helped (t) m
and opened(d).
Each of these three pronunciations is allomorphs of
the same morpheme.
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:Types of Allomorphs
Morphological and syntactical conditioned
allomorphs.

if (ed ) has three allomorphs, is this is all? Then

what about spoke? How do we count?
Obviously, that this is called replacement or
replacive allomorph.
But zero allomorph for some irregular verbs
whose present, past tens forms are the same. For
example, put, becomes put, and some
nounssheep, sheep or fish, fish.
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Types of Allomorphs
differences is shown in the following
Phonological
conditioned Morphological& syntactical
table.

allomorph

conditioned allomorph

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

1.
2.
3.
4.

/z/ beds, knees

/s/ parents, books
/iz/ houses,
/t/ helped
/d/ consumed
/id/ wanted, landed
/dis/ disagree, discount,
disbelieve

Feet, gees,, mice

Knife , knives , deep, depth
En, oxen, children,.
Zero allomorph, deer, sheep,
and
Some irregular vebs, put,
put,put.
5. Sume changes to Consume ,
consumption, or

Types of Allomorphs
Note,
zero allomorph refers to invisible affix
by a specific meaning, such as fish and
cut.

Morphs
According to Katamba(2007)
Morph is a physical form representing some
morphemes in a language which it recurrent
distinctive sounds.
Amorphis considered apiece that denotes
one morphemein sound or writing. For
example, the worddisrespected is made up
of three morphs--dis-, respect -ed- each of
which represents one morpheme.
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Morphs
So there are morphs / id/ d/ t/ which
represent regular past tense of
morpheme/ ed/ in the past tense this is
called complementary distribution.
Morphs tend to be complementary
distribution.
How?

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Types of Morphs
Generally , there is two types of morphs :
Free morph: is the morph that refers
directly to objects and other pieces of
real word. E.g . dog, walk, table.
Bound morph: the morph that has been
modifying the meaning of the lexical
morphs by adding them . e.g. ( un, re,
d, ent, ly, ize. tion ,dis, ment).
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Types of Morphs
For example,
disbelieve'/ disbili:v/
Morphs
Dis/dis/
Believe/ beli:v/.
Thus, every single phonetic symbol of
morpheme is named morph.
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:Suppletion
Suppletion some grammatical
functions are not represented by
inflectional endings.
e.g.
good, better, am, is, are become
were, was.

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:Homophones
Homophones: phonologically, they are
words that have the same pronunciations but
in different meaning and different spelling.
For example,
right, ride, write, rite.
Similarly in morphology they happened
differently and in different morphemes.
For example, meat, and meet, or he
feels/z/excited, these birds /z/are beautiful.
Ahmed's bag/z/.
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Quality of morpheme:
Special morpheme quality is found in
bound morpheme is called bound
root morpheme quality.
So special morpheme quality has
lexical meanings when they are
attached to another bound
morpheme to form a content word.

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:Quality of morpheme
Is cran affix in cranberry?
No

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:Quality of morpheme
While roots can be free but not all roots are free.
many roots are incapable of occurring in
isolation they always occur with some others.
For example,
A: mit as in remit, commit, admit.
B:ceive as in perceive, receive , conceive ,
deceive.
C:Pred, as in predate, predatory.
D: sed: sedate, sedan, sedentary .
E: Cran, cranberry
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Exercise:1
In the following groups of words underline each
infixes.
1-Find, found, found.
2- write, wrote, written,
3- ring, rang, rung.
4-foot,feet,
5- tooth, teeth.
6- mouse. Mice.
7- child, children.
8-Speak, spoke, spoken.
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Exercise:1
Answers
1-Find, found, found.
2- write, wrote, written,
3- ring, rang, rung.
4-foot,feet,
5- tooth, teeth.
6- mouse. Mice.
7- child, children.
8-Speak, spoke, spoken.
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Exercise:2
Explain why Allomorphs of the
indefinite article :a/ an has one
morpheme?

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Ends and Thanks

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References
-Aronoff (2009) what is morphology. Cambridge:
Cambridge university Press.
-Hartmann, R.R.K., and F.C. Stork.
1972.Dictionary of language and
linguistics.London: Applied Science.
- Francis,K., Stonham,A. (2006) Modern
Linguistics: Morphology. 2nd (ed) Palgrave:
Macmillan Press.
https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-ab
out-linguistics/branches/morphology/what-is-morph
ology
http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/Morph.htm
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