Ch. 2 Morphology Flashcards
Morphology is about
Morphemes
Open class
Add new words
Closed class
Doesn’t add new words
Are function words open or closed class?
Closed
Are content words open or closed class?
Open
The smallest unit of a word that still caries meaning
Morphemes
Nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs are what?
Content words
Prepositions, conjunctions, articles, modals, helping verbs, pronouns are what?
Function words
Could, would, should, what what type of words?
Modals
What is an example of a helping verb?
“to be” for example “he is eating” “is” is the helping verb.
Orthography
Spelling
How many F’s are in the blurb? FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.
6 F’s Most people skip the F’s in the 3 “of”s because the brain categorizes them differently and doesn’t immediately see them.
You can categorize morphemes by
bound or free
If a morpheme is free it means what? What part of [kaets] is a free morpheme?
A free morpheme means that it can stand alone, it doesn’t require another morpheme to make sense. [kaet]
If a morpheme is bound it means what? What part of [kaets] is a bound morpheme?
A bound morpheme means that it doesn’t exist by itself, it requires another morpheme to make sense. (affixes) [s]
An affix that goes inside a morpheme
Infixes
An affix that goes on either side of a morpheme like parentheses
Circumfix
In English how would you change a noun (record) to a verb?
Using inflection.
A record (N.) the stress is on “re”
Record (V.) the stress is on “cord”
How do we use infixes in English?
Un-fucking-believable
We only add infixes to words with swear words.
Discountinous morphemes
Circumfixes
In German the verb to love = lieb
Past tense = geliebt
This shows an example of what type of affix?
Circumfixes
These morphemes are an example of what?
- s [3rd person singular present; she waits at home]
- ed [past tense; she waited]
- ing [progressive; she is eating the donut]
- en [past participle; mary has eaten the donut]
- s [plural; she ate the donuts]
- ’s [possessive; Disa’s hair is short]
- er [comparative; Disa has shorter hair than Karen]
- est [superlative; Disa has the shortest hair]
Inflectional Morphemes
What are the 8 inflectional morphemes?
- s
- ed
- ing
- en
- s
- ’s
- er
- est
What are the derivational morphemes?
All morphemes that aren’t inflectional
The following things are typical of _______ morphemes?
- Grammatical function
- No word class change
- Small or no meaning change
- Often required by rules of grammar
- Productive (can be used in a lot)
Inflectional Morphemes
Also, follow derivational morphemes in a word.
The following things are typical of _______ morphemes?
- Lexical function
- May cause word class change
- Some meaning change
- Never required by rules of grammar
- Some productive, many nonproductive
Derivational Morphemes
Also, precede inflectional morphemes in a word.
This chart is the:
Classification of English Morphemes
What is missing from area 1?
(English) Morphemes
What is missing from area 2?
Bound
What is missing from area 3?
Free
What is missing from area 4?
Affix
What is missing from area 5?
Root
- -cieve*
- -mit*
- -fer*
What is missing from area 6?
Open Class Words
- (content or lexical words)*
- nouns*
- adjectives*
- verbs*
- adverbs*
What is missing from Area 7?
Closed class words
- (function or grammatical words)*
- conjunctions*
- prepositions*
- articles*
- pronouns*
- auxilary*
What is missing from area 8?
Derivational
What is missing from area 9?
Inflectional
What is missing from area 10?
Prefix
- pre-*
- con-*
- un-*
What is missing from area 11?
Suffix
- -ly*
- -ist*
- -ment*
What is missing from area 12?
Suffix
- -ing*
- -er*
- -s*
- -s*
- -est*
- -‘s*
- -en*
- -ed*
Who said:
“A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words… the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.”
Mark Twain
Knowing a word means knowing
that a particular sequence of sounds is associated with a particular meaning.
The Greek word for dictionary
What does it mean for us now?
Lexicon
(we use it to mean mental dictionary)
The relation between sound and meaning is a(n) ______ pairing.
