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meaning: in each pair, the first word means "one of X", while the second "two or
more of X” and the difference is always the plural form
-s affixed to the second
word, signaling the key distinction between singular and plural entities.
One of the largest sources of complexity in morphology is that this one-to-
one correspondence between meaning and form scarcely applies to every case in
the language. In English, we have word form pairs like ox/oxen, goose/geese, and
sheep/sheep, where the difference between the singular and the plural is signaled in
a way that departs
from the regular pattern, or is not signaled at all. Even cases
considered "regular",
with the final -s, are not so simple;
the -s in dogs is not
pronounced the same way as the -s in cats, and in a plural like dishes, an "extra"
vowel appears before the -s.
These cases, where alternative forms of a “word”
effect the same distinction, are called allomorphy.
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