Morphology Vocabulary

Question 1

affix

Answer 1

a word element that can be attached to a base or root to form a new word or new form of the word

Question 2

affixation

Answer 2

the morphological process that consists of adding an affix (i.e., a bound morpheme) to a morphological base

Question 3

agglutinating language

Answer 3

a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses the linguistic process of derivational morphology in which complex words are formed by stringing together morphemes without changing them

Question 4

allomorph

Answer 4

a variant phonetic form of a morpheme

Question 5

alternation

Answer 5

the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

the presence of two or more distinct meanings. the possibility that a sentence might have more than one meaning

Question 7

analytic language

Answer 7

a language that primarily conveys relationships between words in sentences by way of helper words and word order, as opposed to using inflections

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

a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme

Question 10

closed lexical category

Answer 10

conjunctions, determiners, pronouns, and prepositions

Question 11

compounding

Answer 11

the morphological operation that—in general—puts together two free forms and gives rise to a new word.

Question 12

conjunction

Answer 12

words that connect two parts of a sentence

Question 13

content morpheme

Answer 13

a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word

Question 14

content word

Answer 14

lexical morphemes that have a semantic content; i.e. they have particular meanings on their own

Question 15

derivation

Answer 15

the process of creating a new word out of an old word

Question 16

determiner

Answer 16

a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and serves to express the reference of that noun or a noun phrase in the context

Question 17

form

Answer 17

the symbols used to represent meaning

Question 18

free morpheme

Answer 18

a morpheme that can stand alone as a word

Question 19

function morpheme

Answer 19

a morpheme that simply modifies the meaning of a word, rather than supplying the root meaning

Question 20

function word

Answer 20

words that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into which the content words may fit

Question 21

fusional language

Answer 21

a language that forms words by the fusion (rather than the agglutination) of morphemes, so that the constituent elements of a word are not kept distinct

Question 22

hierarchical structure

Answer 22

the division of compound and derived words into their basic constituents

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation

Question 24

incorporation

Answer 24

a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object or adverbial modifier while retaining its original syntactic function

Question 25

infix

Answer 25

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 the meaning

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

the change in the form of a word to mark such distinctions as tense, person, number, gender, mood, voice, and case

Question 27

input

Answer 27

the exposure learners have to authentic language in use

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

classes of words that differ in how other words can be constructed out of them

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

the total stock of words and word elements that carry meaning

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

the smallest grammatical unit of speech

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs

Question 33

output

Answer 33

the language the learner produces - i.e., writing and speaking

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word or even the whole word is repeated with a slight change

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

an affix that is placed before the stem of a word

Question 37

preposition

Answer 37

a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

productivity is the degree to which native speakers of a language use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation

Question 39

pronoun

Answer 39

a word or a group of words that substitutes a noun or noun phrase

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

the reduplicated segment in a word resulting from a reduplication process

Question 41

reduplication

Answer 41

a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word or even the whole word is repeated exactly

Question 42

root

Answer 42

the core of a word that is irreducible into more meaningful elements that can be affixed

Question 43

simultaneous affix

Answer 43

an affix that is articulated at the same time as some other affix

Question 44

stem

Answer 44

a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning

Question 45

suffix

Answer 45

an affix that is placed after the stem of a word

Question 46

suppletion

Answer 46

the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate