Morphology Flashcards
What categories are words divided into?
Nouns- teapot, software Verbs- overdevelop, reconstruct Adjectives- carefree, dreadful Adverbs- sometimes, strongly Prepositions- in, on Pronouns- she, anybody Conjunctions- however, unless
Morphology
The branch of linguistics that studies the structure of words
Word
A mapping of meaning and form, part of the lexicon
Morpheme
The smallest unit that carries meaning, lexical or grammatical
What does a morphologically complex word consist of?
A root and one or more affixes
What is the combination of a root and an affix called?
A stem
What types of affixes are there?
Prefixes
Suffixes
Infixes (go in the middle of a word)
Circumfixes (go around a word)
Free morpheme
A morpheme that can stand alone as a word e.g. true, orange
Bound morpheme
A morpheme that cannot stand alone and only functions as part of a word
Are roots bound morphemes
They can be bound or free morphemes
Content words
Open class, idiosyncratic lexical meaning
Function words
Closed class, some grammatical function
Lexical morphemes
Tend to be roots
Carry lexical meaning
Open class
Functional morphemes
Tend to be affixes
Carry grammatical meaning
Closed class
Derivational morphemes
Used to create new words
Can change the category of a word
Add meaning
