Morphology Vocabulary

Question 1

affix

Answer 1

bound morpheme that attaches to a stem

Question 2

affixation

Answer 2

process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes

Question 3

agglutinating language

Answer 3

a type of synthetic language in which the relationships between words in a sentence are indicated primarily by bound morphemes

Question 4

allomorph

Answer 4

One of a set of nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar

Question 5

alternation

Answer 5

In phonology, a difference between two or more phonetic forms that one might expect to be related

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

the phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression

Question 7

analytic language

Answer 7

type of language in which most words consist of one morpheme and sentences are composed of sequences of these free morphemes

Question 8

bound morpheme

Answer 8

morpheme that always attaches to other morphemes, never existing as a word itself

Question 9

bound root

Answer 9

a morpheme that has some associated basic meaning, but that is unable to stand alone as a word in its own right

Question 10

closed lexical category

Answer 10

lexical category in which the members are fairly rigidly established and additions are made very rarely and only over long periods of time

Question 11

compounding

Answer 11

word formation process by which words are formed through combining two or more independent words

Question 12

conjunction

Answer 12

A lexical category that consists of function words such as and, but, however, etc.

Question 13

content morpheme

Answer 13

morpheme that carries semantic content (as opposed to merely performing a grammatical function)

Question 14

content word

Answer 14

A word whose primary purpose is to contribute semantic content to the phrase in which it occurs. All free content morphemes are content words.

Question 15

derivation

Answer 15

In phonology, a process by which an underlying form is changed as phonological rules act upon it. In, morphology, a morphological process that changes word’s lexical category or its meaning in some predictable way.

Question 16

determiner

Answer 16

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a this, all etc. Syntactically, consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in expression of category noun phrase.

Question 17

form

Answer 17

the structure or shape of any particular linguistic item, from individual segments to strings of words

Question 18

free morpheme

Answer 18

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word

Question 19

function morpheme

Answer 19

Function morphemes are also called “closed-class” morphemes, because they belong to categories that are essentially closed to invention or borrowing – it is very difficult to add a new preposition, article or pronoun.

Question 20

function word

Answer 20

are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence,

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

refers to any ordering of units or levels on a scale of size, abstraction, or subordination.

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

the linguistic phenomenon whereby words of different origins become identical in pronunciation. part music composed in a homophonic style.

Question 24

incorporation

Answer 24

is 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

A morpheme inserted inside of a word, like “that’s fan-BLOOMING-tastic”

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

the change in the form of a word (in English, usually the addition of endings) to mark such distinctions as tense, person, number, gender, mood, voice, and case.

Question 27

input

Answer 27

refers to the exposure learners have to authentic language in use. This can be from various sources, including the teacher, other learners, and the environment around the learners.

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

is a syntactic category for elements that are part of the lexicon of a language. These elements are at the word level.

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

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

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

the smallest linguistic unit with a meaning or grammatical function

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

• new words can be added
• when languages borrow new words, these will mainly be nouns, verbs, and adjectives (lexical categories
• can also be slang

Question 33

output

Answer 33

is the language spoken by second language learners themselves. .

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

occurs only with bases(root words) which begin with a consonant. It involves placing before the base a syllable consisting of the first consonant of the base followed by ‘e’.

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to stand alone). They are very highly inflected languages.

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

a word, letter, or number placed before another.

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,

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

is 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

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

The reduplicated segment in a word resulting from a reduplication process.

Question 41

reduplication

Answer 41

is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.

Question 42

root

Answer 42

the morpheme base upon which other morphemes are attached to create complex words (un-LOVE-able)

Question 43

simultaneous affix

Answer 43

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 44

stem

Answer 44

once an affix has been attached to a root, the result is called a stem to which more morphemes may be attached (un-LOVABLE)

Question 45

suffix

Answer 45

bound morpheme that attach to the end of a root

Question 46

suppletion

Answer 46

Suppletion is the replacement of one stem with another, resulting in an allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs.