Ch4 Morphology Vocab Flashcards
affix
is a bound morpheme: this means that it cannot function as an independent word.
affixation
Affixation is a morphological process whereby a bound morpheme, an affix, is attached to a morphological base.
agglutinating language
a grammatical process in which words are composed of a sequence of morphemes (meaningful word elements), each of which represents not more than a single grammatical category
allomorph
is a morph that has a unique set of grammatical or lexical features.
alternation
the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization.
ambiguity
a quality of language that makes speech or written text open to multiple interpretations.
analytic language
any language that uses specific grammatical words, or particles, rather than inflection (q.v.), to express syntactic relations within sentences.
bound morpheme
is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone
bound root
a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme.
closed lexical category
rarely acquire new members. They include conjunctions (e.g., and, or, but), determiners (e.g., a, the), pronouns (e.g., he, she, they), and prepositions (e.g., of, on, under).
compounding
a word formation process based on the combination of lexical elements
conjunction
linguistic elements that link two or more words, phrases, clauses, or sentences within a larger unit, in such a way that a specific semantic relation is established between them.
content morpheme
a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word.
content word
are words that have meaning.
derivation
the formation of a word by changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it (e.g., “hope” to “hopeful”).
determiner
are a nominal syntactic category distinct both from adjectives and nouns, despite the close affinity among them.
form
a meaningful unit of speech
free morpheme
a morpheme (or word element) that can stand alone as a word. It is also called an unbound morpheme
function morpheme
a morpheme which simply modifies the meaning of a word, rather than supplying the root meaning.
function word
a word whose purpose is more to signal grammatical relationship than the lexical meaning of a sentence
fusional language
is a language in which one form of a morpheme can simultaneously encode several meanings.
hierarchical structure
o any ordering of units or levels on a scale of size, abstraction, or subordination.
homophony
the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation
incorporation
is when a noun (usually a direct object) is moved into the verb.
infix
an affix inserted inside a word stem.
inflection
process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings.
input
the processible language the learners are exposed to while listening or reading
lexical category
classes of words (e.g., noun, verb, preposition), which differ in how other words can be constructed out of them.
lexicon
a book containing an alphabetical arrangement of the words in a language and their pronounciations
morpheme
the smallest grammatical unit of speech
morphology
the study of forms, is the branch of linguistics that deals with the internal structure of complex words.
open lexical category
open if the new word and the original word belong to the same category.
output
is the language they produce, either in speaking or writing (i.e. The productive skills).
partial reduplication
involves a reduplication of only part of the word.
polysynthetic language
a language where words are made with lexical morphemes (substantive, verb, adjective, etc) as if parts of sentences were bound together to constitute one word, which can sometimes be very long.
prefix
an affix which is placed before the stem of a word.
preposition
words that “link to other words, phrases, and clauses” and that “express spatial or temporal relations.”
productive
the degree to which native speakers of a language use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation.
pronoun
is a word or a group of words that substitutes a noun or noun phrase.
reduplicant
a word-formation process in which meaning is expressed by repeating all or part of a word
reduplication
a word-formation process in which meaning is expressed by repeating all or part of a word
root
is the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements.
simultaneous affix
An affix is articulated at the same time as some other affix or affixes in a word’s stem.
stem
Stem is any morpheme which a syntactical affix can be added to
suffix
also sometimes called a postfix or ending) is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word
suppletion
the occurrence of phonemically unrelated allomorphs of the same morpheme (such as went as the past tense of go or better as the comparative form of good)
