Chapter 4 Flashcards
affix
Bound morpheme that attaches to a stem
Affixation
Process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes
agglutinating language
Morphemes are joined together loosely making it easy to determine where the boundaries between morphemes are
allomorph
One of a set of nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar.
(of the same morpheme)
alternation
Have to do with the sounds in a particular word pair or larger word set, mark morphological distinctions
ambiguity
Words that can be associated with more than one meaning
analytic language
Made up of sequences of free morphemes-each word consists of a single morpheme, used by itself with meaning and function intact
bound morpheme
Affixes that cannot stand alone. Morphemes that always attaches itself to other morphemes, never existing as a word itself.
bound root
Morpheme that has some associated basic meaning but is unable to stand alone as a word in its own right
closed lexical category
Rarely acquire new members. Include pronouns, determiners, prepositions and conjunctions.
compounding
Process that forms new words from two or more independent words
conjunction
Function words (and, but, however)
content morpheme
Have more concrete meaning. Carries more semantic content.
content word
A word whose primary purpose is to contribute semantic content to the phrase in which it occurs. nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
derivation
In phonology an underlying form is changed. In morphology a process that changes a word’s lexical category or its meaning in some predictable way. Takes one word and performs one or more operations on it.
determiner
a, this, your. The name of a lexical and syntactic category. When combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in an expression of category noun phrase.
form
Structure or shape of any particular linguistic item, from individual segments to string of words
free morpheme
A morpheme that can stand alone as a word
function morpheme
Morpheme that provides information about the grammatical relationships between words in a sentence
function word
A word that has little semantic content and whose primary purpose is to indicate grammatical relationships between other words within a phrase
fusional language
Another subtype of synthetic language, words are formed by adding bound morphemes to stems, the affixes may not be easy to separate from the stem
hierarchical structure
The dominance relationship among morphemes in a word, or among constituents in a phrase. Structure can be schematically represented by a tree diagram that indicates the steps involved in the formation of the word.
homophony
Affixes that sound alike but have different meanings or functions
incorporation
Morphological process by which several distinct semantic components are combined into a single word. objects to verbs.
infix
Type of bound morpheme that is inserted into the middle of the stem
inflection
Morphological process whereby the form of a word is modified to indicate some grammatically relevant information such as person, number, tense, gender
input
Stems with which a given affix may combine normally belong to the same lexical category
lexical category
Parts of speech. Classes of words that differ in how other words can be constructed out of them.
lexicon
Mental dictionary
morpheme
Smallest linguistic unit with a meaning
morphology
Study of how words are constructed out of morphemes
open lexical category
Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. New words added to the language.
output
Words that are formed when an affix attaches to a stem
partial reduplication
Process of forming new words by doubling part of the free morpheme
polysynthetic language
Attaches several affixes to a stem to indicate grammatical relationships
prefix
Affix that attaches to the beginning of a stem
preposition
on, of, under, for. lexical and syntactic category.
productive
rules that speakers are able to apply to form novel words
pronoun
closed lexical categories. we, she, they.
reduplicant
Morpheme that is repeated
reduplication
Forming new words by doubling entire word
root
Words that contributes most semantic content to the word and which affixes can attach
simultaneous affix
Articulated at the same time as some other affix in a word’s stem (exists only in visual gestural languages)
stem
base consisting of one or more morphemes to which an affix is added. always includes threat and may also include one or more affixes
suffix
affix that attaches to the end of a stem
suppletion
Roots that have one or more inflected forms phonetically unrelated to the shape of the root
