The notion of the morpheme. Types of morphemes. Morphs and allomorphs

(a) One of the most widely used definitions of the morpheme is like this: ‘The morpheme is the smallest linear meaningful unit having a sound expression’. However, there are other definitions:

- L.Bloomfield: The morpheme is ‘a linguistic form which bears no partial resemblance to any other form’.

- B. De Courtenay: The morpheme is a generalized name for linear components of the word, i.e. the root and affixes.

- Prof. A.I.Smirnitsky: The morpheme is the smallest language unit possessing essential features of language, i.e. having both external (sound) and internal (notional) aspects.

(b) Morphemes, as it has been mentioned above, may include roots and affixes. Hence, the main types of morphemes are the root morpheme and the affix morpheme. There also exists the concept of the zero morpheme for the word-forms that have no ending but are capable of taking one in the other forms of the same category, which is not quite true for English.

As for the affix morpheme, it may include either a prefix or a suffix, or both. Since prefixes and many suffixes in English are used for word-building, they are not considered in theoretical grammar. It deals only with word-changing morphemes, sometimes called auxiliary or functional morphemes.

(c) An allomorph is a variant of a morpheme which occurs in certain environments. Thus a morpheme is a group of one or more allomorphs, or morphs.

The allomorphs of a certain morpheme may coincide absolutely in sound form, e.g. the root morpheme in ‘fresh’, ‘refreshment’, ‘freshen’, the suffixes in ‘speaker’, ‘actor’, the adverbial suffix in ‘greatly’, ‘early’. However, very often allomorphs are not absolutely identical, e.g. the root morpheme in ‘come-came’, ‘man-men’, the suffixes in ‘walked’, ‘dreamed’, ‘loaded’.