Morphology Vocabulary

Question 1

affix

Answer 1

a bound inflectional or derivational element, as a prefix, infix, or suffix, added to a base or stem to form a fresh stem or a word

Question 2

affixation

Answer 2

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

Question 3

agglutinating language

Answer 3

a linguistic process pertaining to derivational morphology in which complex words are formed by stringing together morphemes without changing them in spelling or phonetics

Question 4

allomorph

Answer 4

any of the versions of a morpheme, such as the plural endings s (as in bats ), z (as in bugs ), and iz (as in buses ) for the plural morpheme.

Question 5

alternation

Answer 5

variation in the form of a linguistic unit as it occurs in different environments or under different conditions, as between the -ed and -en forms of the past participle in danced and spoken or between the (t) and (d) pronunciations of the past tense suffix -ed in hopped and rubbed.

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

is a quality of language that makes speech or written text open to multiple interpretations.

Question 7

analytic language

Answer 7

is a language that primarily conveys relationships between words in sentences by way of helper words and word order, as opposed to utilizing inflections.

Question 8

bound morpheme

Answer 8

is 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

refers to the category of function words that don’t readily accept new members

Question 11

compounding

Answer 11

A compound is a word containing a stem that is made up of more than one root. The process of word formation that creates compound lexemes.

Question 12

conjunction

Answer 12

any member of a small class of words distinguished in many languages by their function as connectors between words, phrases, clauses, or sentences

Question 13

content morpheme

Answer 13

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

Question 14

content word

Answer 14

words that name objects of reality and their qualities

Question 15

derivation

Answer 15

the process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as un- or -ness.

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

Form in linguistics and language refers to the symbols used to represent meaning

Question 18

free morpheme

Answer 18

a morpheme (or word element) that can stand alone as a word

Question 19

function morpheme

Answer 19

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

Question 20

function word

Answer 20

a word whose purpose is more to signal grammatical relationship than the lexical meaning of a sentence, e.g., do in do you live here?

Question 21

fusional language

Answer 21

a language in which one form of a morpheme can simultaneously encode several meanings

Question 22

hierarchical structure

Answer 22

the tree of directories and files that make up the language environment

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

when a set of words are pronounced identically, but have different meanings

Question 24

incorporation

Answer 24

a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object (object incorporation) or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function

Question 25

infix

Answer 25

An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

a change in the form of a word (typically the ending) to express a grammatical function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number, case, and gender

Question 27

input

Answer 27

refers to the exposure learners have to authentic language in use

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

a syntactic category for elements that are part of the lexicon of a language

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

the smallest meaningful unit in a language

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

refers to the category of content words—that is, parts of speech (or word classes) that readily accept new members

Question 33

output

Answer 33

Output is the ability to express a particular meaning by retrieving a particular form or structure and the ability to string structures and forms together.

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

involves a reduplication of only part of the word

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

languages in which words are composed of many morphemes

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word

Question 37

preposition

Answer 37

a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause, as in “the man on the platform,” “she arrived after dinner,” “what did you do it for ?”.

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation

Question 39

pronoun

Answer 39

a word that can function by itself as a noun phrase and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (e.g., I, you ) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse (e.g., she, it, this )

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

a linguistic phenomenon in which a word is doubled, e.g. for emphasis or as a plural e.g. bling-bling

Question 41

root

Answer 41

a word or word element (in other words, a morpheme) from which other words grow, usually through the addition of prefixes and suffixes

Question 42

simultaneous affix

Answer 42

an affix articulated at the same time as some other affix or affixes in a word’s stem; exists only in visual-gestural languages.

Question 43

stem

Answer 43

the form of a word before any inflectional affixes are added

Question 44

suffix

Answer 44

a morpheme added at the end of a word to form a derivative, e.g., -ation, -fy, -ing, -itis.

Question 45

suppletion

Answer 45

the occurrence of an unrelated form to fill a gap in a conjugation (e.g. went as the past tense of go ).