Definitions Flashcards
What is orthography?
Spelling
What is a determiner?
A modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has, for example a, the, every.
What is a definite article?
The definite article (the) is used before a noun to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the reader.
What is an indefinite article?
The indefinite article (a, an) is used before a noun that is general or when its identity is not known.
What is a split infinitive?
An adverb between “to” and the verb itself, e.g. “To suddenly go” or “to quickly eat.”
What is an infinitive?
The basic form of a verb - “to eat” or “to love” - without an inflection binding it to a particular subject or tense.
What is mental grammar?
The system that all native speakers of a language have in their minds, which allows them to understand each other.
What is an affix?
A addition to the base form or stem of a word in order to modify its meaning or create a new word.
What is a conjunction?
A word used to connect clauses or sentences or to coordinate words in the same clause (e.g. and, but, if, unless).
What is a lexicon?
The vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge or in linguistics, the complete set of meaningful units in a language.
What is a content word?
A word that has meaning.
What is a function word?
A word whose purpose is to contribute to the syntax rather than the meaning of a sentence.
Difference between a free and bound morpheme?
A bound morpheme is a morpheme that can appear only as part of a larger expression, while a free morpheme is one that can stand alone.
What is a lexical morpheme?
A morpheme that is contentful and can stand on its own to convey meaning.
What is a functional morpheme?
A morpheme that just conveys grammatical information, such as tense, grammar or case.
Do “lovelier” and “singer” have the same -er morpheme?
No. The meaning of a morpheme must be constant. The morpheme -er in lovelier and singer are two different morphemes, as one means ‘more’ and the other means ‘one who does.’
Difference between open class vs. closed class words?
Open class words have had new words added to them recently, such as various verbs and nouns, e.g. “Facebook” or “frack.” Closed class words are ones like “they” or “and” which generally aren’t receptive to the addition of new words.
Derivational Morpheme Qualities
Lexical function
May cause word class change
Some meaning change
Never required by rules of grammar
Precede inflectional morphemes in a word
Some productive, many non-productive
Inflectional Morpheme Qualities
Grammar function
No word class change
Small or no meaning change
Often required by rules of grammar
Follow derivational morphemes in a word
Productive
A derivational morpheme:
Changes the meaning of a word or its word class.
An inflectional morpheme:
Only adds grammatical info without changing a word’s meaning or class.
Name all 8 inflectional morphemes in the English language:
Plural -s
Possessive ‘s
3rd Person Singular Present Tense -s (it walks)
Progressive -ing
Past participle (I have eaten, driven, chosen)
Past tense -ed
Comparative -er
Superlative -est
Name the differences between the two classes of derivational morphemes.
The first class of derivational morphemes affects pronunciation slightly (specific to specificity). The second one does not affect pronunciation when added to a base word (baker, wishful, boyish).
Affixes from the first class cannot be added after affixes from the second class. Affixes from the second class can be added to bases with either class.
Inflectional morphemes come before derivational morphemes, true or false?
False. Inflectional morphemes come after derivational morphemes in a word (commit+ment+s but not *commit+s+ment). Inflectional morphemes are productive and apply to nearly every appropriate base, aside from irregular forms like foot, not feet+s.
