Allomorphs

In the examples we looked at on the last page the third person singular -s and the simple past tense -ed don't always sound the same. 

The third person singular -s in the present tense can sound like /s/, /z/ or /ɪz/. Similarly, the morpheme used to indicate the past simple in English for regular verbs (-ed) has three sounds: /t/, /d/ and /ɪd/.

These are called allomorphs.

An allomorph is when one morpheme (smallest unit of meaning) has more than one phonetic or graphic form. In other words, the meaning is the same, but the sound or spelling changes.  

Allomorphs also occur with suffixes and prefixes in derivational morphology.  

What prefix would you put in front of the following words to signal 'the opposite'. Choose from in-, im-, il- and ir-. 

polite
legible
elegant
regular


Answers: 

impolite (im- before /m/, /b/, /p/) 
illegible (il- before /l/)
in- (most common)
 irregular (ir- before /r/) 

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