Re: Declension Help

Adam F. wrote:
> What is an allomorph?
>
a. A _morpheme_ is a minimal unit of meaning, not further analyzable.
b. An allomorph is a variant form of a morpheme, often required for
phonological reasons, but not always.

Exs.: Morpheme: all non-compound words; all grammatical affixes and
particles.  So "dog" is a morpheme, dog+plural is 2 morphemes, realized
regularly as dog+s, prounounced [dOgz]. You could refer either (1) to the
morpheme {plural} which in Engl. has 3 regular allomorphs ( [s, z, @z] )
determined by the phonetic environment (respectively, voiceless final stop,
voiced final/vowel, preceding sibiliant/affricate), and several irregular
allomorphs: -en in a few words (ox-, child-**), vowel change (man/men),
i/ae/a in a few Latin loans, and zero (sheep) etc.
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**note that {child} has the allomorph {childr-} in the plural
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Or (2) you could refer to it as some abstract phonological unit, say {S} or
{Z}, which then undergoes regular/irregular realizations.

Note that Romance languages have compound morphemes, that include both
number, and usually gender: Span. -o is singular/masculine, -a
sing./feminine; there are also zero morphemes (I.e. those words that don't
end in -o/a.)

English has a few of these: I '1st pers.sing/nom.' me '1st/sing/acc, dat.',
my '1st sing./poss.

Latin combines _case_: -us is nom/masc/sing; -arum is gen/fem/pl. etc.

Although I've used nouns as exs., Engl. and Romance verbs are notorious for
haveing irregular allomorphs.

This is somewhat oversimplified, but I hope you see what I mean. I'd imagine
Wikipedia has a lot to say on the subject; also, try googling.

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