CRITICAL ISSUES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDY

AREAS WITH CONCERN IN THE ENGLISH GRAMMAR

(i)Allomorph: 

The term, “allomorph” is used to show variations in different bound morphemes that are remarkable for the formation of numbers and also as tense marker in the study of language. Some of these bound morphemes are “s” “ed”, “en” etc. these morphemes are usually conditioned either phonologically or morphologically. The phonologically conditioned allomorphs establish variations within the sound of different morphemes or same bound morpheme in different words. This is particularly relevant in both formation of numbers among verbs and nouns and also indication of certain tenses of different verbs. Allomorph occurs in like manner with alternation of linguistic properties, allophone, consonant mutation and suppletion in the study of the English grammar.

The allomorph relevant for the formation of numbers among different nouns is the “s” bound morpheme. This is phonologically conditioned to take variant forms. The “s” allomorphs used for plural formation of different nouns are the Z₁, Z₂ and Z₃. These are morphologically realised as “s”, “z” and “es/ies” respectively. Details of the phonological environment for the application of the “s” allomorph for plural formations of different nouns are discussed in many English texts.

The second set of allomorph used to denote certain tenses occurs in various forms to denote past and continuous tenses. They are the “-ing” progressive marker and the “-ed” past markers. Also included in these is the “s” final morpheme for distinctiveness (singularity) among verbs. Among this set of allomorphs, the “–ed” plural markers are famous because of their roles in denoting regular verbs. “-ed” past markers are classified into -ed₁, -ed₂ and -ed₃; where -ed₁, -ed₂ and -ed₃ are phonologically realised as /id/, /d/ and /t/ respectively. The phonological conditions that make this possible are discussed in many English texts.

Another allomorph relevant for the plural formation of nouns is the “-en” final morpheme. This is realised in such plural nouns as oxen, women, children etc. We also use the “-en” final morpheme to form past tense among verbs. Examples of such words include given, written, driven etc. All these are treated carefully in this text.

(ii) Aspiration

The term refers to the situation that prevails in the phonological realisation of certain plural allomorphs. Aspirations do not affect the semantic condition of any word, instead they affect words syntactically. The variation brought by aspiration occurs only after words ending with bilabial stop or fricative stop/plosive consonants such as /b/, /d/, /k/, /p/, /t/ etc.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), aspirated consonants are written using the symbols for voiceless consonants followed by the aspiration modifier, a suspended (superscript) form of the letter (h): the form of the symbol for the voiceless glottal fricative /h/. For instance, /p/ represents the voiceless bilabial stop, and [pʰ] represents the aspirated bilabial stop. Voiced consonants are usually not always aspirated. Symbols for voiced consonants followed by [ʰ]

, such as [bʰ], typically represent the bilabial /b/ aspirated. A simple aspiration analysis carried out on the following words reveal immediately their phonological conditions:

Aspirated	Unaspirated	Unrealised
Kick	kicked	Know
Pin	mapped	Psalm
Believed	ramble	Womb
Temple	Important	Theme

The rule of aspiration is sensitive to three factors: stress on the following vowel, a word boundary preceding the voiceless stop, and a fricative preceding the voiceless stop. The fact that the word boundary is referred to in this rule strongly suggests that we are dealing with a lexical rule. Other properties of the rule corroborate this. For instance, the t in hit is unaspirated, even though it is followed by a stressed vowel. This is because the intervening word boundary shields the vowel off. But the t in mistake is aspirated on the other hand, even when it is preceded by an “s”. This is because the word also contains a word boundary (mis/take), which makes the preceding fricative invisible. It is telling that pronunciation dictionaries which intend to mark only phonemic features of words indicate whether a voiceless stop is aspirated or not by placing the stress mark either before it or before the preceding s. the same amounts to the admission that aspiration is not predictable merely from the sequence of segments and the location of stress in a string; morphological structure also influences it. At the same time, aspiration is held to be an allophonic rule. The table above can guide a learner to have indebt understanding of the concept.

 (iii) Inflection and Derivational Affixes

A word can be inflected for different purposes. Inflection can occur on a word to change its number, time and even change it from one part of speech to another. An inflection expresses one or more grammatical categories with a prefix, suffix or infix, or another internal modification such as a change of vowel sound(s). For example, “-en” can be used to inflect “ox” and “child” to form the plurals “oxen” and “children” respectively. The final allomorphs, “s’, “er”, “ing” and “–ed” can inflect different words for different results. When a particular morpheme (whether prefix, infix or a suffix) is used with a particular base word, we say that inflection has occurred.

