Morphology

Question 1

morpheme

Answer 1

the smallest linguistic element with a meaning or grammatical function

Question 2

free morpheme

Answer 2

can occur as an independent word

Question 3

bound morpheme

Answer 3

cannot occur as an independent word

Question 4

cranberry morpheme

Answer 4

bound morphemes occuring in only one word in a language

e.g. cran-berry, in-ert, in-ane

Question 5

affixes

Answer 5

• bound morphemes
• have one or more identifiable semantic or grammatical functions/meanings
• occur in more than one word in the language

Question 6

base

Answer 6

the morpheme(s) to which an affix is attached

Question 7

root

Answer 7

base consisting of a single morpheme

Question 8

stem

Answer 8

base for inflectional affixes, possibly consisting of more than one morpheme

Question 9

prefix

Answer 9

affix before base

Question 10

suffix

Answer 10

affix after base

Question 11

infix

Answer 11

affix inside base

Question 12

circumfix

Answer 12

affix consisting of both a prefix and a suffix

Question 13

portmanteau morpheme

Answer 13

single indivisible morpheme realising more than one feature

she = 3rd person, singular, feminine, subject
were = BE + past

Question 14

clitics

Answer 14

a cross between an affix and a word. They are phonologically so short they can’t be pronounced alone and need to join other words, sometimes short forms of larger words

e.g. he’s, I’m

Question 15

allomorph

Answer 15

variant in pronunciation of a morpheme

e.g. receive/reception

Question 16

compounding

Answer 16

creating a word (a compound) by combining two words; either or both of these words might itself be a compound

Question 17

conversion (zero derivation)

Answer 17

change of syntactic category of a word without adding affixes. It may involve a stress change or other minor changes in the base

e.g.
N>V: access (a file)
V>N: a look
A>V: slow (the tempo)

Question 18

clipping

Answer 18

shortening a word by deleting phonological material (not necessarily morphemes)

e.g. prof(essor)

Question 19

blending

Answer 19

merging to words in which at least one of them undergoes clipping

e.g. infotainment

Question 20

backformation

Answer 20

the formation of a new word by removing affixes, change in meaning and often change in syntactic category

e.g. self-destruct (from self-desruction)

Question 21

ablaut

Answer 21

creation of a new (form of a) word by changing vowel in the base word

e.g. sing/sang

Question 22

acronymy

Answer 22

words formed by taking the initial letters from the words in a compound or phrase and pronouncing the word spelled by them

e.g. NATO

Question 23

abbreviation

Answer 23

are like acronyms, but the names of the leters are pronounced

e.g. BBC

Question 24

reduplication

Answer 24

repetition of part of a word

e.g. chit-chat, splish-splash

Question 25

derivation

Answer 25

the use of morphologial processes to create new words; changes the meaning of a word

e.g. kill -> killer

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

morphological operations changing the form of a word in response to syntactic requirements; only changes meaning with regard to a feature which is part of the grammar rather than the vocabulary of the language

e.g. dog -> dogs

Question 27

endocentric compounds

Answer 27

AB is an instance of B; the final element is the head and the other elements provide additional information about the head

e.g. strawberry jam

Question 28

exocentric compounds

Answer 28

AB is neither A nor B; the head is not in the compound

e.g. sabretooth

Question 29

copulative compound

Answer 29

AB is A and B

e.g. singer-songwriter

Question 30

head

Answer 30

the element that determines the semantic and grammatical characteristics of the whole word; the head of a word is on the right in English

Question 31

Productivity

Answer 31

the ability of an affix or process to form new (forms of) words

productive processes in English: compounding & conversion
unproductive process: ablaut

Question 32

productive affixes

Answer 32

-er; -wise; -ful

Question 33

unproductive affixes

Answer 33

-th (no new formations possible)

Question 34

blocking

Answer 34

the formation of new words can be blocked by existing words with same meaning

Question 35

phonological constraints

Answer 35

an affix/process might require or disallow bases with particular phonological properties

Example: The comparative morpheme -er disallows bases of more than one syllable
excepting bisyllabic bases ending in syllabic [n], [l] or [i]