Morph Terms Flashcards
Allomorph
Variant form of a morpheme
Analytic Language
Language that marks grammatical function primarily through syntax
Analytic / Synthetic Continuum
Continuum that typologists use to classify languages according to morphological “richness.”
Arbitrariness of the Lexicon
Fact that nearly all words are arbitrarily related to thier associated concepts and referents
Conversion
Change in syntactic category with no corresponding change in word form
Derivation
Regular, rule governed change in a lexeme, through processes such as affixation or conversion.
Diachronic
Study of language change over time
Study of Language Change Over Time
Study of the “original” or “true” meanings of words.
Fusion / Fusion Language
Combination of two or more morphemes within one morph.
Generative Grammar
A rule system that generates all and only the acceptable strings of a language as determined by NS
Homograph
One of two or more words that have the same spelling but may have different sounds and also have different unrelated meanings
Homonym
Word from associated with two or more unrelated meanings but all with same sounds, same spelling
Homophone
One of two or more words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have unrelated meanings
Iconic
Sign that resembles what it means
Indexical
Sign that is non-arbitrarily related to its meaning.
Inflection
Morphological marking of word forms for a grammatical purpose
Isolating
Language that has little or no morphological marking
Lexeme
The citation form of a word and all of its inflected forms
Lexicon
The mental repository of morphemes and words in an individual’s long term memory
Meta-Language
The language one uses to perform analysis (on an object language)
Morph
A form associated with one or more morphemes
Morpheme
Smallest unit of meaning or grammar
Object Language
The language under analysis
Polyseme, Polysemous, Polysemy
The various related meanings of a word form
Polysynthetic
Language that marks most or all grammatical functions on word forms
Reanalysis (of word forms)
Process where NS unconsciously reassign morphological structure to an existing word form
Simple Word Form vs Complex Word Form
Simple word forms have only one morpheme; complex forms have more than one
Synchronic
Study of language that is focused on NS current knowledge of a language
Syncretism
Use of the same word form for two or more syntactic (grammatical) purposes
Universal Grammar
Underlying system of language principles that is assumed to genetically inherited.
Morphology
The rules of word formation and structure
Etymology
History of words.
The study of historical linguistic change, specially as manifested in individual words.
