S5 Morphology I Flashcards
morphology
the “study of the formation and internal organisation of words”
attributes of typical words 1/4
syntactic attributes
- independence
- minimality
words that are the smallest units that can occur alone in certain contexts (eg. short answers to questions)
attributes of typical words 2/4
orthographical attribute
words are orthographically interrupted units separated on each side by spaces (or punctuation marks)
attributes of typical words 3/4
phonological attribute
words are phonological units that typically have no primary stress
attributes of typical words 4/4
semantic-cognitive attribute
a word is associated with a unit of meaning; a word stands for an integrated idea, a conceptual gestalt
simplex vs complex words
simplex: monomorphemic, they can not be split into further units that carry meaning
complex: polymorphemic, they consist of two or more units that carry meaning
morphemes
are the smallest meaningful or function-carrying units of the language
missing are the types of morpehmes
content words
- related to the extralinguistic world
- independent, identifiable meaning
- open class: productive (creation of new members)
- nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs
function words
- inner-linguistic importance
- no(t much) independent lexical meaning, grammatical functions
- closed class: not productive (hardly any change)
- determines, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliaries
unique morphemes (or blocked)
special type of bound morpheme, which do not exist as free morphemes in isolation, but only in combination with a specific free morpheme (cran/berry words)
root
minimal lexical unit that remains once all derivational and inflectional affixes are removed
allomorphs
are a specific realisation variants of a morpheme depending on the specific enviroment
phonologically conditioned allomorphs
eg. plural /-s/ in books, /-z/ in dogs, /-iz/ in bridges
morphologically/ lexically conditioned allomorphs
eg. plural formation: woman-women,
past tense: walk-walked, sleep-slept, sing-sang
suppletion
one word is regarded as the inflected form of another word, but the two words are not cognate; historically related
eg. good-better, person-people