Allomorph Inflection and Noun Plural Morpheme free essay sample

Different allomorph of the root may be used depending on the grammatical word of which it forms part. We will illustrate this by contrasting the base form, the past form and the past participle form of the following verbs: Base Past tense Past participle a. jump call He jump-ed yesterday. He call-ed yesterday. He has jump-ed. He has call-ed . b. ride drive He rode yesterday. He drove yesterday He has ridden. He has driven. c. sing stink She sang yesterday. She stank yesterday. She has sung. She has stunk. 2. 1 In [a] regular verb stems like â€Å"jump† remain unchanged all three columns. The formation of the past tense and the past participle is simply accomplished by the suffixation –ed. This contrasts with the verb in [b] and [c] where the grammatical word that is realised by the word-form dictates the allomorph of the stem that is used. Thus in [b] we see the base form â€Å"ride† (as in I ride). We will write a custom essay sample on Allomorph: Inflection and Noun Plural Morpheme or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page But if â€Å"ride† is in the past tense it must be realised as rode and if it is past participle that is required, then the form selected is ridden. Similarly, in [c] the base form of sing is sing (as in I sing). But if â€Å"sing† is in the past tense, it must be realised as sang and if it is in the past participle that is required, then the form selected is sung, and so on. This is a case of the selection allomorph of the root being solely conditioned by grammatical factors. Hence it is called grammatical conditioning. 3. The lexically-conditioned allomorph: The selection of inflectional affixes may be determined by the presence of a particular lexical root morpheme. Hence this is called lexical conditioning. A classic example pf this in English is the way in which â€Å"ox† forms its plural as â€Å"oxen† rather than â€Å"oxes†. Phonologically and grammatically comparable words like fox ? foxes and box ? boxes from their plurals using the regular /-z/ suffix. In the phonology and grammar of modern English, there is nothing that explain why ox has oxen as its plural. The suffix –en singles out this particular word. In other words, -en is a lexically conditioned allomorph of the plural morpheme. Our final example involves nouns which remain unchanged in the plural: Singular Plural sheep sheep deer deer equipment equipment aircraft aircraft 2. 2 If a farmer said to you: I have just lost one sheep but my neighbor has lost 200 sheep this year, you would know that sheep is singular in â€Å"one sheep† but plural in â€Å"200 sheep† although the same word-form â€Å"sheep† in both cases. The plural of sheep and other words of the ilk is formed by adding a zero suffix, as it were. In spite of absence of any overt number marking, such nouns can function as plurals. A child acquiring English needs to recognise and memorise, word by word, the set of noun which take zero, rather than the suffix /-z/ because the distribution of the zero plural suffix is lexically-conditioned. . Suppletion: madness without method. Occasionally, there is no method in the madness. This is so tiny minority of cases when suppletion takes place. Then the choice of the allomorphs of a root morpheme that serve in different grammatical contexts is phonological arbitrary: the allomorphs in question bear no phonological resemblance to each o ther. That is what happens in the case of the verb â€Å"go†, which has â€Å"went† as its past tense form and â€Å"gone† as its past participle. The form â€Å"good†, â€Å"better† and â€Å"best† which belong to the adjective â€Å"good† also show suppletion since the relationship between the morphs representing the root morpheme is phonological arbitrary. It would plainly make no sense to claim that there is single underlying representation in the dictionary from which â€Å"go† and â€Å"went† or â€Å"good† and â€Å"better are derived. The best we can do as to content ourselves with listing these allomorphs together under the same entry in the dictionary. Normally, the word-forms representing the same lexeme show some phonetic similarity (see [2. ] for example). However, when suppletion occurs, the word-form that realised a lexeme bears no reasonable resemblance to the other word-forms representing the same lexeme. Mercifully, the majority of words follow general rules (for example adding the suitable phonologically conditioned allomorph of the plural /-z/ suffix) and wor d-forms belonging to the same lexeme are phonologically similar to some degree. Acquiring a language for the most part involves working out these general rules rather than using brute force to commit morphemes and their allomorphs to memory. III. Summary: The selection of allomorph to use on a given occasion ma be conditioned by phonological, grammatical, or lexical factors. Normally, phonological conditioning is due to assimilation: the allomorph that occurs in a particular context is the one that is most similar to the sounds found in neighboring forms. However, the choice of allomorph is sometimes grammatically conditioned. If a root morpheme occurs in a particular grammatical word, then it must have a certain specified allomorph.