6 - Morphology

Question 1

What is morphology?

Answer 1

The study / analysis of basic forms of words

Question 2

What are morphemes?

Answer 2

Minimal units of meaning or grammatical functions

Question 3

What are free morphemes?

Answer 3

Morphemes which can stand alone as single words with a distinct meaning

Question 4

What are bound morphemes?

Answer 4

• Don’t stand alone

- Are typically attached to another form

Question 5

What are lexical morphemes?

Answer 5

• Words that carry the ‘content’ of a message
• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
• Open class of words -> new words can be added

Question 6

What are functional morphemes?

Answer 6

• Words that perform a specific function in a message
• Articles (the), conjunctions (but), prepositions, pronouns
• Closed class of words -> new words rarely added

Question 7

What are the 2 types of bound morphemes?

Answer 7

• Derivational

- Inflectional

Question 8

What are derivational bound morphemes?

Answer 8

• Bound forms used to create new words or words of a different grammatical category
• e.g. derivational suffix -ment + encourage -> encouragement
• e.g. derivational prefix mis- + interpret -> misinterpret

Question 9

What are infectional bound morphemes?

Answer 9

• 8 in English (all suffixes)
• Plural -s
• Possessive -‘s
• 4 attached to verbs: -s, -ing, -ed, -en/-ed
• 2 attached to adjectives: -er, -est

Question 10

What are allomorphs?`

Answer 10

• Variants of a morpheme
• Same meaning but different sound or spelling
• e.g. hats [s], bugs [z], boxes [iz]
• e.g. missed [t], voiced [d], offended [id]

Question 11

What is suppletion?

Answer 11

The replacement of one stem with another, resulting in an allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs