Allomorphs and Their Distributions

Allomorphs and Their Distributions
Allomorphs is many morphemes which have two or more different form but has the similar meaning. The example of allomorph itself is divided into some kinds.

• 
  THE –S SUFFIX :
  

1. 
   when the preceding sound is a sibilant (the kind of ‘hissing’ or ‘hushing’ sound heard at the end of Horses : /[hɔːrs][Iz]/ , Roses : /[roʊz][Iz]/ , Bushes : /[bʊʃ][Iz]/ , Churches : /[tʃɝːtʃ][Iz]/ ,Judge : /[dʒʌdʒ][Iz]/ the [Iz]allomorph occurs.
   
2. 
   otherwise, when the preceding sound is voiceless, i.e. produced with no vibration of the vocal folds in the larynx Cats : /[kæt][s]/ ,Rocks : /[rɑːk][s]/ ,cups : /[kʌp][s]/ ,Cliffs : /[klɪf]/ the [s] allomorph occurs
   
3. 
   otherwise (i.e. after a vowel or a voiced consonant, as in Dogs : /[dɑːg][z]/ or Days : /[deɪ][z]/ ) the [z] allomorph occurs.
   

• 
  THE –ed SUFFIX:
  

1. 
   [t]
   

jumped : /[dʒʌm p] [t]/
stamped : /[stæmp][t]/

2. 
   [d]
   

Loved : /[lʌv][d]/
turned : //[tɝːn][d]/

3. 
   [ɪd]
   

wanted : /[wɑːnt][ɪd]/
cried : /[kraɪd]/

• 
  THE WORD “THE”
  

1. 
   ðiː
   

the apple : /ðiː// æp.l /
the art :/ðiː//ɑːrt/

2. 
   ðə
   

the table : /ðə//teɪ.bl/
the stars : /ðə//stɑːr/

In fact, there are some aspects that can influence the choice of it which is called allomorphy. The first aspects is phonological aspects, Phonologically determined allomorphy need not just be a matter of avoiding what is phonologically prohibited. For example, If we experiment by replacing the [z] of lies with [s], we get an actual word (lice, the plural of louse), and replacing it with [əz] we get what is at least a possible word (it might be the plural of an imaginary noun ‘lia’) – and is an actual word (liars) in those dialects of English where liar is pronounced without an r-sound.

The second aspect is grammar. The words that reflects how grammar can influence the use of allomorphs are *wife and *loaf. These end in the same voiceless consonant as laugh and cliff; yet their plurals are not *wifes and *loafs but wives and loaves. (The asterisk is a conventional symbol to indicate that a linguistic expression (a word, phrase or sentence) is unacceptable for some reason to do with grammar or with the structure of the language generally, rather than for reasons such as truthfulness or politeness.) In fact, there are quite a few nouns which, in the singular, end in a voiceless f,sorthsound but which change this in the plural to the voiced counterpart (not always reflected in the spelling). Nouns that behave like this in most varieties of English are knives, lives, hooves, houses, pathsandbaths. However, there are also exceptions to this ‘rule’: apart from laugh and cliff, already mentioned, one can think of fife and oaf, which both form their plural with [s].
What’s more, wife, knife and the rest do not use their voiced allomorph (wive etc.) before any morpheme except plural -s – not even before the ‘apostrophe s’ morpheme that indicates possession, as in my wife’s job. So the allomorphy here is determined both lexically (it is restricted to certain nouns only) and grammatically (it occurs before the plural suffix -s but not before other morphemes). This state of affairs suggests a refinement to the bound-free distinction: as a morpheme, wifeis clearly free, but, of its two allomorphs wife(with final [f ]) and wive(with final [v]), only the former is free, while the latter is bound
For the addition, like what have being explained above, there are allomorphs that have this property are phonological allomorphs. The formal relation between two (or more) phonological allomorphs is called an alternation. Linguists often describe alternations with a special set of morphophonological rules, which were historically phonetically motivated, but affect morphology. Phonological allomorphs represent a single morpheme whose form varies slightly depending upon the phonological context created by combining morphemes. For this reason, it is common to think of the morpheme as the more abstract underlying representation, rather than the more concrete surface word-form. The underlying and surface representations may be the same, or they may differ as a result of the application of morphophonological rules. However, it is important to remember that the underlying representation is a tool used by linguists. It may or may not reflect the kinds of generalizations that language users make. 
There are examples where it seems unlikely that there is a single underlying representation in the minds of speakers; we see this in another type of allomorphy: