" Zero morph" in Axiomatic Functionalist Morphology

For the purposes of this article¹, the term 'morphology' will be used in a wide sense to cover the "complex unordered plerological system" (Mulder 1980, c: Def. 3b) of a language, together with the realisational portion or aspect relevant to this system. In axiomatic functionalism, the realisational aspect relevant to the morphological system of a language lies, strictly speaking, within the domain of allomorphy, albeit this aspect does not constitute the entire subject matter of that domain. The aim of this article is to examine the legitimacy of the notion 'zero morph' in descriptions based on axiomatic functionalism, as this theory presently stands (Mulder 1980, c), bearing in mind the axiomatic functionalist tenet that any description which professes to be based on the theory must satisfy the condition of being justified by, or under, the theory (Mulder 1980: a, b). Among other things, this is taken to mean that the description concerned should be externally consistent with the theory, in the sense that nothing in that description should contradict anything that either is in, or is implied by, the theory.