As its title suggests, this book presents the major points of a theory of morphology and some reasons for viewing word structure in a particular way. Readers may legitimately wonder about whether the theory in question ought to bear a distinctive name, and if so, why this one: A-Morphous Morphology. In that connection, consider the following (probably apocryphal) story that was current around the MIT Linguistics Department when I was a student there.

One day one of the graduate students, who may as well remain nameless for present purposes, was talking with the chairman, Morris Halle, and asked him “What must I do to become rich and famous?” Morris's reply: “Go forth and name things!” True or not, this undoubtedly represents a valid observation about the socio-politics of linguistics. Anyone who has been in the field for any length of time knows a number of cases in which the credit for some principle or theoretical position, at least in the general perception of linguists, went not to its originator(s) (insofar as it is possible to be clear who that might be), but rather to whoever first called it a principle, or a theory, and gave it a memorable name. More seriously, perhaps, we can take Morris's observation as the recognition that principles and theories come into clear focus when their unity is recognized (or at least asserted) and a distinctive and unitary way is provided by which to refer to them.