Morphology Vocabulary Flashcards
affix
a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form (prefix, infix, suffix)
affixation
a morphological process whereby a group of letters (the affix) is attached to a base or root word to form a new word
agglutinating language
a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination; a morphological process in which words are formed by stringent to gather morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature
allomorph
a variant phonetic form of a morpheme; a unit of meaning that varies in sound and spelling without changing the meaning
alternation
a variation in the form and/or sound of a word or word part
ambiguity
a quality of language that makes speech or written text open to multiple interpretations
analytic language
a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers
bound morpheme
these are affixes (prefix, infix, suffix) that must be attached to the word; have two categories, inflectional and derivational morphemes
bound root
these are root morphemes which cannot appear on its own
closed lexical category
new members of these classes (pronouns, modal verbs, determiners, prepositions, conjunctions) are not added to the language very often.
compounding
when two or more words or sings are joined to make a longer word or sign; the act of combining two lexemes to make a new word
conjunction
parts of speech that connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences
content morpheme
a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word
content word
words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur
derivation
the formation of a word by changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it
determiner
a word used before a noun that modifies, describes, or introduces it
form
the constituent structure in language, involving phonological and syntactic rules for interpreting speech and sentences
free morpheme
the type of morpheme that can stand alone as words by themselves
function morpheme
words that do not have clear meaning but has grammatical functions; these are conjunctions, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries and pronouns; referred also as closed class because it cannot be added to other morphemes
function word
a word that expresses a grammatical or structural relationship with other words in a sentence
fusional language
a type of language in which a single morpheme can express multiple grammatical categories by combining them into one form
hierarchical structure
the arrangement of morphemes in a fixed order by categories and levels; the format of linguistic representations
homophony
the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation
incorporation
the compounding of a word (typically a verb or preposition) with another element (typically a noun, pronoun, or adverb).
infix
an affix inserted inside a word stem
inflection
the change in the form of a word to mark such distinctions as tense, person, number, gender, mood, voice, and case
input
everything a language learner is exposed to either orally or visually in the target language
lexical category
a syntactic category for elements that are part of the lexicon of a language such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs
lexicon
the complete set of meaningful units in a language
morpheme
the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language
morphology
the study of structure of the words and word formation
open lexical category
parts of speech (or word classes) that can add morphemes to words such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives; parts of speech (or word classes) that readily accept new members.
output
what is produced in the target language through speaking or writing
partial reduplication
reduplication of only part of a word; repeats only a part of the base word
polysynthetic language
a unique type of language where words are formed by combining several morphemes into a single unit
prefix
an affix which is placed before the stem of a word
preposition
a word that indicates the relationship of a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase to another word or phrase in a sentence
productive
the ability of an affix or word formation rule to coin new words; the degree to which speakers of a language use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation
pronoun
a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase
reduplicant
the base word (or part of the word) that is copied; the reduplicated element in reduplication
reduplication
a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change
root
the basic part of a word that carries meaning
simultaneous affix
an affix that takes place at the same time as its base
stem
when a root morpheme is combined with affix morpheme
suffix
an affix which is placed after the stem of a word
suppletion
the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate
