Morphology Definitions / Segmentation Flashcards
What is Morphology?
Study of words and their parts.
Study of grammatical structure of words, rules and categories realized by them.
What is a word?
Smallest free form in language.
What criteria do you consider, when definig
something as a word?
- Phonological: its sound
- Semantic: its meaning
- Syntactic: its category (noun, verb…)
- Morphological: its inflections (plural, past tense)
- Orthographic: blank spaces left and right
What is a phonological form?
Different representation and pronounciation of words. What we hear when we pronouncing.
What is a lexeme?
What we find in dictionary, abstract entity, lemma -> a basic unit of language
What is a Morpheme?
the smallest meaning distinguishing unit of a language that can carry lexical as well as grammatical information - concept of meaning
What is a Morph?
concrete realization of the idea, represented as phonological form (-un unloved, -s girls)
What is an Allomorph?
several morphs relating to one morpheme:
different phonological realizations
What are affixes
Morpheme added to beginning or end of word
* prefix: before stem
* suffix: after stem
What types of morphemes do we have?
Free (lexeme)
* lexical: content words (cat)
* grammatical: function words (And, then)
Bound (affix)
* lexical/derivational: changes word class and meaning (like-able)
* grammatical/inflectional: no word class change (dog-s)
Example of how to describe morphemes
Unbelievable: un (bound derivational prefix), believe (free lexical root), able (bound derivational suffix)
Uphill: up (free lexial prefix), hill (free lexical root)
What are Cranberry Morphs
Bound lexical root Morphs (which used to be free) needs to be attached to a root
* cranberry: cran (bound lexical root), berry (free lexical root)
What are bound Morphs
Roots are bound and cannot stand on there own
* unkempt: un (bound derivatoinal prefix) kempt (bound lexical root)
