Morphology Flashcards
allomorph
A non-distinctive variant of a morpheme, e.g. -keit and -heit in German (Heiterkeit, Schönheit) which vary according to the final consonant of the base to which they are suffixed but share the same grammatical function of nominal derivation.
article
A grammatical word — or affix — used to specify a noun as definite or indefinite. It may vary for gender and case in languages with gender distinctions and a formal case system such as German.
bound
In a general sense any form which cannot occur on its own. Both lexical and grammatical morphemes may be bound, but the number of the former is very limited, e.g. the first part of raspberry in English which does not occur independently.
case
An inflection which indicates the relationship of a noun to other elements in a sentence, e.g. the dative in German which broadly indicates the beneficiary of an action: Sie hat ihm versprochen, nach Hause zu kommen. There are, however, many instances in which case requirements are not semantically motivated, e.g. gratulieren, imponieren with the dative as opposed to beglückwünschen, beeindrucken with the accusative.
closed class
A term which refers to any linguistic level whose elements form a relatively small number which is not altered by the individual speaker. For instance phonemes, grammatical morphemes and syntactic structures are a closed set but the lexicon is definitely an open class as it is continuously expanding.
declension
A term which refers to the inflections of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, i.e. of nouns and the elements which can qualify them. The set of inflections is called a nominal paradigm. The term declension can also be used for classes of nouns which conform to a certain paradigm. It is the equivalent with nouns of the term conjugation with verbs.
definite article
A grammatical word which marks a following noun for definiteness. Not every language has such an element, though it is more common for the indefinite article to be missing. Languages furthermore vary according to whether they demand the definite article when nouns are used generically. This is a major difference between English and German, cf. He is interested in philosophy. Er interessiert sich für die Philosophie.
degree
A relational specification which is found with adjectives and adverbs. There are three degrees: 1) positive as in small, 2) comparative as in smaller and 3) superlative as in smallest.
empty morph
In some morphological analyses, an element which is posited as the carrier of a grammatical category but not present on the surface, for instance the word sheep could be said to contain an empty plural morph: sheep + Ø.
function word
A word which serves the purpose of indicating a grammatical category or relationship. It contrasts explicitly with a content word which has lexical meaning.
inflection
An alteration made to a word to indicate a certain grammatical category, e.g. number and case with nouns or person, number and tense with verbs. The number of inflections in a language can be taken as an indication of its type, a large number being characteristic of synthetic languages. Diachronically inflections arise from clitics which become unseparable from the lexical bases to which they are attached.
irregular
A form which can be regarded as an exception to a given pattern or rule, e.g. the plurals formed with a stem vowel change in Modern English, man : men, tooth : teeth.
morph
Any item of language which cannot be broken down any further without a loss of meaning. A morph usually realises a morpheme, the unit of grammar on an abstract level, e.g. /ʌn/ in undoable but also /ɪm/ in impossible.
morpheme
The smallest unit in a grammar which can contrast with another and which carries meaning. A morpheme can be an inflection, e.g. /ri:-/ in rewrite or a lexical word, house, tree, sick. A morpheme is an abstract unit and is realised by a morph; it is the approximate equivalent of a phoneme on the level of phonology.
morphology
The level of linguistics which is concerned with the structure of words, both from the point of view of inflections and of word-formation. It is traditionally located between phonology (the level of sounds) and syntax (the level of sentences).
