Morphology Questions Flashcards
What are the two classes of derivational suffixes?
1) Class One - Often cause changes to the consonant or vowel sound in the base.
2) Class Two - Do not cause changes in the sound.
What is headedness in compounds?
The head of a compound is the part that determines the category of the entire word. In English, most compounds are righ-headed.
Describe stress patterns in compounds.
In a compound, stress tends to be most prominent on the first member.
Where are tense and plural markers on compounds?
Markers are usually placed on the word as a whole rather than just the first member or all of the members.
What is the difference between endocentric and exocentric compounds?
Based on the meaning of its members, an endocentric compound is one that denotes a subtype of the head (teacup, lunchroom), and an exocentric is one in which meaning does not come from the head (redneck, yellow belly).
Name the eight inflectional affixes present in English.
Plural (-s), Possessive (-‘s), 3 p.s. non-past (-s), Past tense (-ed), Progressive (-ing), Past participle (-en/-ed), Comparative (-er), Superlative (-est)
What is the difference between derivational and inflectional affixes?
a) Category/Meaning change - Derivational typically change the lexical category and meaning of the base, inflectional does not.
b) Placement - Inflectional occur after derivational affixes have been attached.
c) Productivity - There are relatively few exceptions on the class of bases to which inflectional can attach. Derivational have may restrictions.
d) Transparency - With inflectional it is easy to determine the contribution of the resulting word.
Affixation
An inflectional process that adds an affix to the word.
Internal change
An inflectional process that provides grammatical information by changing a portion of the morpheme (run –> ran)
Suppletion
An inflectional process that provides grammatical information for a morpheme by replacing it with an entirely different morpheme (go –> went)
Reduplication
an inflectional process that repeats all or a portion of the base to mark a semantic or grammatical contrast
Tone placement
An inflection process found in tonal languages in which differences in tone can be used to mark grammatical information.
