Morphology Flashcards
What is morphology?
Subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with word and word structure
Free Form
An element that does not need to occupy a fixed position
Morphemes
Smallest units of meaning in language
What kinds of information can morphemes carry?
3 Answers
- Semantic
- Structural
- Syntactic
Simple Words
Have only one morpheme in them
Complex Words
Have more than one morpheme in them
Free Morphemes
Can stand alone as simple words
Bound Morpheme
Cannot be used as simple words
Allomorphs
Conditioned variants to morphemes
Roots
Carry the major component of the word’s meaning
4 Lexical Categories
- Nouns (N)
- Verbs (V)
- Adjectives (A)
- Preposition (P)
Affixes
Are always bound
Bases
Forms to which affixes are attached
Prefix
An affix that attaches to the left edge of its base
prefix - base
Suffix
An affix that attaches to the right edge of its base
base - suffix
Infix
An affix that goes inside tis base
ba - infix - se
Derivational Affixes
Additional meaning to the word; can change lexical category
Inflectional Affixes
Brings grammatical meaning to the word; never changes the lexical category
Derivation vs Inflection
3 criteria
- Category Change
- Order
- Productivity