Morphology Flashcards
affix
a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form
affixation
a morphological process whereby a bound morpheme, an affix, is attached to a morphological base
agglutinating language
form words through the combination of smaller morphemes to express compound ideas
allomorph
any of two or more actual representations of a morpheme.
alternation
the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization
ambiguity
a quality of language that makes speech or written text open to multiple interpretations
analytic language
a language that conveys relationships between words in sentences primarily by way of helper words (particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to using inflections
bound morpheme
a morpheme that can appear only as part of a larger expression
bound root
a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme
closed lexical category
the category of function words—that is, parts of speech (or word classes)—that don’t readily accept new members
compounding
morphological operation that—in general—puts together two free forms and gives rise to a new word
conjunction
a part of speech that connects words, phrases, or clauses that are called the conjuncts of the conjunctions
content morpheme
a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word
content word
words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur
derivation
the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as un- or -ness
determiner
a nominal syntactic category distinct both from adjectives and nouns
form
describes the physical structure of the material
free morpheme
A morpheme that can carry meaning on its own, and does not require a prefix, suffix, or infix to give it meaning
function morpheme
a morpheme which simply modifies the meaning of a word, rather than supplying the root meaning.
function word
words that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into which the content words may fit
fusional language
a morphological system in which one morpheme, usually an inflectional affix, expresses several different meanings or grammatical functions
hierarchical structure
suggests the division of compound and derived words into their basic constituents
homophony
the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation.
incorporation
a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function.
infix
an affix inserted inside a word stem
inflection
the change in the form of a word (in English, usually the addition of endings) to mark such distinctions as tense, person, number, gender, mood, voice, and case
input
the exposure learners have to authentic language in use
lexical category
classes of words (e.g., noun, verb, preposition), which differ in how other words can be constructed out of them
lexicon
he total stock of words and word elements that carry meaning
morpheme
the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression
morphology
the study of the forms of words.
open lexical category
they carry more ‘referential’ meaning than the grammatical words
output
the language the learner produces
partial reduplication
involves consonant ablaut or vowel alternation
polysynthetic language
languages in which words are composed of many morphemes
prefix
n affix that is joined before a root or stem.
preposition
a word that shows how two words are related
productive
the degree to which speakers of a language use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation
pronoun
a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase and that refers either to the participants in the discourse
reduplicant
the repeated portion of a word
reduplication
a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change
root
either a base word, or a part of a word to which affixes are added
simultaneous affix
an affix that takes place at the same time as its base
stem
a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning
suffix
an affix which is placed after the stem of a word
suppletion
traditionally understood as the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate
