al status: phonemes, morphemes. Allo-terms denote the concrete manifestations, or variants of the generalised units dependent on the regular co-location with other elements of language: allophones, allomorphs. A set of iso-functional allo-units identified in the text on the basis of their co-occurrence with other lingual units (distribution) is considered as the corresponding eme-unit with its fixed systemic status. p align="justify"> The allo-emic identification of lingual elements is achieved by means of the so-called "distributional analysis". The immediate aim of the distributional analysis is to fix and study the units of language in relation to their textual environments, ie the adjoining elements in the text.
The environment of a unit may be either "right" or "left", eg: un-pardon-able.
In this word the left environment of the root is the negative prefix un-, the right environment of the root is the qualitative suffix-able. Respectively, the root-pardon-is the right environment for the prefix, and the left environment for the suffix. p align="justify"> The distribution of a unit may be defined as the total of all its environments; in other words, the distribution of a unit is its environment in generalised terms of classes or categories.
In the distributional analysis on the morphemic level, phonemic distribution of morphemes and morphemic distribution of morphemes are discriminated. The study is conducted in two stages. p align="justify"> At the first stage, the analysed text (ie the collected lingual materials, or "corpus") is divided into recurrent segments consisting of phonemes. These segments are called "morphs", ie morphemic units distributionally uncharacterised, eg: the/boat/s/were/gain/ing/speed.
At the second stage, the environmental features of the morphs are established and the corresponding identifications are effected.
Three main types of distribution are discriminated in the distributional analysis, namely, contrastive distribution, non-contrastive distribution, and complementary distribution.
Contrastive and non-contrastive distributions concern identical environments of different morphs. The morphs are said to be in contrastive distribution if their meanings (functions) are different. Such morphs constitute different morphemes. Cf. the suffixes - (e) d and-ing in the verb-forms returned, returning. The morphs are said to be in non-contrastive distribution (or free alternation) if their meaning (function) is the same. Such morphs constitute "free alternants", or "free variants" of the same morpheme. Cf. the suffixes - (e) d and-t in the verb-forms learned, learnt.
As different from the above, complementary distribution concerns different environments of formally different morphs which are united by the same meaning (function). If two or more morphs have the same meaning and the difference in (heir form is explained by different environments, these morphs are said to be in complementary distribution and considered the allomorphs of the same morpheme. Cf. The allomorphs of the plural morpheme/- s /, /-z /, /-iz/which stand in phonemic complementary distribution; the plural allomorph-en in oxen, children, which stands in morphemic complementary distribution with the other allomorphs of the plural morpheme.
As we see, for analytical purposes the notion of complementary distribution is the most important, because it helps establish the identity of outwardly altogether different elements of language, in particular, its grammatical elements.
As a result of the application of distributional analysis to the morphemic level, different types of morphemes have been discriminated which can be called the "distributional morpheme types". It must be stressed that the distributional classification of morphemes cannot abolish or in any way depreciate the traditional morpheme types. Rather, it supplements the traditional classification, showing some essential features of morphemes on the principles of environmental study. p align="justify"> We shall survey the distributional morpheme types arranging them in pairs of immediate correlation.
On the basis of the degree of self-dependence, "free" morphemes and "bound" morphemes are distinguished. Bound morphemes cannot form words by themselves, they are identified only as component segmental parts of words. As different from this, free morphemes can build up words by themselves, ie can be used "freely".
For instance, in the word handful the root hand is a free morpheme, while the suffix-ful is a bound morpheme.
There are very few productive bound morphemes in the morphological system of English. Being extremely narrow, the list of them is ...
