Differentiate between morph and allomorph?

Morph and allomorph are terms used in linguistics to describe different aspects of morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful units of language. Here is how they differ:

1. Morph: A morph is a single unit of meaning that cannot be further divided into smaller meaningful units. It is the basic building block of words and can be a word itself or a part of a word. For example, the word "cats" consists of two morphs: "cat" (referring to the animal) and "-s" (indicating plural).

2. Allomorph: An allomorph is a variant form of a morph that is used in different contexts or environments. Allomorphs represent different phonological realizations of the same morpheme. They are conditioned by the surrounding sounds or morphemes. For example, the plural morpheme "-s" in English has three allomorphs: /s/ as in "cats," /z/ as in "dogs," and /ɪz/ as in "wishes." The choice of allomorph depends on the phonetic context.

In summary, a morph is a basic unit of meaning, while an allomorph is a variant form of a morph that is used in different phonetic contexts.