Ch 4 - Morphology Flashcards
lexicon
a speaker’s mental dictionary, which contains info about the syntactic properties, meaning, and phonological representation of a language’s words
morphology
the system of categories and rules involved in word formation and interpretation
words
the smallest free forms found in language
simple word
a word that consists of a single morpheme (eg horse)
complex/compound word
a word that contains two or more morphemes (eg unemployment)
derivative
a word w/ derivational affix(es)
morpheme
the smallest unit of language that carries info about meaning or function (eg books consists of book and –s)
free morpheme
a morpheme that can be a word by itself (eg fear)
bound morpheme
a morpheme that must be attached to another element (eg the past tense marker –ed)
root
the morpheme in a word that carries the major component of the word’s meaning and belongs to a lexical category (eg collect in the word collections
base
the form to which an affix is added (eg book is the base for affix –s in books, modernize is the base for the affix –ed in modernized)
affix
a morpheme that does not belong to a lexical category and is always bound (eg –ing, un–)
prefix
an affix that is attached to the front of its base (eg re- in replay)
suffix
an affix that is attached to the end of its base (eg –ly in quickly)
infix
an affix that occurs w/in another morpheme
