Morphemes are the smallest units that carry meaning. A morpheme can be a free morpheme, which can stand alone as a word, or a bound morpheme, which must be attached to other morphemes. A morph is the actual form used to realize a morpheme. For example, the word "cats" has two morphs, /kæt/ and /s/. An allomorph is an alternative pronunciation of the same morpheme. For example, the plural morpheme /s/ has allomorphs like /s/ in "books" and /z/ in "dogs".