An allomorph is "one of a set of forms that a morpheme may take in different contexts" (Merriam-Webster).
The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar offers a more extensive treatment, defining allomorph as "An alternant of a *morpheme (1); any form in which a (meaningful) morpheme is actually realized. (Also called morphemic variant.)" See page 21.
Linguists customarily define morphemes as minimal units of meaning. Zero allomorphy occurs in words like "sheep" which retains the same morphological form even when pluralized and with the form "two fish" rather than "two fishes." See The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, page 21, for irregular allomorphs.
Examples of allomorphs: the past tense participial morpheme -ed (e.g., hunted, fished, buzzed); the international phonetic alphabet (IPA) represents three different sounds for this morpheme in each word or suffix (i.e., hunted, fished, buzzed). Therefore, each time that the suffix -ed occurs in these cases, the phonemic sound is different.
An allophone is "one of two or more variants of the same phoneme" (M-W).
Examples: plow, clap, clear, play (the phoneme here is /l/). When /l/ follows 'p' or 'r,' it is "devoiced," but in blue, gleam and leaf, it is voiced: one linguist states that the allophonic variation of /l/ usually is predictable. The /p/ in pin and spin is another example of an allophone: one is aspirated whereas the other is not, so they're in complementary distribution (CD).
SIL defines CD this way: "Complementary distribution is the mutually exclusive relationship between two phonetically similar segments. It exists when one segment occurs in an environment where the other segment never occurs. The words, pat and stop are two other examples of how the allophone /p/ occurs when aspirated or unaspirated. Another factor in the pronunciation of /p/ is positional variation."
See https://glossary.sil.org/term/complementary-distribution
What are some examples of allomorphs and allophones from ancient languages?
The Hebrew Bible and Allomorphs: David Tsumura (Creation and Destruction) points to the word ed (Genesis 2:5-6), which arose from eres to water adama: this term only appears in Genesis and Job 36:27 where either ed or the allomorph edo occurs (Tsumura, page 85). Translators have variously rendered ed as "spring," "fountain," "(rain-)cloud," "vapor" or "mist."
Tsumura's discussion is worth consulting; it is thorough and informative but our main concern here is allomorphs and allophones. I will make one more thought about Genesis 2:5-6. Regarding ed in the Hebrew scriptures, the NET Bible prefers the rendering "springs"--it appeals to the cognate term edu in Akkadian and employed in Babylonian texts which "refers to subterranean springs or waterways." NET reckons that this usage best fits the Genesis context. NWT 2013 opts for the translation "mist."
In The Lord Has Saved Me: A Study of the Psalm of Hezekiah, Michael L. Barre brings another example of Hebrew allomorphy to our attention. On page 165, he cites 1QIsaa (the Isaiah Scroll aka the Great Isaiah Scroll)--the passage contains the reading mr ly< m<wdh. Barre explains that the last word is an allomorph of me·<od.
The Targum of Isaiah supports this reading since it has mr ly sgy, which is translated "it is very bitter for me." For the textual issues surrounding this word, see Barre, 166. Compare Isaiah 38:15 and its employment of mar.
2 comments:
https://biblehub.com/text/genesis/2-5.htm
Not that I want to retread old ground about ed: I was merely using it as one example of an allomorph. I'm going to discuss others in edited versions to the post.
But I think you've read Tsumura's treatment of the subject before: his is one of the most sustained treatments I've read about ed.
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