Ch. 4 Morphology Vocabulary

Question 1

Affix

Answer 1

Morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form

Question 2

Affixation

Answer 2

The linguistic process that speakers use to form different words by adding morphemes at the beginning (prefixation), the middle (infixation) or the end (suffixation) of words.

Question 3

Agglutinating Language

Answer 3

A language that allows a great number of morphemes per word and has highly regular rules for combining morphemes

Question 4

Allomorph

Answer 4

Allomorph is a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, or, a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning.

Question 5

Alternation

Answer 5

The phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization.

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

A quality of language that makes speech or written text open to multiple interpretations.

Question 7

analytic language

Answer 7

Any language that uses specific grammatical words, or particles, rather than inflection (q.v.), to express syntactic relations within sentences.

Question 8

bound morpheme

Answer 8

A morpheme that must be “bound” with another morpheme to form a word. Ex: un, ish, es, ed, pre

Question 9

bound root

Answer 9

A bound root is a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme.

Question 10

closed lexical category

Answer 10

Lexical category in which the members are fairly rigidly established and additions are made very rarely and only over long periods of time.

Question 11

compounding

Answer 11

The process of combining two words (free morphemes) to create a new word

Question 12

conjunction

Answer 12

A word used to join words or groups of words; a conjunction is a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions.

Question 13

content morpheme

Answer 13

A morpheme that carries the main semantic and referential content of a sentence. In English content morphemes are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs.

Question 14

content word

Answer 14

Words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur.

Question 15

derivation

Answer 15

That process by which a word is traced from its original root or primitive form and meaning.

Question 16

determiner

Answer 16

A word that modifies a noun to show amount, ownership, specificity, or definiteness.

Question 17

form

Answer 17

A meaningful unit of speech

Question 18

free morpheme

Answer 18

A free morpheme is a morpheme (or word element) that can stand alone as a word.

Question 19

function morpheme

Answer 19

A morpheme that, while adding such content as time, mode, individuation, and evidentiality, also serves a grammatical purpose (e.g., the suffixes -s and -er, or the connecting words and or if).

Question 20

function word

Answer 20

Words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker.

Question 21

fusional language

Answer 21

A language that forms words by the fusion (rather than the agglutination) of morphemes, so that the constituent elements of a word are not kept distinct.

Question 22

hierarchical structure

Answer 22

In grammar, hierarchy refers to any ordering of units or levels on a scale of size, abstraction, or subordination. Adjective: hierarchical. Also called syntactic hierarchy or morpho-syntactic hierarchy.

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

The linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation.

Question 24

incorporation

Answer 24

A phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function.

Question 25

infix

Answer 25

An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem.

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

A process of word formation, in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories.

Question 27

input

Answer 27

“All words, contexts, and other forms of language to which a learner is exposed, relative to acquired proficiency in first or second languages”.

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

Classes of words (e.g., noun, verb, preposition), which differ in how other words can be constructed out of them.

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

The total stock of words and word elements that carry meaning.

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

In a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning.

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language.

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

Lexical category into which new members are often introduced.

Question 33

output

Answer 33

The language they produce, either in speaking or writing

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

A morphological process in which part of a stem is repeated to form a new word

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

A type of language that attaches several affixes to a stem to indicate grammatical relationships.

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

a syllable or word that comes before a root word to change its meaning

Question 37

preposition

Answer 37

A word that shows the relationship of a noun or pronoun to another word

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers of a language use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation.

Question 39

pronoun

Answer 39

A word that can function as a noun phrase used by itself and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g. I, you ) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

The morpheme or part of a morpheme that is repeated in reduplication.

Question 41

reduplication

Answer 41

A syllable structure phonological process that involves the repetition of a syllable of a word

Question 42

root

Answer 42

A root is the core of a word.

Question 43

simultaneous affix

Question 43

stem

Answer 43

In linguistics, a stem is a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning.

Question 44

suffix

Answer 44

An affix that is added at the end of the word.

Question 45

suppletion

Answer 45

A morphological process between forms of a word wherein one form cannot be phonologically or morphologically derived from the other.