morph
noun
- (linguistics) An allomorph: one of a set of realizations that a morpheme can have in different contexts.
A morpheme is the smallest language unit that has a meaning. The meaning part of a morpheme is called a sememe. The pronunciation part of a morpheme is called a morph.
One morpheme can have several morphs, appearing in complementary distribution. They are then called allomorphs. For example, the plural morpheme of English (-s) connects three allomorphs ([s] of cats, [z] of dogs and [iz] of foxes) to one sememe (plurality).
According to John Lyons, "When the word can be segmented into parts these segments are referred to as morphs". Thus the word 'teacher' can be analyzed in two morphs which can be written as teach and er, and in a phonological transcription /ti:tf/ and /er /. Each morph represents a particular morpheme
-- M.R.SETHI
