morphophoneme
/ˌmɔrfoʊˈfoʊnim/
noun
- A unit of sound in a language that can change depending on its position in a word or the sounds around it, representing a group of related speech sounds.
- Linguists study how a morphophoneme changes form in different grammatical contexts.
- The morphophoneme for the past tense '-ed' can be pronounced as /t/, /d/, or /ɪd/.
- In English, the plural 's' is a morphophoneme that can sound like /s/, /z/, or /ɪz/.