Vocab List - 10/4/20 Flashcards
affix
a grammatical element that is combined with a word, stem, or phrase to produce derived or inflected forms.
affixation
the process of adding a morpheme—or affix—to a word to create either a different form of that word or a new word with a different meaning
agglutinating language
a language which has a morphological system in which words as a rule are polymorphemic and where each morpheme corresponds to a single lexical meaning
allomorph
nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar
alternation
the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization
ambiguity
quality of language that makes speech or written text open to multiple interpretations
analytic language
a language that primarily conveys relationships between words in sentences by way of helper words and word order, as opposed to utilizing inflections
bound morpheme
morphemes that cannot occur on their own
bound root
a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme
closed lexical category
the category of function words—parts of speech—that don’t readily accept new members. The closed classes in English include pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions
compounding
a word formation process based on the combination of lexical elements (words or stems)
conjunction
function morpheme that serve to either tie elements together grammatically or express obligatory features
content morpheme
a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word with lexical denotations that are not dependent on the context or on other morphemes
content word
words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur.
derivation
process of forming a new word from an existing word, often by adding a prefix or suffix, such as un- or -ness
determiner
nominal syntactic category distinct both from adjectives and nouns, despite the close affinity among them
form
a meaningful unit of speech
free morpheme
morphemes that can occur as separate words
functional morpheme
also sometimes referred to as functors, are building blocks for language acquisition
function word
words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker.
fusional language
language in which one form of a morpheme can simultaneously encode several meanings
hierarchical structure
combinations of the individual elements of human language organized in a hierarchical manner
homophony
when a set of words are pronounced identically, but have different meanings
incorporation
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
infix
a word element (a type of affix) that can be inserted within the base form of a word—rather than at its beginning or end—to create a new word or intensify meaning
inflection
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.
input
the exposure learners have to authentic language in use.
lexical category
a syntactic category for elements that are part of the lexicon of a language
lexicon
a language’s inventory of lexemes
morpheme
the smallest meaningful unit in a language
morphology
the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language
open lexical category
a open category of syntactics where the new word and the original word belong to the same category. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs belong to this category
output
language that is produced, either in speaking or writing
partial reduplication
a reduplication of only part of the word
polysynthetic language
language that is highly synthetic , i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes- these are highly inflected languages
prefix
an affix which is placed before the stem of a word
preposition
a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause
productive
the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation
pronoun
a word that takes the place of a noun
reduplication
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.
reduplicant
reduplicated segment in a word resulting from a reduplication process
root
a word that does not have a prefix in front of the word or a suffix at the end of the word
simultaneous affix
affix that is articulated at the same time as some other affix or affixes in a word’s stem; exists only in visual-gestural languages
stem
a part of a word used with slightly different meanings and would depend on the morphology of the language in question
suffix
an affix which is placed after the stem of a word
suppletion
the use of one word as the inflected form of another word when the two words are not cognate
