alomorfos

Alomorfos (allomorphs) are alternative surface realizations of a single morpheme in a language. They carry the same grammatical meaning but differ in phonological form. Allomorphy arises from phonological rules, historical sound changes, or interactions with neighboring morphemes. In linguistic analysis, these alternating forms are treated as realizations of the same underlying morpheme rather than as completely different morphemes.

Common examples occur in inflectional paradigms, where a single morpheme encodes a category such as number or tense but surfaces in several phonetic shapes. English plural allomorphy is well known: the suffix is realized as [s], [z], or [ɪz] depending on the final sound of the noun (e.g., cats [s], dogs [z], buses [ɪz]). The past tense suffix -ed is pronounced as [t], [d], or [ɪd] depending on the preceding consonant or vowel. These forms illustrate how the same grammatical meaning is carried by distinct phonetic realizations.

Allomorphy is often described as occurring in complementary distribution, where each allomorph appears in a distinct environmental context, or in free variation, where speakers may choose among allomorphs without a change in meaning. Some irregular forms are termed suppletion rather than allomorphy because they do not share a straightforward underlying morpheme or phonological rule.

Cross-linguistically, allomorphy is widespread, affecting determiners, adjectives, pronouns, and verb affixes in many languages. Studying allomorphs helps linguists understand the interface between morphology and phonology, as well as historical changes that shape the structure of current languages.