Affixes in Standard Arabic A Morphological Study
Abstract
Morphology is defined as " the study of morphemes and their arrangements in forming words" (Nida, 1976:1). Morphemes are the minimum meaningful units. Thus a morpheme is an abstraction just as morpheme is an abstraction. Morph on the other hand, is the particular realization of the morpheme in speecd / writing . If a morpheme has a number of different realizations (Variant forms) we call them allomorphs. Morphemes are divided into free and bound (Allerton and French, 1975:81). The former can be used alone , e.g., kataba and daraba ; the latter cannot be used alone e.g. the last ? alf in qama: Allomorphs , being variant forms of the same morpheme. can be exemplified by ? alya: and ? annu:n in Kita : bayn. and by ?al? alf and ? annu:n in Kita: ba :n, which are allomorphs of the dual morpheme. This variation may be conditioned by syntactic considerations as in the said example , or by phonological considerations as is in the case of the amalgamation of ? alla:m (?idga:m) in the definite article.