semantics and morphology

Question 1

semantic domain

Answer 1

A semantic domain contains a group or range of words that have related
meanings. We organise words into particular domains when they have lexical
relationships with each other. This tends to produce words that occur together
frequently. In the semantic domain of ‘snow’, for example, we have words such
as ‘flurry’, ‘blizzard’ and ‘snowstorm’; a l of these words can be used to discuss
snow. This semantic domain can also include lexically related words, such as ‘ski’,
‘downhill’ and ‘avalanche’

Question 2

inferring

Answer 2

When a text - its words, phrases and sentences - contains information that is
not overt, we can derive meaning by inferring what it intends to convey, which
often relies on our cultural or social understanding of a particular context.
Example
Speaker A: Did you finish your homework last night?
Speaker B: I fell asleep as soon as I got home.

Question 3

Root & Stem morphemes

Answer 3

The root of a word is a single morpheme that contains the primary meaning of
the word. For example, in the word ‘cats’, the root would be ‘cat’ because, of the
two morphemes, it contains the most relevant information regarding the word’s
primary meaning.

Question 4

Free and bound morphemes

Answer 4

Bound morphemes only carry their meaning or grammatical information when attached to another morpheme
Free morphemes can stand alone and carry the same meaning whether attached to other morphemes or not

Question 5

Inflectional and derivational affixes

Answer 5

An inflectional affix is a bound morpheme that attaches grammatical
properties to a word, such as tense (in verbs), number (in nouns) or possession
(in nouns and pronouns). Inflectional affixes don’t affect the fundamental
meaning or form of the root word.

A derivational affix creates or derives a new word from the root or stem
that it is attached to. Rather than just being a grammatical ‘helper’, it adds to or
changes the meaning or form of the existing word so that it no longer performs
the same role. This usually means that the derived word has its own entry in a
dictionary. For example, the prefix ‘un-‘ is a derivational morpheme that changes
the meaning of’breaking’ to its opposite, ‘unbreaking’, and the suffix ‘-ing’

Question 6

affixes

Answer 6

Prefixes

Go before the root
Eg: Disinterested
Suffixes

Go after the root
Eg: Walking
Infixes

Inserted inside the root
Not found in English (except for non-Standard words)
Often expletives or intensifiers in English.

Question 7

derivational affixation

Answer 7

prefixes
de-
pre-
in-
un-
suffixes
-ion
-ly
-able
-er

Question 8

inflectional suffixes

Answer 8

plural:
-s
-ing
-ed