Morphology Vocabulary Flashcards
affix
a morpheme, or word part, that is added to a word stem to form a new word or word form
affixation
the process of attaching a bound morpheme, or affix, to a word or morphological base to create a new word or change the meaning of an existing word
agglutinating language
languages that form words by combining morphemes, or meaningful word elements, to express complex ideas
allomorph
a variant phonetic form of a morpheme, which is a unit of meaning in a language
alternation
when a morpheme’s phonological realization varies, and each variation is called an alternant
ambiguity
a characteristic of language that allows for multiple interpretations of a word, phrase, or sentence
analytical language
a natural language that uses grammatical words and particles to express syntactic relations in sentences, rather than inflection
bound morpheme
a word element that cannot stand alone as a word, and must be attached to another morpheme to create a word
bound root
a bound morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word
closed lexical category
a word class that has a limited number of words and rarely adds new members
compounding
the process of combining two or more words or signs to create a new word or sign
conjunction
a word that joins words, phrases, clauses, or sentences together
content morpheme
morphemes that convey a concrete meaning or content in a sentence
root
the core of a word that cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts
form
the structure of language and the rules for interpreting speech and sentences
free morpheme
a word part, or morpheme, that can stand alone as a word and has meaning on its own
function morpheme
a word that modifies the meaning of another word or provides grammatical information
fusional language
a type of synthetic language where a single morpheme can express multiple grammatical or syntactic features
determiner
a word that modifies, describes, or introduces a noun
homophony
when words have the same pronunciation but different meanings
infix
a letter or group of letters that are inserted into the middle of a word to create a new word
inflection
the process of changing the form of a word to indicate grammatical features, such as tense, person, number, and case
input
the language that a learner is exposed to
hierarchical structure
the idea that language elements are organized in a systematic and structured way, with higher-level constituents built from lower-level constituents
