Allomorphs of the Formation of
Plurals in English
1. Introduction to Morphemes and Allomorphs
Morphemes are the smallest unit of a word. There are two main types of morphemes: free morphemes and bound morphemes.
Free morphemes can stand alone as individual words, such as “dog” and “book”. Lexical morphemes and function morphemes belong to Free morphemes. Lexical morphemes are the content of our utterances. Function morphemes have a grammatical role, which connects the words together within and across sentences.
Bound morphemes cannot stand alone as individual words. Derivational morphemes and Inflectional morphemes belong to Bound morphemes. Derivational morphemes, such as ‘pre-’ and ‘-able’, help to create new words by adding affixes which can change the lexical category (part of speech) of a word. Inflectional morphemes serve a grammatical role in language and do not create new words in a language, such as ‘-s’ for third person singular and ‘-ing’ for present participle.
Allomorphs are one or more complementary morphs, each of which is different phonetic realizations of a morpheme.
2. Standard Plural Suffix in English
The importance of understanding allomorphs in English plural formation lies in the fact that the difference pronunciation occurs depending on the ending of the word.
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3. Standard English Plural Suffix (in spelling) and its Allomorphic Variants
In English, as the data presented in Table 1, the standard plural forms can end with ‘-s’ or ‘-es’, representing the inflectional morpheme '-s', and this morpheme has three allomorphs: [s], [z], and [ǝz].
In terms of English spelling, the inflectional morpheme ‘-s’ is attached to the end of nouns, such as “books”. However, there are specific rules governing its usage:
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Some nouns ending with ‘-f’ or ‘–fe’ change the voiceless sound /f/ to the voiced /v/ before adding ‘-es’ to form their plural, such as “leaves”, which results in the allomorph [z].
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When a noun ends in ‘y’ preceded by a consonant, the ‘y’ changes to ’i’ and ‘-es’ is added to form the plural form, such as “babies”, which results in the allomorph [z].
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Some nouns ending with –o add ‘-es’ to form the plural, such as “potatoes”.
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If the end of the noun is a sibilant it adds ‘-es’ to form the plural, such as “dishes”, which results in the allomorph [ǝz].
The pronunciation of the plural morpheme, spelled as ‘-s’ or ‘-es’, is determined by phonological conditions. It means that the phonological context decides the choice of allomorphs (i.e., [s], [z], and [ǝz]) for plural formation in English:
1. [s] occurs when ‘-s’ follows a voiceless consonant, such as in “books”.
2. [z] occurs when ‘-s’ or ‘-es’ follows a voiced sound except a sibilant, such as in “dogs”.
3. [ǝz] occurs when ‘-es’ follows a sibilant, such as in “watches”.
4. Exceptions and Irregular Plurals
Irregular plural nouns are nouns that do not follow the standard pattern by adding ‘-s’ or ‘-es’ to form plurals, as most nouns do. For example, “goose” becomes ”geese” and “person” becomes “people”, which exemplify irregular plurals.
There are some exceptions to the pluralization rules. For example, words borrowed from foreign languages, including musical terms simply add ‘-s’ such as “taco – tacos” in Spanish. Words that are short forms of longer words simply add ‘-s’, such as “photograph(photo) – photos”.
5. Conclusion
In conclusion, free morphemes and bound morphemes have distinct meanings. Inflectional morphemes, particularly in the context of English plurals, are closely connected to this concept. Plural forms such as ‘-s’ and ‘-es’ are examples of inflectional morphemes that exhibit three allomorphs: [z], [s] and [əz]. The usage of these allomorphs in English plurals is strictly phonologically conditioned and follows a specific order.