Chapter 4 Flashcards
a grammatical case that marks noun phrases that occur as objects of clauses
accusative
morpheme attached to a root, e.g., the English plural ‑s
affix
morphological structure in which the boundaries between morphemes are clear‑cut and generally encode a one‑to‑one morpheme‑to‑meaning ratio; contrasts with fusional
agglutinative
a phonetic variant of a morpheme, often motivated by the same phonetic forces that govern the occurrence of allophones; allomorphs of the English plural suffix include /s/, /z/, and /?z/
allomorph
morpheme that cannot stand on its own as a word, e.g., English un‑
bound morpheme
the morphological marking of the syntactic and (in some cases) semantic relations that hold between the noun phrases and the verb of a sentence
case
a construction type that typically increases by one the number of core arguments in a clause; in a causative clause an agent typically causes a patient to perform some action; also used to refer to an affix that adds the meaning ‘cause’ or ‘make’, e.g., the English en‑ of en‑able
causative
affix that surrounds the root, with one part before it and another after it; circumfixes add meanings beyond those of the components
circumfix
the situation in which two or more sounds occur in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., there is no single environment in which more than one of the allophones could occur; sounds in complementary distribution are allophones of a single phoneme
complementary distribution
word composed of two roots, stems, or words
compound
morphological processes that create new lexemes, or new mental dictionary entries; derivational processes may change the word class of the stem they are added to, e.g., govern/govern‑ment (verb ? noun), though this is not always the case
derivation
cover term for a set of word classes that can occupy a single slot in a noun phrase; in English these include articles, demonstratives, and possessives
determiner
morpheme that can stand on its own as a word, e.g., English house or of
free morpheme
morphological structure in which the boundaries between morphemes are no longer clear‑cut; the English plural noun feet shows fusional structure: it is difficult to separate the root ‘foot’ from the plural suffix (see Seneca language profile for an excellent example of a fusional language)
fusional
the translated representation of a morpheme’s meaning; frequently won’t capture the full meaning of a morpheme, due to translational issues
gloss
affix that appears inside of the root (not just inside of the word)
infix
morphological processes that do not create new lexemes (mental dictionary entries), but simply add grammatical meaning such as past tense, plural number, or case
inflection
morphological structure in which each word has very few morphemes, usually just one, i.e., there are no or only several affixes or clitics; common in a number of Southeast Asian languages, such as Vietnamese; contrasts with synthetic or polysynthetic
isolating or analytic
a type of morphological description that specifies the environment where each of two or more allomorphs occur
item and arrangement
a type of morphological description that posits a basic form of each allomorph and then states a set of processes (phonological rules) that derive each of the non‑basic allomorphs
item and process
vocabulary item in the mental lexicon; a single lexeme, e.g., English freeze , might have several word forms, such as freeze, freezes, freezing, froze, and frozen
lexeme
the addition of a morphological formation to the mental lexicon as a single unit, or a recognizable vocabulary item (lexical item); inappropriateness is lexicalized, whereas inelegantness is not, though it could become lexicalized if it were used often enough
lexicalization
allomorphs whose occurrence (distribution) cannot be predicted on the lexical semantics basis of the sounds around them, but simply must be learned with the individual word, e.g., the plurals mice and alumni
lexically conditioned
semantic relation of location and/or the grammatical marking of location by case; refers to static location when contrasting with categories of source and/or goal.
locative
the smallest meaningful part of a word; includes roots, affixes, clitics, and particles
morpheme
the study of the internal structure of words and the principles underlying such structuring
morphology
an affix that creates nouns; the English suffixes ‑ness, ‑ity, and hood are all nominalizers: sweet/sweet‑ness, scarce/scarc‑ity, woman/woman‑hood
nominalizer
a grammatical case that marks noun phrases that occur as subjects of clauses
nominative
allomorphs whose occurrence (distribution) can be predicted on the basis of the sounds around them, e.g., occurrence of the English plural allomorphs /‑s/, /‑z/, and /‑?z/ can be predicted based on their phonological environment
phonologically conditioned
morphological structure in which words tend to have large numbers of morphemes; characteristic of many languages of North America and the Caucasus; contrasts with isolating
polysynthetic
affix that occurs before the root, e.g., the English negative un‑ ‘not’
prefix
in morphology, degree to which a particular morphological formation is used by speakers to create new words; the English suffix ‑hood of mother‑hood is no longer very productive, but the suffix ‑ness of words like happi‑ness is highly productive
productivity
the main morpheme of a word, the foundation to which other morphemes may be added; roots typically carry the core meaning of the word, e.g., late in English be‑late‑d‑ly
root
an apical ‘hissing’ fricative or affricate, such as s, z, ts, dz, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ and dʒ; sibilants are also described with the feature [+strident]
sibilant
noisy sound (typically a fricative or affricate) which involves the funneling of air against the back of the teeth
strident
affix that occurs after the root, e.g. the English plural ‑s.
suffix
derivational affix that creates verbs, e.g., English ‑ize, as in real‑ize ‘make real’
verbalizer