Arbitrary
An example of an arbitrary relationship between sounds and meaning?
un petit d’un petit
Humpty Dumpty
Spelling
Orthography
Other info in your mental lexicon includes info such as:
what part of speech a word is, whether or not we consciously know it
Words that denote concepts such as objects, actions, attributes, and ideas that we can think about (like children, build, beautiful, seldom)
Content words
Words that specify grammatical relations, have little or no semantic content, no clear lexical meaning, or obvious concepts associated with them are
Function words
Content words are sometimes called the
open class
A class of words that we can and regularly do add new words to is
open class
When you know a word you know it’s
Sound (pronounciation) and meaning
Because the sound-meaning relation is arbitrary, it is possible to have words with the same sound and different _______
meaning
ex: bare, bear
Our mental lexicon knows the
grammatical category or syntactic class of a word
Traditionally called “parts of speech”; also called syntactic categories; expressions of the same grammatical category can generally substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality
Grammatical Category
The study of the structore of words; the component of the grammar that includes the rules of word formation
Morphology
Rules for combining morphemes to form stems and words
Morphological Rules
Smallest unit of linguistic meaning or function
Morpheme
Word group that rarely - if ever - adds new words
Closed Class
When a speaker inadvertantly switches words in a sentence (i.e. the journal of the editor instead of the editor of the journal)
Slips of the tongue
Slips of the tongue have never been observed with what class of words?
Function words
In the early stages of talking children often omit ______ words from their sentences. (ex: _____)
Function words
Ex: Doggie barking
Phoneme that means “pertaining to sound”
phon
Prefix used to mean “not”
Un-
The linguistic term for the most elemental unit of grammatical form is
morpheme
“In two words: im-possible”
Samuel Goldwyn
If Samuel Goldwyn had taken a linguistics course he would have said:
“In two morphemes: im-possible”
Morpheme is derived from the Greek word morphe meaning
form
The study of the internal structure of words, and of the rules by which words are formed is
morphology
Morphology (the word itself) consits of
two morphemes
morph + ology
Ology means branch of knowledge
The branch of knowledge concerning word forms
Morphology
Also refers to our internal grammatical knowledge concerning the words of our language, and like most linguistic knowledge we are not consciously aware of it
Morphology
A single word may be composed of ___________ morphemes
One or more
A morpheme may be represented by _______
a single sound, single syllable, two syllables, three syllables, or four or more syllables
A sound or gesture, typically a morpheme in a spoken language and a sign in a sign language, that has a form bound to a meaning in a single unit
Linguistic sign
(e.g. dog)
Words containing only one morpheme
Monomorphemic word
The meaning of a morpheme must be
Constant
True or false
Morphemes can have different meanings but spelled the same way
True
ex: -er means “one who does” in painter
- er means “more” in prettier
True or false
Two morphemes cannot have the same meaning but different forms
False
ex: -er and -ster have the same meaning but diff forms
singer and songster mean “one who sings”
The concept of the morpheme is a ____ plus a _____ unit
sound plus a meaning unit
The decomposition of words into morphemes illustrates one of the fundamental properties of human language
Discreteness
_____ units combine to form ______
Sound units …. Morphemes
Morphemes combine to form ______
Words
Words combine to form ________
phrases and sentences
True or false
Discreteness is not an important part of linguistic creativity
False
“noisy crow” is an example of:
phrase consisting of adjective plus noun
“scarecrow” is an example of
compound noun
“the crow” is an example of
a grammatical morpheme followed by a lexical morpheme
“crowlike” is an example of
a root morpheme plus derivational suffix
“crows” is an example of
a root morpheme plus inflectional affix
True or false
boy, desire, gentle, and man are examples of bound morphemes
False, they are free morphemes
Morphemes that are not words by themselves but are always attached to other words
Bound morphemes
An affix that occurs before other morphemes
Prefix
An affix that occurs after other morphemes
Suffic
True or false
In English we have an affix to derive a noun from a verb
False
True or false
Turksih and Karuk have the same suffix -ak. It is intentional and has the same form and meaning.
False
Same form (sound) different meaning.
Morphemes that are inserted into other morphemes
Infixes
True or false
English is full of infixes
False
Our only infix is “swear words” “abso-fucking-lutely”
Morphemes that are attached to a base morpheme both initially and finally.
Circumfixes
Circumfix morphemes are sometimes called
discontinous morphemes
morphologically complex words consist of a morpheme _____ and one or more affixes
root
True or false
A root may not stand alone as a word
False
It may or may not
paint and read do; cieve and ling don’t
When a root morpheme vis combined with an affix it forms a
Stem
Any root or stem to which an affix is attached
Base
ungainly, discern, nonplussed, downhearted are examples of what?
