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"open" grammatical suffixes are used only with some plural nouns in the possessive case, cf:. the children's
toys, the oxen's yokes).
Thus, the abstract complete morphemic model of the common English word is the following: prefix + root
+ lexical suffix + grammatical suffix.
The syntagmatic connections of the morphemes within the model form two types of hierarchical structure.
The first is characterized by the original prefixal stem (e.g. prefabricated), the second is characterized by the
original suffixal stem (e.g. inheritors). If we use the symbols St for stem, R for root, Pr for prefix, L for lexical
suffix, Gr for grammatical suffix, and, besides, employ three graphical symbols of hierarchical grouping-
braces, brackets, and parentheses, then the two morphemic word-structures can be presented as follows:
§ 4. Further insights into the correlation between the formal and functional aspects of morphemes within the
composition of the word may be gained in the light of the so-called "allo-emic" theory put forward by
Descriptive Linguistics and broadly used in the current linguistic research.
In accord with this theory, lingual units are described by means of two types of terms: allo-terms and eme-
terms. Eme-terms denote the generalized invariant units of language characterized by a certain functional
status: phonemes, morphemes. Allo-terms denote the concrete manifestations, or variants of the generalized
units dependent on the regular co-location with other elements of language: allo-phones, 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.
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, i.e. the adjoining elements in the text.
The environment of a unit may be either "right" or "left", e.g.: 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.
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 generalized terms of classes or categories.
In the distributional analysis at the morphemic level, phonemic distribution of morphemes and morphemic
distribution of morphemes are discriminated. The study is conducted in two stages.
At the first stage, the analysed text (i.e. the collected lingual materials, or "corpus") is divided into
recurrent segments consisting of phonemes. These segments are called "morphs", i.e. morphemic units
distributionally uncharacterized, e.g.: 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 alter-nants", 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 their 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