Chapter 6

Question 1

What is Morphology?

Answer 1

The study of the form of words.

Question 2

What is a Morpheme?

Answer 2

smallest units of meaning found within words.

Question 3

Free morphemes + Examples

Answer 3

Morphemes that can stand alone

Example:
- Friend

Question 4

Bound Morpheme + example

Answer 4

A morpheme that cannot stand alone.

Example:

• the -ly in friendly

Question 5

Free: Lexical and Functional Morphemes

Answer 5

Lexical:
- Words that carry content : Girl, Boy, Follow
- usually noun, adjective,verbs
- Open class

Functional:
- Closed class
- Conjunction, prepositions, articles, pronouns
- ex: above, in, it, the

Question 6

Bound: Derivational and Inflectional

Answer 6

Derivational:
- Affixes to change category of word
- ness, ly, re

Inflectional:
- indicate comparative/possessive, singular/plural, verb tense
- s,’s / s,ing,ed,en / er,est

Question 7

Morph

Answer 7

A morph is a sound that has a grammatical function.
ex: the s in cats

Question 8

Allomorph

Answer 8

A group of morphs

Question 9

How many morphemes are there in the word terrorists?

Answer 9

3 (Terror-ist-s)

Question 10

What kind of morpheme is the suffix in slowly?

Answer 10

Bound and Derivational

Question 11

What are the functional morphemes in the following sentence?

When she walked into the room, the doctor asked me if I had a sore throat or an annoying cough.

Answer 11

When, she, into, the, the, me, if, I, a, or, an.

Question 12

(i) List the bound morphemes in these words: fearlessly, happier, misleads, previewer, shortening, unreconstructed
(ii) Which of these words has a bound stem: consist, deceive, introduce, repeat?

Answer 12

(i) -less, -ly, -er, mis-, -s, pre-, -er, -en, -ing, un-, re-, -ed.
(ii) All of them (-sist, -ceive, -duce, -peat).

Question 13

Which of these words contains an allomorph of the morpheme “past tense”?
are, have, must, sitting, waits

Answer 13

None

Question 14

Which word(s) in the following sentence would you put in a closed class?
Bob brought hot donuts to class.

Answer 14

to

Question 15

Which word(s) in the following sentence would you put in an open class? I put it on the shelf near you and him.

Answer 15

put, shelf

Question 16

How many regular inflectional morphemes are there in English?

Answer 16

8

Question 17

What are the inflectional morphemes in these expressions?
(a) Have you eaten yet?
(b) Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?
(c) She’s younger than me and always dresses in the latest style.
(d) We looked through my grandmother’s old photo albums.
(e) My parents’ parents were all from Scotland.

Answer 17

(a) -en, (b) -en, -ing, (c) -er, -es, -est, (d) -ed, -’s, -s, (e) -s’, -s.

Question 18

What is the difference between the -er morphemes in the words smaller and singer?

Answer 18

We add -er to the adjective small to create another adjective smaller. Since
this doesn’t change the category of the word (adjective → adjective), it is an
inflectional morpheme. When we add -er to the verb sing, we get the noun singer.
This process does change the category of the word (verb → noun) in this case, so
it is a derivational morpheme.

Question 19

What are the allomorphs of the morpheme “plural” in the following set of English words?
criteria, dogs, oxen, deer, judges, stimuli

Answer 19

a (or -on → -a); -s; -en; Ø; -es or /-əz/; -i (or -us → -i).