Bound roots
When these morphemes are added to a base a new word with a new meaning is derived
Derivational morphemes
The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a
derived word
Derivational morphemes have
clear semantic content
like content words but not words
True or false
The derived word may also be a different grammatical class than the original word
True
Derivational affixes appear to come in two classes.
In the first class the addition of a suffix ___________
In the second class they may be tacked onto a base word without _____________.
- Triggers subtle changes in pronunciation
- Affecting the pronunciation.
Affixes from the two classes cannot be used together in the same word.
Morphemes that have strictly grammatical function that mark properties such as tense, number, person, and so forth
Inflectional morphemes
Unlike derivational morphemes inflectional morphemes ______________ of the stems to which they are attached.
Never change the grammatical category
These morphemes represent relationships between different parts of a sentence
For example, -s expresses the relationship between the verb and the 3rd person singular subject.
Inflectional morphemes
These are examples of what morpheme?
- s (3rd per. sing. present)
- ed (past tense)
- ing (progressive)
- en (past participle)
- s (plural)
- ’s (possessive)
- er (comparative)
- est (superlative
Inflectional morphemes
What are the 8 inflectional morphemes
- s
- ed
- ing
- en
- s
- ’s
- er
- est
True or false
Inflectional and derivational morphemes are productive
False, just inflectional
What does it mean for a morpheme to be productive?
They apply freely to nearly every appropriate base
The grammatical relation of a noun in a sentence is called the _____ of the noun.
case
When case is marked by inflectional morphemes the process is referred vto as
case morphology
inflecting a word through the repetition of part or all of the word
reduplication
Which morphemes have these traits
- grammatical function
- no word class change
- small or no meaning change
- often required by rules of grammar
- follow ________ morphemes in a word
- productive
Infectional morphemes
-follow derivational morphemes
Which morphemes have these traits
- lexical function
- may cause word class change
- some meaning change
- never required by rules of grammar
- precede by _______ morphemes in a word
- some productive, many nonproductive
Derivational morphemes
precede inflectional morphemes
What is the example tree diagram for unsystematic?
Unsystematic (adj)
/. \
un. systematic (adj)
/. \
system (n). atic
Another word for irregular forms in grammar
Suppletive
Words that comform to the rules of word formation but are not truly part of the vocabulary are called
Accidental gaps or lexical gaps
Well-formed but nonexistent words
Accidental gaps
A new word that enters the language because of an incorrect morphological analysis
Back formations
“bikini” and “monokini” are an example of
a back formation
True or false
Language purists love back formations
False, they sometimes rail against them
Two or more words may be joined to form new
compound words
Facebook, linkedin, android apps
are examples of
new compound words
In english the rightmost word in a compound is the
head of the compound
What kind of compounds are the most common in english?
two-word compounds
True or false
The meaning of a compound is always the sum of it’s parts
False
ex: blackboard, redcoat, egghead
True or false
Sign languages lack morphology
False
True or false
Morphemes that sound the same always mean the same thing
False
ex: uglier (-er) and singer (-er)
means “more” and “one who”
What are the inseperable parts of the linguistic sign?
Form and meaning
The relationship between form and meaning is
arbitrary
_____ morphemes stand alone, like girl or the
Free
Open class free morphemes contain the
content words
Closed class free morphemes contain the
function words
Bound morphemes may be the
affixes or bound roots
Affixes may be
prefixes, suffixes, infexes or circumfixes
Affixes may be
derivational or inflectional
Derivational affixes
derive new words
Inflectional affixes
make grammatical changes to words
Complex words contain a ____ around which _____ are built by affixation
root … stems
True or false
Words have a heirarchical structure as evidenced by ambiguous words such as unlockable
un+lockable ‘unable to be unlocked’
unlock+able ‘able to be unlocked’
True
If a morphological rule is a productive it means
they can apply freely to the appropriate stem
________ morphology is extremely productive
inflectional
Suppletive forms escape inflectional morphology. Give an example.
Instead of ‘mans’ we say ‘men’
_______ are formed by uniting two or more root words in a single word
compounds
the head of the compound is
the rightmost word and bears the basic meaning
Back-formations are words created by
misinterpreting an affix look-alike
True or false
The grammars of sign languages also include a morphological componenet consisting of a root, derivational and inflectional sign morphemes, and the rules for their combination
True
The process of identifying form-meaning units in a language, taking into account small differences in pronunciation, so that prefixes in- and -im are seen to be variants of the “same” prefix in english
Morphological analysis
