Morphology Flashcards
Familiarize yourself with some of the basic concepts in the study of morphology
Give two examples of the word formation process:
blending
What type of word formation process are the following words examples of?
slanguage (slang + language)
motel (motor + hotel)
smog (smoke + fog)
telemarketing (telephone + marketing)
Define the concept:
reduplication
State the concept:
“… the process of forming new words either by doubling an entire free morpheme (total) or part of it (partial).
e.g.,
Mama, hocus-pocus,
hoity-toity.”
(p. 19. AM)
Define the concept:
compounding
state the concept:
“…the formation of a new word by assembling two content/free morphemes.”
e.g.,
Olive oil, Facebook, Flat-foot.
(p.14 AM)
Define the concept:
morpheme internal change
State the concept:
The word formation process that uses a change in the morpheme to generate a new word.
Examples:
Nouns: man - men, goose - geese
Verbs: ring, rang, rung. Swim, swam, swum.
Noun to Verb: Strife - strive, teeth - teethe
Give the definition of the term:
content morpheme
What type of morpheme is it?
This class of morphemes has “independent, identifiable meaning, or indicates change in meaning when added to a stem/root”.
e.g.,
neighbor-hood, loneli-ness.
(p.6 handout 1)
What type of word formation are the following words examples of?
Scuba (Self-contained underwater breathing apperatus)
Lazer (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emmision of Radiation”)
Soweto (South Western Township)
Fubar (Fucked up beyond all recognition)
Give two examples of word formation by:
akronymization
Define the concept:
affixation
State the concept:
When words are formed by the combination of bound affixes and free morphems.
e.g.,
doubt(free)-ing(bound)
shame(free)-less(bound)
What do the suffixes mean and what do they do?
- -ly
- -ee
State what suffixes are being described:
- ( “in an X-manner”)
- Attaches to almost any adj.
changes speech from adj. to adv.
- ( “one who is subjected to being X-ed” )
attaches only to verbs,
describing actions of humans on humans
changes part of speech to a noun.
( p. 3 Lecture 2 hand out )
In the English language, what caracterizes
inflectional suffixes
State the class of morphemes:
- They do not change the meaning or part of speech. They create new forms of the same word.
e. g., big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives. - They typically indicate syntactic or semantic relations between the different words in a sentence.
- They are very productive. Typically, they occur with all members of some large class of morphemes,
e. g, the plural morheme -s
occurs with almost all nouns.
- They occur at the very end of a word and always following after any derivational suffix that attaches to the root or stem.
Give two examples of the process of word formation:
clipping
removing more than one morpheme
from the original word
Which word formation process are the following words examples of?
mic/mike (microphone)
typo (Typographical error)
pram (perambulator)
What type of word formation process is active here?
- ding-dong
- pop
- yuck
- slurp
( p. 5 Lecture 2 hand out )
Give two examples of word formation by means of:
Sound symbolism
Which word formation process are the following words examples of?
mic/mike (microphone)
typo (Typographical error)
pram (perambulator)
Give two examples of the process of word formation:
clipping
removing more than one morpheme from the original word
What does the concept entail:
duality of patterning
State the concept:
A feature of human language that states that human language is organized on two levels:
- The sound level with a limited number of units which differentiates meaning (phonemes).
- The “grammatical” level with an open number of units which carry meaning (linguistic signs or morphemes).
State what suffixes are being described:
- ( “in an X-manner”)
- Attaches to almost any adj.
changes speech from adj. to adv.
- ( “one who is subjected to being X-ed” )
attaches only to verbs,
describing actions of humans on humans
changes part of speech to a noun.
( p. 3 Lecture 2 hand out )
What do the suffixes mean and what do they do?
- -ly
- -ee
What type of morpheme is it?
This class of morphemes has “independent, identifiable meaning, or indicates change in meaning when added to a stem/root”.
e.g.,
neighbor-hood, loneli-ness.
(p.6 handout 1)
Give the definition of the term:
content morpheme
state the concept:
“…the formation of a new word by assembling two content/free morphemes.”
e.g.,
Olive oil, Facebook, Flat-foot.
(p.14 AM)
Define the concept:
compounding
What kind of word formation proces are the following words examples of?
This word formation process prescribes that the same morphological form represents two different word classes:
A hug - to hug
A comb - to comb
A kiss - to kiss
Give two examples of word formation by:
zero-derivation/conversion
State the concept:
“… the process of forming new words either by doubling an entire free morpheme (total) or part of it (partial).
e.g.,
Mama, hocus-pocus,
hoity-toity.”
(p. 19. AM)
Define the concept:
reduplication
What type of word formation process are the following words examples of?
to imprínt - an ímprint
To permít - a pérmit
to combíne - a cómbine
Give two examples of word formation by:
stress shift
State the concept:
This principle states that:
- only a small number of the speech sounds which humans can make are linguistically relevant.
- In a given language, speech sounds are always perceived categorically and sounds that belong in the same category are classified as being equivalent (i.e., realizations of one phoneme).
Describe the concept:
the phonemic principle
What type of word formation process are the following words examples of?
slanguage (slang + language)
motel (motor + hotel)
smog (smoke + fog)
telemarketing (telephone + marketing)
Give two examples of the word formation process:
blending
in English, what parts of speech are both:
free morphemes
and
function morphemes
Under what two classes of morphemes do these belong?
- Prepositions
- Articles
- Pronouns
- Conjunctions
Describe the concept:
the phonemic principle
State the concept:
This principle states that:
- only a small number of the speech sounds which humans can make are linguistically relevant.
- In a given language, speech sounds are always perceived categorically and sounds that belong in the same category are classified as being equivalent (i.e., realizations of one phoneme).
State the class of morphemes:
- They change the part of speech or the meaning of a word, e.g., -ment added to a verb forms a noun. E.g., agree-ment.
- They typically indicate semantic relations within a word, but no syntactic relations outside the word. e.g., happy is negated by adding the prefix un-.
- They are usually not very productive. they are generally very selective about what parts of speech they’ll combine with. E.g. -hood only attaches to a few nouns (brother, neighbor and knight)
- They typically occur before inflectional suffixes, e.g., govern-ment(der.)-s(infl.).
- They may be prefixes or suffixes in English.
State the characteristics of:
derivational affixes