Morphemes Flashcards
morpheme
most elemental unit of grammatical form/an arbitrary union of sound & meaning (grammatical function) that can’t be further analyzed
morphology
the study of the internal structure of words/the rules by which words are formed/internal grammatical knowledge in native tongue
linguistic sign
an arbitrary union of sound & meaning (grammatical function) that can’t be further analyzed
monomorphemic word
a word consisted of a single morpheme
what must a morpheme be?
a meaning of the morpheme must be constant
what does the decomposition of words indicate in language?
the decomposition of words into morphemes shows the discreteness property of human language
what is our morphological knowledge made of?
knowledge of the individual morphemes & the knowledge of the rules that combine them
free morphemes
morphemes that constitute a word on their own
bound morphemes
morphemes that are not words but can be attached to other morphemes to create a word
affixes
prefixes (an affix that precedes a morpheme) & suffixes (an affix that follows a morpheme)
infixes
morphemes that are inserted into other morphemes
what are the only infixes in the English language?
full-word obscenities
circumfixes/discontinuous morphemes
morphemes that are attached to a base morpheme initially and finally
morphologically complex words are made of
morpheme root + affix(es)
root
a morpheme that cannot stand alone/the morpheme where the circumflixes and infixes are attached to
stem
root morpheme + affix
base
any root/stem to which an affix is attached
bound roots
do not occur in isolation/acquire meaning in combination with other morphemes
morphological rules
derivational morpheme
bound morphemes when added to a base, a new word with a new meaning is derived/have clear semantic content
derived word
form that results from addition of a derivational morpheme
blocked
when a certain affix enters the language, the need for other affixes are not needed
how can a complex derivation be blocked?
when a new word enters the lexicon by the application of morphological rules
derivational affixes manifests as…
(1) an addition of a suffix triggers subtle changes in pronunciation
(2) an addition of a suffix does not affect the pronunciation
inflectional morphemes
bound morphemes that are strictly grammatical functions/do not change the grammatical category of the stems they’re attached to
what can inflectional morphemes do?
they represent the relationships between different parts of a sentence
what is the placement of inflectional morphemes to derivational morphemes?
in English, inflectional follows derivational
productive
when a morpheme can apply freely to nearly every base/inflectional is productive
case
aka “case of a noun”/the grammatical relation of a noun in a sentence
case morphology
the process when case is marked by inflectional morphemes
reduplication
inflecting a word through the repetition of part of all of the word
characteristics of inflectional morphemes
grammatical function/no word class change/small or no meaning change/often required by rules of grammar/productive
characteristics of derivational morphemes
lexical function/may cause word class change/some meaning change/never required by rules of grammar/some productive but most are unproductive
