Morphology Vocab

Question 1

Affix

Answer 1

A morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. They may derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed.

Question 2

Affixation

Answer 2

A morphological process whereby a bound morpheme, an affix, is attached to a morphological base.

Question 3

Agglutinating Language

Answer 3

A grammatical process in which words are composed of a sequence of morphemes (meaningful word elements), each of which represents not more than a single grammatical category. This term is traditionally employed in the typological classification of languages. Turkish, Finnish, and Japanese are among the languages that form words by agglutination.

Question 4

Allomorph

Answer 4

Any of the variant forms of a morpheme as conditioned by position or adjoining sounds

Question 5

Alternation

Answer 5

A variation in the form and/or sound of a word or word part.

Question 6

Ambiguity

Answer 6

A single string of words has two distinct meanings, which arise from two different grammatical ways of combining the words in the sentence.

Question 7

Analytic Language

Answer 7

A language that primarily conveys relationships between words in sentences by way of helper words (particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to using inflections (changing the form of a word to convey its role in the sentence).

Question 8

Bound Morpheme

Answer 8

A word element that cannot stand alone as a word, including both prefixes and suffixes.

Question 9

Bound Root

Answer 9

Bound morphemes that cannot stand alone to function as words because they are no longer used in Modern English. Examples: receive, reduce.

Question 10

Closed Lexical Category

Answer 10

Include conjunctions (e.g., and, or, but), determiners (e.g., a, the), pronouns (e.g., he, she, they), and prepositions (e.g., of, on, under).

Question 11

Open Lexical Category

Answer 11

If the new word and the original word belong to the same category. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are open lexical categories.

Question 12

Compounding

Answer 12

A morphological operation that puts together two free forms and gives rise to a new word. The importance of compounding stems from the fact that there are probably no languages without compounding, and in some languages (e.g., Chinese) it is the major source of new word formation.

Question 13

Conjunction

Answer 13

Words that connect two parts of a sentence. There are two kinds of conjunctions. The most familiar are the coordinating conjunctions, such as and, or, and but. The second kind are the subordinating conjunctions (sometimes just called subordinators) such as if, because, so that, that, etc.

Question 14

Content Morpheme

Answer 14

A noun, verb, adjective, or adverb which is central to understanding a phrase or sentence.

Question 15

Content Word

Answer 15

Words that give information, or meaning. They are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Examples: House, Enjoy, Computer, Purchase, etc.

Question 16

Function Word

Answer 16

Words that are necessary for grammar, and connect important information, and includes auxiliary verbs, prepositions, articles, conjunctions, and pronouns.

Question 17

Derivation

Answer 17

The process of creating new words, or the formation of new words. Examples: black + bird combine to form blackbird. dis- + connect combine to form disconnect.

Question 18

Determiner

Answer 18

Words placed in front of a noun to make it clear what the noun refers to.

Question 19

Form

Answer 19

A meaningful unit of speech (such as a morpheme, word, or sentence)

Question 20

Free Morpheme

Answer 20

A morpheme (or word element) that can stand alone as a word. It is also called an unbound morpheme or a free-standing morpheme. A free morpheme is the opposite of a bound morpheme, a word element that cannot stand alone as a word.

Question 21

Function Morpheme

Answer 21

Words that do not have clear meaning but has grammatical function, including conjunctions, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries and pronouns.

Question 22

Fusional Language

Answer 22

A language in which one form of a morpheme can simultaneously encode several meanings.
They have a large number of morphemes in each word, but morpheme boundaries are difficult to identify because the morphemes are fused together.

Question 23

Hierarchical Structure

Answer 23

Combinations of the individual elements of human language are not only linear but also hierarchical in nature. This can be demonstrated at every level of linguistic analysis: phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and also at the level of discourse.

Question 24

Homophony

Answer 24

The linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation. Examples: Ball & Bawl, Caret & Carrot and Dual and Duel.

Question 25

Incorporation

Answer 25

A word, usually a verb, forms a kind of compound with its direct object (object incorporation) or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function.

Question 26

Infix

Answer 26

A word element (a type of affix) that can be inserted within the base form of a word—rather than at its beginning or end—to create a new word or intensify meaning. Example: fan-bloody-tastic

Question 27

Inflection

Answer 27

A process of word formation in which items are added to the base form of a word to express grammatical meanings. They are most often prefixes or suffixes, and can also be used to indicate a word’s part of speech.

Question 28

Input

Answer 28

The processible language the learners are exposed to while listening or reading (i.e. The receptive skills).

Question 29

Output

Answer 29

The language learners produce, either in speaking or writing (i.e. The productive skills).

Question 30

Lexical Category

Answer 30

Classes of words (e.g., noun, verb, preposition), which differ in how other words can be constructed out of them.

Question 31

Lexicon

Answer 31

The vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge.

Question 32

Morpheme

Answer 32

The smallest units of meaning in a language. You can break words down into morphemes — like the -s at the end of a noun that tells you it’s plural or the -ly at the end of a word that shows it’s an adverb.

Question 33

Morphology

Answer 33

The study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes, and looks at parts of speech, intonation and stress, and the ways context can change a word’s pronunciation and meaning.

Question 34

Partial Reduplication

Answer 34

A reduplication of only part of the word.

Question 35

Polysynthetic Language

Answer 35

Highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes. They are very highly inflected languages.

Question 36

Prefix

Answer 36

A syllable or group of syllables added to the beginning of a word or a root word stem to alter its meaning.

Question 37

Preposition

Answer 37

A word or group of words used before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to show direction, time, place, location, spatial relationships, or to introduce an object. Some examples of prepositions are words like “in,” “at,” “on,” “of,” and “to.

Question 38

Productive

Answer 38

The limitless ability to use language—any natural language—to say new things. It is also known as open-endedness or creativity. Also applied in a narrower sense to particular forms or constructions (such as affixes) that can be used to produce new instances of the same type

Question 39

Pronoun

Answer 39

Any of a small set of words that substitutes a noun or noun phrase (such as I, she, he, you, it, we, or they).

Question 40

Reduplicant

Answer 40

The repeated portion of a word.

Question 41

Reduplication

Answer 41

A word-formation process in which meaning is expressed by repeating all or part of a word

Question 42

Root

Answer 42

Basic parts of a word that carries meaning. Example: Teach (-er)

Question 43

Simultaneous Affix

Answer 43

An affix articulated at the same time as some other affix or affixes in a word’s stem; exists only in visual-gestural languages.

Question 44

Stem

Answer 44

When a root morpheme is combined with affix morphene. Example: teach-er

Question 45

Suffix

Answer 45

A morpheme added at the end of a word to form a derivative, e.g., -ation, -fy, -ing, -itis

Question 46

Suppletion

Answer 46

The use of two or more phonetically distinct roots for different forms of the same word, such as the adjective bad and its suppletive comparative form worse.