THEORETICAL VIEWS OF EASTERN LINGUISTS ABOUT ALLOMORPHS

Аннотация

This article explores the development and study of the concept of allomorph in Eastern linguistics. It analyzes how Eastern linguists have defined, classified, and interpreted allomorphs, focusing on phonetic, morphological, and semantic factors influencing their appearance in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, and other Eastern languages. The research also compares the Eastern perspectives on allomorphy with those of Western linguistics, identifying both commonalities and differences. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of morphological structures in Eastern languages and clarifies the theoretical foundations of allomorphy from adiachronic and typological viewpoint. Keywords: allomorph, variants of a morpheme, apophony, alternation, root morpheme, auxiliary morpheme. In Eastern linguistics, comprehensive theories and perspectives concerning the notion of allomorphs have been advanced. According to A. Nurmonov, “a morpheme is a socio- psychological entity that, in immediate observation or speech, manifests itself through several variants. The fact that a morpheme appears in multiple forms within the structure of speech accounts for what wecall allomorphs, or variants ofthat morpheme”1. Uzbek scholar A. Khojiyev2 regards allomorphs as variants of a morpheme, arguing that auxiliary morphemes—which may be substituted for one another in any given construction— constitute the variants of that morpheme. He substantiates this claim with examples from Uzbek, showing the free alternation of the morphemes -day and -dek in expressions such as gulday ~ guldek (“likea flower”). R. Rasulov concurs that allomorphs are morpheme-variants but rejects the idea that they are freely interchangeable. He defines an allomorph as “a variant of a morpheme that occurs only within theform of a specific lexeme. Each observable morph has a limited scope of applicability, surfacing only in contexts that favor it”3 He illustrates this with pairs such as tonggi ~ tongki (“morning”), kechki ~ kechgi (“evening”), and attributes their distribution to phonetic environment, phonological form, and semanticconstraints. Building onthese views, M. Irisqulov4emphasizes that morphemes and morphs are notalways in one-to-one correspondence: a single morpheme may be realized by one or several morphs in speech. He demonstrates this in Uzbek with the directional meaning expressed by the suffixes - ga, -ka, and -qa. Irisqulov notes that when one morpheme is manifested through multiple morphs, those morphs are termed its allomorphs. He further defines an allomorph as any morph that, while differing in form, conveys the same meaning and constitutes a single morpheme. As an illustration, hecites theRussian plural suffixes [и],[ы],[а],[я]. 1NurmonovA.vab.O‘zbektiliningmazmuniysintaksisi.T.Fan,1992 2HojiyevA.Tilshunoslikterminlariningizohlilug‘ati.T.:2002.–B.21. 3RasulovR.(2010)GeneralLinguistics.Umumiytilshunoslik.(Tahshkent) 4IriskulovM.(2009) IntroductiontoLinguistics.Tilshunoslikkakirish.(Tashkent) https://ijmri.de/index.php/jmsi volume 4,issue4,2025 245 A. Abduzuhurov5 explains the origin of allomorphs in Uzbek by situating them within affixal morphology. Affixes, which never occur independently but only attach to a root morpheme to express various lexical-grammatical meanings, undergo phonological adjustment depending on the final sound of the stem. Thus, a single morpheme may surface in diverse morphophonological shapes—its allomorphs. For example, the participial morpheme -gan acquires the forms -kan, -qan, -gan after stems ending in different phonemes, as in yozgan (“written”), ekkan (“planted”), suqqan (“hit”). Each allomorph differs from the others by exactly onephoneme. In Korean linguistics6, a similar conception holds that the various phonologically conditioned variants of one morphemeare itsallomorphs. From thisvantage, certain morphemes expressing a single meaning may have two or three variants, and these variants are distributed exclusively— that is, they are complementary but together exhaust the set of possible realizations. For instance, the nominative case marker 이 and the accusative 을 attach to stems ending in a consonant, whereas their allomorphs 가 and 를 attach only to vowel-final stems. Korean morphemes thus divide into 자립형태소 (independent morphemes) and 의존형태소 (dependent morphemes), or leading and auxiliary morphemes, exemplified in: 철수가밥을 아까먹었다 Ch’ŏlsu-ga pap-ŭl akwa-mŏgŏt’ta.(“Cholsu justate ameal.”) Allomorphy also figures prominently in Japanese morphology. Phonological or morphological context may yield different forms of the same morpheme. For instance, the causative suffix has two allomorphs: -ase after consonant-final stems (C-stems), as in nom-ase (“make drink” from nom- “drink”), and -sase after vowel-final stems (V-stems), as in tabe-sase (“make eat” from tabe- “eat”). This choice is explained within Optimality Theory by the constraints ONSET (“every syllable must begin with a consonant”) and NO-CODA (“syllables must not end