Elements Smaller than Words

- Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language.
- Morpheme is an abstract unit realized by Morphs
- The members of morph in the same morpheme are called Allomorphs.
- Allomorph is a variant of morphemes.
- An allomorph is a conditioned morph.
- Morphemes are enclosed in braces { }
- Allomorphs are in complementary distribution. They never occur in the same environment or context.
- Morpheme, like lexeme and phoneme, is realized by something else. We cannot hear a morpheme or say morpheme. We can only hear or say something which realizes a morpheme, morph.
- Morph is a segment of a word-form which represents a particular morpheme.
- Morphemes are abstract elements of analysis, and what actually occurs is a phonetic (or orthographic) strings which realizes the morpheme.
- When the phonetic (or orthographic) strings which realize morphemes are segmentable, these are termed ‘morph’. The form un. touch. able. s, the segmented portions are morphs, each of which represents a morpheme.