Morphology Vocabulary Flashcards
affix
a word element that can be attached to a base or root to form a new word or new form of the word
affixation
the morphological process that consists of adding an affix (i.e., a bound morpheme) to a morphological base
agglutinating language
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
allomorph
a variant phonetic form of a morpheme
alternation
the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization
ambiguity
the presence of two or more distinct meanings. the possibility that a sentence might have more than one meaning
analytic language
a language that primarily conveys relationships between words in sentences by way of helper words and word order, as opposed to using inflections
bound morpheme
a word element that cannot stand alone as a word, including both prefixes and suffixes
bound root
a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme
closed lexical category
conjunctions, determiners, pronouns, and prepositions
compounding
the morphological operation that—in general—puts together two free forms and gives rise to a new word.
conjunction
words that connect two parts of a sentence
content morpheme
a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word
content word
lexical morphemes that have a semantic content; i.e. they have particular meanings on their own
derivation
the process of creating a new word out of an old word
determiner
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
form
the symbols used to represent meaning
free morpheme
a morpheme that can stand alone as a word
function morpheme
a morpheme that simply modifies the meaning of a word, rather than supplying the root meaning
function word
words that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships into which the content words may fit
fusional language
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
hierarchical structure
the division of compound and derived words into their basic constituents
homophony
the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation
incorporation
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
