Morphology Vocabulary Flashcards
affix
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.
affixation
the process of inflection or derivation that consists of adding an affix.
agglutinating language
An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination
allomorph
any of two or more actual representations of a morpheme.
alternation
the repeated occurrence of two things in turn.
ambiguity
the quality of being open to more than one interpretation; inexactness.
analytic language
is a type of natural language in which a series of root/stem words is accompanied by prepositions, postpositions, particles and modifiers
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
the category of function words—that is, parts of speech (or word classes)—that don’t readily accept new members
compounding
the act of combining two lexemes to make a new word
conjunction
a word used to connect clauses or sentences or to coordinate words in the same clause
content morpheme
a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word
content word
are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur
derivation
in generative grammar, the set of stages that link the abstract underlying structure of an expression to its surface form
determiner
a modifying word that determines the kind of reference a noun or noun group has, for example a, the, every
form
the constituent structure in language, involving phonological and syntactic rules for interpreting speech and sentences
free morpheme
a stand-alone word
function morpheme
is a morpheme which simply modifies the meaning of a word, rather than supplying the root meaning
function word
expresses a grammatical or structural relationship with other words in a sentence
fusional language
a type of synthetic language, distinguished from agglutinative languages by their tendency to use single
hierarchical structure
the delegation of authority using a pyramid model, with the most authoritative professionals at the top and general employees at the bottom
homophony
the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation
incorporation
is a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object
