Morphology Flashcards
lexeme
dictionary entry; units abstracted from actual use (say)
word-forms
realization of lexemes in actual use (saying, said, says)
what is morphology
examines internal structures of words, concerned with the analysis and segmentation of words into their smallest meaningful parts
inflectional morphology
formation of word forms, provide grammatical information mostly by affixation
word formation
process of expanding the vocabulary of a language (creating new lexemes)
morpheme
smallest meaning-bearing unit, basic morphological unit, arbitrary union of sound + meaning
morph
realization of a morpheme
allomorph
phonologically and morphologically conditioned member of a set of morphs
morphological segmentation
separate units that carry meaning and segment words into such meaningful elements
criteria of classifying morphemes
- autonomy
- function/meaning
- position
autonomy
free (by itself) and bound (must be attached to another morpheme)
function/meaning
lexical (conveys lexical information) and grammatical (conveys grammatical information)
position
- prefix
- suffix
- circumfix
- infix
root
part of word-form which remains when all bound morphemes have been removed (speakers -> speaker -> speak)
stem
part of word-form which remains when all bound grammatical morphemes have been removed (speaks -> speak)
base
any form to which lexical affixed can be attached (speak -> speaker -> speakers)
bound roots
display attributes of prototypical morphemes but condition that at least one free morpheme is contained in a “word” is not fulfilled (infer, confer, prefer)
portmanteau morphs
e.g. 3rd person singular -s
carries multiple meanings:
1. third person
2. singular
3. present tense
4. indicative mood
unique compounds
bound morphemes appearing only in particular words
e.g. cranberry, huckleberry
neoclassical compounds
no free morpheme emerges from segmentation, but also no affix is found (neither word component is a typical morpheme)
e.g. biometry, biology, geography
morphophonemics
systematic phonological realizations of morphemes and how they depend on their respective enviroment
phonological conditioning
allomorph is predictable from phonological enviroment (plural, possesive marker, inflectional morphemes for verbs)
e.g. plural morpheme -s
lexical conditioning
allomorphs are restricted to individual lexemes (completely unpredictable)
e.g. ox - oxen
morphological conditioning
particular morpheme demands a special allomorph of another morpheme it combines with
e.g. explain -explanatory
suppletion
no resemblance to the root of morpheme
e.g. good - better
productivity
extent to which speakers still actively use word-formation patterns to form new lexemes
types of word formation
- affixattion
- prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix = derivation - conversion
- compounding
shortening
- clipping (bike -> bicycle)
- blending (smog = smoke + fog)
- initialism
- acronyms (pronounced like a
- alphabetisms (pronounced letter by letter) - reanalysis
- back-formation (taking away a real or presumed derivational suffix)
- folk-etymology (form of a lexeme is reanalysed in a way so that the form seems more motivated by percieved meaning) - coinage
- neologism (process of creating new words often used by companies for products)
- eponym (proper name develops into a common noun/lexeme)
morphological typology
synthetic strategies and analytic strategies
language typology
synthetic type - inflectional and agglutinating
analytic type - isolating
grammatical categories
- gender -masculine, feminine, neuter
- case - common, possesive, object
- number - singular, plural
- person - 1st, 2nd, 3rd
- tense - past, non past
- aspect - progressive - non progressive, perfect - non perfect
- mood - indicative, subjective
- voice - active, passive
interaction morphology - syntax
- agreement/concord (two grammatical units which are related syntactically display the same grammatical category)
- government (a word requires another word to show a certain grammatical category)
