List of Terms Leder Sent

Question 1

Allomorph

Answer 1

Variant form of a morpheme

Question 2

Analytical Language

Answer 2

Language that marks grammatical function primarily through syntax

Question 3

Analytic/ Synthetic Continuum

Answer 3

Continuum that typologists use to classify languages according to morphological “richness.”

Question 4

Arbitrariness of the lexicon

Answer 4

Fact that nearly all words are arbitrarily related to their associated concepts and referents

Question 5

backformation

Answer 5

See 1.1

Question 6

Conversion

Answer 6

change in syntactic category with no corresponding change in word form

Question 7

Derivation

Answer 7

regular, rule governed change in a lexeme, through processes such as affixation or conversion.

Question 8

diachronic

Answer 8

study of language change over time

Question 9

etymology

Answer 9

study of the “original” or “true” meanings of words.

Question 10

fusion/ fusion language

Answer 10

combination of two or more morphemes within one morph.

Question 11

Generative Grammar

Answer 11

A rule system that generates all and only the acceptable strings of a language as determined by NS

Question 12

homograph

Answer 12

one of two or more words that have the same spelling but may have different sounds and also have different unrelated meanings

Question 13

homonym

Answer 13

word form associated with two or more unrelated meanings but all with same sound, same spelling

Question 14

homophone

Answer 14

one of two or more words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have unrelated meanings

Question 15

iconic

Answer 15

sign that resembles what it means

Question 16

indexical

Answer 16

sign that is non-arbitrarily related to its meaning.

Question 17

inflection

Answer 17

morphological marking of word forms for a grammatical purpose

Question 18

isolating

Answer 18

language that has little or no morphological marking

Question 19

lexeme

Answer 19

The citation form of a word and all of its inflected forms

Question 20

lexicon

Answer 20

the mental repository of morphemes and words in an individual’s long term memory

Question 21

meta-language

Answer 21

The language one uses to perform analysis (on an object language)

Question 22

morph

Answer 22

A form associated with one or more morphemes

Question 23

morpheme

Answer 23

Smallest unit of meaning or grammar

Question 24

object language

Answer 24

The language under analysis

Question 25

polyseme, polysemous,

polysemy

Answer 25

The various related meanings of a word form

Question 26

polisynthetic

Answer 26

Language that marks most or all grammatical functions on word forms

Question 27

reanalysis (of word forms)

Answer 27

process where NS unconsciously reassign morphological structure to an existing word form

Question 28

simple word form vs complex word form

Answer 28

Simple word forms have only one morpheme; complex forms have more than one

Question 29

synchronic

Answer 29

Study of language that is focused on NS current knowledge of a language

Question 30

syncretism

Answer 30

use of the same word form for two or more syntactic (grammatical) purposes

Question 31

Universal Grammar

Answer 31

Underlying system of language principles that is assumed to genetically inherited.