Allomorph

A variant of a morpheme. The meaning remains the same.

Example

The English plural morpheme for nouns has three allomorphs:

• [z] day-s, pie-s, shampoo-s, piano-s, zebra-s
• [s] map-s, lot-s, birth-s
• [&z] ash-es, surprise-s, age-s, approach-es

(notation in SAMPA)

from: Iggy Roca and Wyn Johnson, a course in phonology, Blackwell, 1999; p. 621