noun
- any of the variant forms of a morpheme that have the same meaning but different pronunciations or spellings depending on context
Usage: linguistics
Examples
- The plural morpheme in English has several allomorphs: /s/, /z/, and /ɪz/.
- The words ‘cats’, ‘dogs’, and ‘horses’ contain different allomorphs of the plural suffix.
- Students of linguistics learn to identify allomorphs in morphological analysis.
- The past tense morpheme has allomorphs like /t/, /d/, and /ɪd/ in English.
- Allomorphs are conditioned by the phonological environment of the root word.
- The prefix ‘in-‘ has allomorphs ‘im-‘, ‘il-‘, and ‘ir-‘ before certain consonants.