Morphology Flashcards
definition of morpheme
the smallest unit in a language with meaning
what is glossing?
Analysis of morphemes
What is the hierarchical structure of a word?
WORD- morpheme-syllable-onset/rime-consonants/vowels
4 types of morpheme
Bound
Free
Lexical
Grammatical
Bound morpheme
must be attached to another morpheme forming a morphologically complex word
Free morpheme
Stands in isolation as a minimal free form
morphologically simple
Lexical morpheme
content words, convey the major meaning of an utterance
Can refer to real-world entities
open set- new members added
Grammatical morpheme
free morphemes
do not convey lexical content
depend on context for meaning
eg/ articles, connectors, pronouns
2 types of article with examples
Definite: refers to a specific item (the)
Indefinite: nonspecific (a)
Example of a bound lexical morpheme
Italian: amare (love)
am- is not a free morpheme
affixes added to a root to create word
what is a derivational affix?
a type of bound lexical morpheme
forms new words with new meanings
eg/ bake - baker
What is a inflectional affix?
Bound morpheme
does not form new words with new meanings
Often required by sentence structure
eg/ cat-s
What is a word?
the smallest phonologically free form
What is an affix?
attached to a word
what is a clitic?
attached to a phrase
What does inflection produce?
lexemes
- different forms of the same word
What is a paradigm made of?
complete set of related word forms associated with a lexeme.
What is a lexeme?
unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection.
What is a root?
What is a stem?
A root is the part of the word that carries the core meaning, can be free or bound.
A stem is the base to which inflection is added.
It may consist only of a root, or it may be morphologically complex.
State the positions of bound morphemes (affixes and clitics)
Before root: Prefix and Proclitic
Inside root: infix
After root: Suffix and Enclitic
NB. a suffix followed by another suffix is not an infix
Morphological types (3)
Isolating
Agglutinating
Fusional (aka synthetic)
Isolating pattern in languages
1.1 ratio of morphemes to words
no (or very few) bound morphemes
Characteristic of South East Asian languages
Agglutinating language pattern
Allows morphologically complex words
bound morphemes are easily identifiable
Characteristic of Turkish, Quechua, and Japanese
Fusional language pattern
Morphologically complex words
Encode multiple pieces of information
Characteristic of European and Semitic languages
