Chapter 4: Morphology

Question 1

What is a morpheme?

Answer 1

= smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning + is a linguistic symbol

(1) cars = car + s
(2) reconsider = re + consider
(3) overgeneralization = over + general + iz + action

Question 2

What are monomorphemic words?

Answer 2

= one word –> one morpheme

(1) car
(2) the
(3) contain

Question 3

What are polymorphemic words?

Answer 3

= words that consists of 2 words

(1) happiness
(2) walked
(3) tablecloth

Question 4

What are bound morphemes?

Answer 4

Free = morph. by themself
Prefix = infront of the word 
Suffix = behind the word 

• important for our language –> we memorize things + are able to produce novel words + sentences
• allows us to produce words that nobody ever used –> productivity !!

Question 5

What are different types of morphemes?

Answer 5

free-bounded:

• free: hope
• bound: -ful; -ly

content-function:
= have rich content
- content: hope
- function: -ful; -ly

Base-root:
= relative term
= morpheme that is used as a starting point 
- root: hope
- base: hope; hopeful

Question 6

Define the special cases.

Answer 6

= “Morphology should not be confused with etymology (history of a word).”

zero forms:
car - cars 
tree - trees 
book - books 
deer - deer 

Umlaut:
mouse - mice
tooth - teeth
goose - geese

Ablaut:
= applies only to verbs 
sing - sang 
buy - bought 
give - gave

Question 7

Tree diagrams

Answer 7

look at notes for the picture

Question 8

What defines allomorphy?

Answer 8

= a single variant of a word is called a morph
= all morphs of a morpheme are called allomorph

(1) There is a dog over there
(2) He is recovering from an illness
(3) I said “a” dog, not “the” dog.

(indef art) = written + pronounced in two different ways

• cats (s) –> after a voiceless consonant
• dogs (z) –> after voiced speech sounds
• bushes (ez) –> after sibilants
• writer (r)
• editor (r)
• liar (r)
• -> homophones