The inflected form of a word often contains one or more free morphemes and one or more bound morphemes. A free morpheme is a unit of meaning which can stand on its own as a word, while a bound morpheme is a unit of meaning which cannot stand alone as a word. The examples given above clarify this. Words that are never subject to inflection are said to be invariant; for example, the English verb, “must”, is an invariant item: it never takes a suffix or changes form to signify a different grammatical category. Its categories can be determined only from its context.

Many morphemes tend to change the form-class (part of speech) of their inflected roots from one form to another. For example, the word exalt is naturally a verb, but when -ation inflects it the form-class will change from verbs to nouns. When this is achieved in the process of word formation we say that a derivation has occurred. It is possible for another derivational affix to follow another one in a particular word in the English language. In the word naturalisation, for instance, the derivational suffix -al succeeded nature to give us the word natural. Then the derivational suffix /aiz/ follows, as also another derivational suffix -/eiʃn/ succeeded them to give us the word, naturalisation. Derivational suffixes can also go with inflectional morpheme. Inflectional suffixes are those suffixes that appear at the end of words; they are significant for grammatical roles. They are used to show tenses and pluralities among different roots, but they do not bring about changes of words from one part of speech to another.

From the second example above it is obvious that derivative morphemes inflect their roots to change from one form-class to another. The fluctuation or movement of the root in response to each of the suffixes are explained in the table below.

	Nouns	Verbs	Adjectives
Nature	+	-	-
Natural	+	-	+
Naturalize	-	+	-
Naturalisation	+	-	-

The table clarifies the sense of derivation in the meaning and answers the questions about the movement of inflected roots to different form-classes. It is needful to clarify here that this movement is not a universal condition for every derived words. Exceptional cases abound for some roots. Good examples of such impeccable words are “nation, national, nationalist and nationalism.” Each of the words has one or more derived morphemes but their roots refuse to move or change its form-class. This is the only root is found so far in the English language that can be inflected to four forms without any change of form-class (part of speech).

Movement is one remarkable feature that characterizes derivational morphemes. It may be movement across form-class as exemplified in the table above, movement within different suffixes as shown in the preceding paragraph, movement across languages as shall be discussed in progress, or movement as a result of duplications of the roots or the roots and related words of closer phonological tie respectively. As the root moves in consonance with any of the steps above, the resultant word will either increase or decrease. Various forms of derivations are examined below:

(iv) Voiced and voiceless sounds

 Sounds that are articulatory are voiced while the non-articulatory sounds are considered voiceless. The easiest way to check whether a sound is voiced or voiceless is by mechanically examining the movement of the vocal cord at the moment of experimentation. Voiced and voiceless sounds are determined through the movement of the vocal cord in the production tract. To mechanically determine voiced sounds, one simply needs to put his finger under his pharynx and feel the movement around his throat as he articulates any sound, mainly consonants. If in the process he experiences movement through his feelings, then he may conclude that a voiced sound has occurred. But, if in the process he could not feel any movement, he may clearly conclude that such a sound experimented is not voiced; in other words, it is a voiceless sound. Try and articulate /s/ and /z/ consonants and examine their vibratory conditions. This will throw a little light on the difference between the voices.

Observations show that /z/ promotes clear vibration than the free flow of vocal permission found while articulating the /s/ sound. By this condition, we can clearly say that /z/ is voiced while /s/ is voiceless. Through the same practice, we can vividly say that /d/, /b/, /v/, /g/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /ð/ are voiced, while /s/, /p/, /f/, /ʃ/, /m/, /n/, /h/ are voiceless.

It is simple; when you speak, your vocal cords close to make for partial obstruction (not total obstruction) that leads to the vibration experienced as the sound forces its way out via your vocal fold, producing certain sound. The sound produced through this vibratory circumstance is tagged “voiced”. There is, on the other hand, a situation where the vocal fold does not close up during articulation. Because of this condition, the consonants produced do not have any stress passing through the fold, therefore resulting in the production of voiceless sounds.

Another condition for the realisation of voiceless sounds is when certain articulatory positions are completely blocked; it could be because of the connection of the tip of the tongue to the alveolar region, the back of the tongue to the soft pallet, or the closure of the lips completely, resulting in the realisation of such sounds as /n/, /η/ and /m/ respectively. By this means also, we realise voiceless consonants.