Morphology

Question 1

What is morphology?

Answer 1

The study of the structure of words.

Question 2

Morphemes

Answer 2

Smallest unit in language that carries meaning or function

Question 3

Min. # of morphemes per word

Answer 3

1

Question 4

Words

Answer 4

Smallest free form found in language

Question 5

Mental Lexicon

Answer 5

Internal dictionary

Question 6

Form

Answer 6

The sound that makes up words

Question 7

Meanings

Answer 7

The concepts words express

Question 8

Allomorphs

Answer 8

Variant pronunciations of a morpheme based on phonological context

Question 9

Mono-morphemic

Answer 9

Words that cannot be broken down into meaningful parts

Question 10

Multi-morphemic

Answer 10

Words that are morphologically complex

Question 11

Free Morpheme

Answer 11

A morpheme that can stand as an independent word

Question 12

Bound Morpheme

Answer 12

A morpheme unable to stand alone ex. -s

Question 13

Root

Answer 13

The morpheme in a word that carries the major component of meaning

Question 14

Bound root

Answer 14

Carries meaning, has lexical category but cannot stand alone ex. -flate

Question 15

Affix

Answer 15

No lexical category; always bound

Question 16

Prefix

Answer 16

Affix attached to the front of its base

Question 17

Suffix

Answer 17

Affix attached to the back of its base

Question 18

Infix

Answer 18

Affix attached within another morpheme

Question 19

Compounds

Answer 19

Contain two or more roots

Question 20

Affixation

Answer 20

Attachment of an affix to a base (bound morph to a free morph)

Question 21

Head of Compounds

Answer 21

The morpheme that determines the lexical category of the entire compound (ex. house determines greenhouse is a noun)

Question 22

Right Headed

Answer 22

The head is the right-most member of the compound (most languages)

Question 23

3 ways to represent compounds

Answer 23

1. Tree structures
2. Bracketing
3. Feature percolation (category of the entire constituent is the category of the head)

Question 24

Tests for Compound Status

Answer 24

1. Stress Pattern (stress not usually on head of cmpd)
2. Placement for regular inflection
3. Must stay together
4. Semantic Drift (meaning doesn’t have to be a combination of the parts)

Question 25

Base

Answer 25

Form to which any affix is attached. Can be one or more morphemes

Question 26

Derivational Affixes

Answer 26

Affixes that change the meaning of words and can change lexical category

Question 27

Inflectional Affixes

Answer 27

Affixes that only change the meaning slightly and cannot change lexical category

Question 28

Discontinuous Morphs

Answer 28

Roots and affixes are discontinuous (ex. Arabic & Hebrew)

Question 29

Building Complex Words (Steps)

Answer 29

1. determine root & its lexical category | 2. identify affixes and if multiple, which one comes first

Question 30

Inflection

Answer 30

A morpheme that modifies a word's form in order to indicate the grammatical subclass to which it belongs

Question 31

Case

Answer 31

Provides information about the role that a noun plays in a sentence

Question 32

Gender

Answer 32

Traditional, generally arbitrary, name for a kind of noun class

Question 33

Noun Classes

Answer 33

In many languages, nouns may be marked for noun class

Question 34

Number

Answer 34

Common noun class system. Singular vs. plural vs. dual

Question 35

Tense

Answer 35

Indicates the point in time relative to the time of speaking that an event took place

Question 36

Aspect

Answer 36

Expresses the duration or time of completion of an event

Question 37

Differences b/n inflection and derivation (4)

Answer 37

1. Category change - inflectional: do not change grammatical category - derivational: often change the grammatical category 2. Ordering - inflectional affixes always follow derivational 3. Semantic composition - inflectional: meaning is the sum of parts - derivational: sum of parts or drifted meaning 4. Productivity - Inflectional: more productive - derivational: less productive

Question 38

8 English Inflectional Affixes

Answer 38

1. plural -s 2. possessive -'s 3. 3rd person agreement -s 4. past tense -ed 5. progressive aspect -ing 6. perfected aspect -ed 7. comparative -er 8. superlative -est

Question 39

Root Internal Changes

Answer 39

Changes inside the root can mark grammatical changes

Question 40

Suppletion

Answer 40

Change in the entire morpheme (can be a result of historical change)

Question 41

Reduplication

Answer 41

Copy some part of the root and add it to the root

Question 42

Conversion

Answer 42

A new word is created by assigning an existing word to a new category

Question 43

Clipping

Answer 43

Creating a new word by shortening an existing multisyllabic word