Exam 2 Flashcards
Morphemes
The smallest units of language that carry meaning
Form
What a word sounds like when spoken
Meaning
The meaning of a word (cat and dog cannot be used interchangeably)
Lexical categories
Parts of speech
Open lexical categories
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
Closed lexical categories
Pronouns, determiners (a, the, this, your), prepositions, conjunctions (and, or, but)
Derivational morphemes
Changes a word’s lexical category or meaning
Inflectional morphemes
The creation of different grammatical forms of a word
If it changes the part of speech, it must be derivational/inflectional
Derivational
If it is at the beginning of a word, it must be derivational/inflectional
Derivational
If it indicated grammatically relevant information, such as person, number, gender, or tense, it must be derivational/inflectional
Inflectional
Free morphemes
Can be used as words themselves
Bound morphemes
Cannot stand alone; must be attached to something else
Content morphemes
Carries semantic content; refers to something out in the world
Function morphemes
Contains primarily grammatically relevant information
Content words are
Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
Function words are
Determiners, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions
Morphology
Area of linguistics associated with the formation of words and study of morphemes
The 8 inflectional morphemes
-s, -s’, -ed (2), -ing, -en, -er (comparison), -est
Homophonous morphemes
Morphemes that are the same but have a different meaning
-er (colder, inflectional) vs. (teacher, derivational)
-ing (running shoes, derivational) vs. (he is running, inflectional)
Compounding
Forming a new word from independent words rather than affixes (girlfriend, textbook, air-conditioner, lifeguard chair)
Affixation
Adding an affix to a word (Sara’s, Discover, Undomesticated)
Reduplication
Forming a new word by doubling an entire free morpheme (total reduplication) or part of it (partial reduplication) (bye bye, mama)
Alternations
A morpheme-internal modification that results in a change of meaning (man/men, bind/bound, foot/feet, ring/rung)
Suppletion
When a root has one or more inflected forms that are phonetically unrelated (is/was, go/went, are/were)
Open lexical categories
Nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs
Closed lexical categories
Conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, determiners
Allomorphs
A unit that varies phonetically but has the same meaning (malign/malignant, divide/divisible)
Allomorphs of the present tense/ plural morpheme
[s], [z], [əz]
Allomorphs of the past tense/plural morpheme
[t], [d], [əd]
Allomorphs of in-
[im] (before labials [p], [b], [m])
[il] (before l)
[iɹ] (before r)
[iŋ] (before velars [k], [g])
[in] (elsewhere, before vowels and other consonants)
Root
The free morpheme or bound root in a word that contributes most semantic content to the word, and to which affixes can attach
Stem
The base, consisting of one or more morphemes, to which some affix is added.
Word order
The order of the syntactic constituents in a language (ex. SVO)
Free word order
A language in which any word order is grammatically correct, however there is usually a dominant word order that writers default to
Co-occurence
The set of syntactic properties that determines which expressions may or have to co-occur with some other expressions in a sentence
Subject
The main person/thing being discussed
Direct object
The NP denoting a person/thing that is the recipient of the action in a transitive verb (ex. The dog in Jimmy fed the dog)
Indirect object
A NP referring to someone/thing that is affected by the action of a transitive verb; receives the direct object (ex. She gave HIM the address)
Adverbial
Phrase that modifies a verb, adjective, or adverb (surprisingly well, right here, during the week)
Argument
A linguistic expression that must occur in a sentence if some other expression occurs as well. (Ex. An apple in Sally devoured an apple)
Complement
Non-subject verb argument (ex. The soup in the soup tastes good)
Adjuncts
Expressions whose occurrence is purely optional (ex. On the table in the cat was sleeping on the table)
Transitive verb
A verb that requires one or more objects to complete its meaning (turn on, push)
Intransitive verb
A verb whose context does not entail a direct object (fly, listen)
Ditransitive verb
A verb that requires two NP complements (gave, sell, tell)
Sentential complement verbs
A verb that requires a clausal argument (thought in sally thought bob liked her)
Embedded clause
A clause in the middle of another clause to give more information
What makes a sentence?
A subject and verb or a NP and VP
Meaning embeds 2 terms:
Sense (a description) and reference (the particular entities in real life to which the expression refers to)
Hypernym
Encompasses different groups of a certain field (ex. Fruit)
Hyponym
The specific categories of a hypernym (ex. Apples, bananas, grapes)
Hyponyms are
Sister terms
Complementary antonyms
Straightforward; one or the other (married/unmarried, alive/dead, win/lose)
Gradable antonyms
Degrees between 2 antonyms (wet/dry, old/young)
Reverses
One antonym reverses the other (put together/take apart, expand/contract, ascend/descend)
Converses
One antonym requires the other (lend/borrow, send/receive, employer/employee, over/under)
Meaning relationships encompasses
Synonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms, sister terms, antonyms
What are suprasegmentals?
It is the phonetic characteristics of speech sound (length, tone, stress, intonation)
Co-articulation
Changes in speech articulation of the current phoneme due to neighboring speech
Auxiliary verbs
Verbs that support the sentence’s main verb so as to express tense or mood (have in I have finished)
Monophtong
A simple vowel composed of a single configuration in the vocal chords (æ, o, u)
Diphthong
A complex vowel composed of a sequence of two different configurations in the vocal chords (aI, eI)
Phonotactic constraints
Restriction on possible combinations of sounds
Ways of handling phonotactic constraints
Dropping or deleting one of the consonants or inserting a vowel to separate consonants are examples of ways to handle phonotactic constrains
Phonemes vs allophones
Phonemes are a set of sounds and allophones are phonetic variations of the same phoneme 
Contrastive distribution
Replacing one sound with the other in a word can change the words meaning (p and p^h in hindi have different meanings, e.g. [p^hel] is fruit and [pel] is moment) (bit and pit)
Non-contrastive
Interchanging two sounds does not result in a change of meaning
Aspiration
A puff of air transcribed with a super scripted [h] 
Complementary distribution
Sounds in a language that are never found in the same phonetic environment. When sounds are in complementary distribution you will not find a minimal pair (spot, pot)
Sounds that are in complementary distribution are
Allophones of the same phoneme (ex. t and t^h)
Minimal pair
Two words with different meanings whose pronunciations differ by exactly one sound
Allophones of t
[t] stop
[t^h] top
[ʔ] kitten
[ɾ] little
Basic allophone
 The allophone with the broader distribution; the elsewhere allophone 
Restricted allophone
The allophone that appears in a more limited set of phonetic environments; follows a specific rule
Constituency tests
A test applied to a portion of a sentence to provide evidence about the constituent structure
