CHAPTER 4 Flashcards
AFFIX
Bound morphemes that attaches to a stem
AFFIXATION
Process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes
AGGLUTINATING LANGUAGE
A type of synthetic language in which the relationships between words in a sentence are indicated primarily by bound morphemes. In agglutinating languages, morphemes are joined together loosely so that it is 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.
Alternation
The morphological process that uses morpheme-internal modifications to make new words or morphological distinctions.
Ambiguity
The phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression. The form that is shared by more than one expression is said to be ambiguous.
Analytic Language
Type of language in which most words consist of one morpheme and sentences are composed of sequences of these free morphemes. Grammatical relationships are often indicated by word order. Examples are Chinese and Vietnamese.
Bound Morpheme
Morpheme that always attaches to other morphemes, never existing as a word itself.
Bound Root
Morpheme that has some associated basic meaning but that is unable to stand alone as a word in its own right
Closed Lexical Category
Lexical category in which the members are fairly rigidly established and additions are made very rarely and only over long periods of time.
compunding
Process of forming words by combining two or more independent words.
Conjunction
A lexical category that consists of function words such as and, but however, etc.
Context Morpheme
Morpheme that carries semantic content (as opposed to merely performing a grammatical function).
Content Word
A word whose primary purpose is to contribute semantic content to the phrase in which it occurs. All free content morphemes are content words.
Derivation
A morphological process that changes a word’s lexical category or its meaning in some predictable way
Determiner
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a, this, all, etc. Syntactically, consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun their right result in an expression of category noun phrase.
Form
The structure or shape of any particular linguistic item, from individual segments to strings of words.
Free Morpheme
A morpheme that can stand alone as a word.
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
A type of synthetic language in which the relationships between the words in a sentence are indicated by bound morphemes that are difficult to separate from the stem.
Hierarchical Structure
The dominance relationship among morphemes in a word or among constituents in a phrase.
Homophony
The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form.
Incorporation
Morphological process by which several distinct semantic components are combined into a single word in a polysynthetic language.
Infix
A type of bound morpheme that is inserted into the middle of the stem.
Inflection
A morphological process whereby the form of a word is modified to indicate some grammatically relevant information, such as person, number, tense, gender, etc.
Input
The linguistic form before the application of a rule or a set of rules.
Lexical Category
Class of words grouped together based on morphological properties. Traditionally known as part of speech.
Lexicon
A mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form and meaning and their morphological and syntactic properties. As a part of a descriptive, not mental, grammar, the lexicon is the representation of the mental lexicon, consisting of lexical entries that capture the relevant properties of lexical expressions.
Morpheme
Smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function.
Morphology
The study of how words are constructed out of morphemes.
Open Lexical Category
Lexical category into which new members are often introduced.
Output
The linguistic form obtained after an application of a rule or a set of rules.
Partial Reduplication
Morphological reduplication in which only part of a morpheme is reduplicated.
Polysynthetic Language
A type of language that attaches several affixes to a stem to indicate grammatical relationships.
Prefix
Affix that attaches to the beginning of a stem.
Preposition
The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc. Syntactically, this category consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in an expression of category prepositional phrase.
Productive
Describes a morpheme or rule (such as a morphological rule stating under what circumstances an affix may be added) that can be used to produce novel grammatical forms.
Pronoun
The name of a lexical category that consists of words such as I, she, us, etc. Syntactically, pronouns belong to the category noun phrase.
Reduplicant
The morpheme or part of a morpheme that is repeated in reduplication.
Root
The free morpheme or bound root in a word that contributes most semantic content to the word, and to which affixes can attach.
Simultaneous Affix
An affix that is articulated at the same time as some other affix or affixes in a word’s stem; exists only visualgestural languages.
Stem
The base, consisting of one or more morphemes, to which some affix is added. The stem always includes the root and may also include on or more affixes.
Suffix
Affix that attaches to the end of a stem.
Suppletion
A morphological process between forms of a word wherein one form cannot be phonologically or morphologically derived from the other.
