Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure Flashcards
Morphology
The system of categories and rules involved in word formation and interpretation.
Lexicon
A speaker’s mental dictionary, which contains information about the syntactic properties, meaning, and phonological representation of a language’s words.
Word
The smallest free form found in language.
Free form
An element that can occur in isolation and/or whose position with respect to neighboring elements is not entirely fixed.
Morpheme
The smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function (e.g., books consists of the two morphemes book ? s).
Simple word
A word that consists of a single morpheme (e.g., horse).
Complex word
A word that contains two or more morphemes (e.g., theorize, unemployment).
Free morpheme
A morpheme that can be a word by itself (e.g., fear).
Bound morpheme
A morpheme that must be attached to another element (e.g., the past tense marker -ed).
Allomorphs
Variants of a morpheme (e.g., [-s], [-z], and [-?z] are allomorphs of the English plural morpheme).
Root (of a word)
In a complex word, the morpheme that remains after all affixes are removed (e.g., mind in unmindfulness).
Affix (Af)
A bound morpheme that modifies the meaning and/or syntactic (sub)category of the stem in some way (e.g., un- and -able in unreadable).
Lexical category
The word-level syntactic categories noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), and preposition (P).
Tree
A diagram that represents the internal organization of a word, phrase, or sentence.
Base
The form to which an affix is added (e.g., book is the base for the affix -s in books, modernize is the base for the affix -ed in modernized).
Derivation
In morphology, a wordformation process by which a new word is built from a stem—usually through the addition of an affix—that changes the word class and/or basic meaning of the word.
Class 1 affixes
A group of affixes that (in English) often trigger changes in the consonant or vowel segments of the base and may affect the assignment of stress.
Class 2 affixes
A group of affixes that tend to be phonologically neutral in English, having no effect on the segmental makeup of the base or on stress assignment.
Compounding
Creating a new word by combining two or more existing words (e.g., fire + engine).
Compound word
A word made up of two or more words (e.g., greenhouse, pickpocket).
Head (of a word)
The morpheme that determines the category of the entire word in a compound (e.g., bird in blackbird).
Endocentric compound
A compound word in which one member identifies the general class to which the meaning of the entire word belongs (e.g., dog food is a type of food in English).
Exocentric compound
A compound whose meaning does not follow from the meaning of its parts (e.g., redneck, since its referent is not a type of neck).
Inflection
The modification of a word’s form to indicate the grammatical subclass to which it belongs (e.g., the -s in books marks the plural subclass).
Stem
The base to which an inflectional affix is added (e.g., modification is the stem for -s in the word modifications).
Productivity
In morphology, the relative freedom with which affixes can combine with bases of the appropriate category.
Case
A morphological category that encodes information about an element’s grammatical role (subject, direct object, and so on) (e.g., the contrast between he and him).
Agreement
The result of one category being inflected to mark properties of another (e.g., the verb marked for the person and/or the number of the subject).
Internal change
A process that substitutes one nonmorphemic segment for another to mark a grammatical contrast (e.g., sing, sang, sung).
Ablaut
A vowel alternation that marks a grammatical contrast (e.g., mouse/mice).
Umlaut
The effect that a vowel (or sometimes a glide) in one syllable can have on the vowel of another (usually preceding) syllable.
Concatenative (morphology)
A term used for the morphological process that builds word structure by assembling morphemes in an additive, linear fashion.
Suppletion
A morphological process that marks a grammatical contrast by replacing a morpheme with an entirely different morpheme (e.g., be/was).
Partial suppletion
A morphological process that marks a grammatical contrast by replacing part of a morpheme (e.g., think/thought).
Reduplication
A morphological process that repeats all or part of the base to which it is attached.
Full reduplication
A morphological process that duplicates the entire word (e.g., in Turkish, t?abuk ‘quickly’/t?abuk t?abuk ‘very quickly’).
Partial reduplication
A morphological process in which part of a stem is repeated to form a new word (e.g., in Tagalog, takbuh ‘run’ and tatakbuh ‘will run’).
Internal change
A process that substitutes one nonmorphemic segment for another to mark a grammatical contrast (e.g., sing, sang, sung).
Suppletion
A morphological process that marks a grammatical contrast by replacing a morpheme with an entirely different morpheme (e.g., be/was).
Partial suppletion
A morphological process that marks a grammatical contrast by replacing part of a morpheme (e.g., think/thought).
Reduplication
A morphological process that repeats all or part of the base to which it is attached.
Partial reduplication
A morphological process in which part of a stem is repeated to form a new word (e.g., in Tagalog, takbuh ‘run’ and tatakbuh ‘will run’).
Full reduplication
A morphological process that duplicates the entire word (e.g., in Turkish, t?abuk ‘quickly’/t?abuk t?abuk ‘very quickly’).
Cliticization
The process by which a clitic is attached to a word.
Clitic
A word that is unable to stand alone as an inde
Enclitic
A clitic that attaches to the end of a word.
Proclitic
A clitic that attaches to the beginning of a word.
Host
The element to which a clitic is attached.
Conversion
A word-formation process that assigns an already existing word to a new syntactic category (also called zero derivation) (e.g., nurse [V] from nurse [N]).
Clipping
A word-formation process that shortens a polysyllabic word by deleting one or more syllables (e.g., prof from professor).
Blend
A word that is created from parts of two already existing items (e.g., brunch from breakfast and lunch).
Backformation
A word-formation process that creates a new word by removing a real or supposed affix from another word in the language (e.g., edit came from editor through the removal of -or).
Acronym
A word that is formed by taking the initial letters of (some or all) of the words in a phrase or title and pronouncing them as a word (e.g., NATO for North Atlantic Treaty Organization).
Initialisms
Abbreviations that are pronounced as a series of letters rather than as words (e.g., LA for Los Angeles).
Onomatopoeic words
Words that sound like the thing that they name (e.g., plop, hiss).
Word manufacture
The creation of a word from scratch, sometimes with the help of a computer (also called coinage) (e.g., Kodak).
Eponyms
Words created from names (e.g., quixotic from Don Quixote).
Borrowing
A source of language change that involves adopting aspects of one language into another; can include adding new words to a language (e.g., fengshui added to English from Chinese).
