Morphology Vocabulary

Question 1

affix

Answer 1

an additional element placed at the beginning or end of a root, stem, or word, or in the body of a word, to modify its meaning.

Question 2

affixation

Answer 2

the process of inflection or derivation that consists of adding an affix.

Question 3

agglutinating language

Answer 3

An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination

Question 4

allomorph

Answer 4

any of two or more actual representations of a morpheme.

Question 5

alternation

Answer 5

the repeated occurrence of two things in turn.

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

the quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness.

Question 7

analytic language

Answer 7

is a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers

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

the category of function words—that is, parts of speech (or word classes)—that don’t readily accept new members

Question 11

compounding

Answer 11

the act of combining two lexemes to make a new word

Question 12

conjunction

Answer 12

a word used to connect clauses or sentences or to coordinate words in the same clause

Question 13

content morpheme

Answer 13

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

Question 14

content word

Answer 14

are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur

Question 15

derivation

Answer 15

in generative grammar, the set of stages that link the abstract underlying structure of an expression to its surface form

Question 16

determiner

Answer 16

a modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has, for example a, the, every

Question 17

form

Answer 17

the constituent structure in language, involving phonological and syntactic rules for interpreting speech and sentences

Question 18

free morpheme

Answer 18

a stand-alone word

Question 19

function morpheme

Answer 19

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

Question 20

function word

Answer 20

expresses a grammatical or structural relationship with other words in a sentence

Question 21

fusional language

Answer 21

a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use single

Question 22

hierarchical structure

Answer 22

the delegation of authority using a pyramid model, with the most authoritative professionals at the top and general employees at the bottom

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

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

Question 24

incorporation

Answer 24

is a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object

Question 25

infix

Answer 25

an affix inserted inside a word stem

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

a process of word formation in which a word is modified

Question 27

input

Answer 27

the exposure learners have to authentic language in use

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

a class of lexical items

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

the vocabulary of a language, an individual speaker or group of speakers, or a subject

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

the smallest grammatical unit of speech

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

is the study of words

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

parts of speech (or word classes) that readily accept new members

Question 33

output

Answer 33

the language the learner produces

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

reduplication of only a part of a word

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

formerly holophrastic languages, [1] are highly synthetic languages, ie, languages in which words are composed of many morphemes.

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

an affix attached to the beginning of a word, base, or phrase and serving to produce a derivative word or an inflectional form

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

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

writing an original essay or describing an unfamiliar situation to another person

Question 39

pronoun

Answer 39

a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word

Question 41

reduplication

Answer 41

is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word

Question 42

root

Answer 42

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

Question 43

simultaneous affix

Answer 43

an affix that takes place at the same time as its base

Question 44

stem

Answer 44

a part of a word responsible for its lexical meaning

Question 45

suffix

Answer 45

letters added to the end of a base word to change its conjugation, word type, or other grammar properties like plurality

Question 46

suppletion

Answer 46

a form of morphological irregularity whereby a change in a grammatical category triggers a change in word form, with a different (suppletive) root substituting for the normal one