CONDITIONED ALLOMORPH ANALYSIS IN DONALD TRUMP’S INAUGURAL SPEECHES TRANSCRIPTION: A MORPHOLOGICAL STUDY

Abstract

Abstract: This study aims to identify the types of conditioned allomorphs present in the official transcripts of Donald Trump's inaugural addresses and to determine the most frequently occurring type. The research is grounded in the importance of understanding morphological variation in English, particularly how morphemes alter based on phonological, grammatical, lexical, or suppletive conditioning. Employing a qualitative descriptive method, this study uses a morphological analysis theory as proposed by Katamba (1993). The researcher served as the primary instrument in data collection and analysis. The data source consisted of two official transcripts of Donald Trump's inaugural speeches, delivered on January 20, 2025, retrieved from The American Presidency Project archive. The analysis revealed four major types of conditioned allomorphs: (1) Phonologically conditioned allomorphs (320 data or 80,60%), observed in past tense markers, plural suffixes, and negative prefixes; (2) Grammatically conditioned allomorphs (49 data or 12,34%), found in irregular past tense forms, third-person singular present tense verbs, and relative pronouns; (3) Lexically conditioned allomorphs (1 data or 0,25%), occurring notably in plural forms marked with -en; and (4) Suppletive allomorphs (26 instances or 6,80%), distributed among comparative adjectives, irregular verbs, auxiliary verbs, plural nouns, ordinal numbers, demonstratives, and possesive pronouns. The most dominant type was phonologically conditioned allomorphs especially the variant allomorph /-z/ appearing 145 times demonstrating variation in pronunciation based on the phonetic environment of the root word. These findings suggest that morpheme variation in English is primarily influenced by phonological and grammatical contexts, which frequently cause confusion and mispronunciation among language learners.