Vocabulary and Terminology Chapter 4

Question 1

affix

Answer 1

Bound morpheme that attaches to a stem. (See also Prefix, Infix, and Suffix.)

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. In agglutinating languages, morphemes are joined together loosely so that it is easy to determine where the boundaries between morphemes are.

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

The morphological process that uses morpheme-internal modifications to make new words or mophological distinctions

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

The phenomenon by which a single linguistic form (e.g. a word or a string of words) can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression. The form that is shared by more than one expression is said to be ambiguous.

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. Grammatical relationships are often indicated by word order. Examples are Chinese and Vietnamese.

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

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

A process that changes a 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 an 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

Morpheme that provides information about the grammatical relationships between words in a sentence

Question 20

function word

Answer 20

A word that has little semantic content and whose primary purpose is to indicate grammatical relationships between other words within a phrase.

Question 21

fusional language

Answer 21

A type of synthetic language in which the relationships between the words in a sentence are indicated by bound morphemes that are difficult to separate from the stem.

Question 22

hierarchical structure

Answer 22

The dominance relationship among morphemes in a word, or among constituents in a phrase.

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form, i.e., sound the same.

Question 24

incorporation

Answer 24

Morphological process by which several distinct semantic components are combined into a single word in a polysynthetic language.

Question 25

infix

Answer 25

A type of bound morpheme that is inserted into the middle of the stem.

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

A morphological process whereby the form of a word is modified to indicate some grammatically relevant information, such as person, number, tense, gender, etc.

Question 27

input

Answer 27

The linguistic form before the application of a rule or a set of rules.

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

Class of words grouped together based on morphological properties. Traditionally known as part of speech.

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

A mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form, meaning, morphological, and syntactic properties.

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

Smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function.

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

The study of how words are constructed out of morphemes.

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

Lexical category into which new members are often introduced.

Question 33

output

Answer 33

The linguistic form obtained after an application of a rule or a set of rules.

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

Morphological reduplication in which only part of a morpheme is reduplicated.

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

A type of language that attaches several affixes to a stem to indicate grammatical relationships.

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

Affix that attaches to the beginning of a stem.

Question 37

preposition

Answer 37

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as at in, for, with, etc.

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

Describes a rule (such as a morphological rule stating under what circumstances an affix may be added to a stem) that can be applied in novel situations to produce novel grammatical forms.

Question 39

pronoun

Answer 39

The name of a lexical category that consists of words such as I, she, us, etc. Syntactically, pronouns belong to the category noun phrase

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

The morpheme or part of a morpheme that is repeated in reduplication.

Question 41

reduplication

Answer 41

Process of forming new words by doubling either an entire word (total reduplication) or part of a word (partial reduplication).

Question 42

root

Answer 42

The free morpheme or bound root in a word that contributes most semantic content to the word, and to which affixes can attach.

Question 43

simultaneous affix

Answer 43

An 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.

Question 44

stem

Answer 44

The base, consisting of one or more morphemes, to which some affix is added. The stern always includes the root and may also include one or more affixes.

Question 45

suffix

Answer 45

Affix that attaches to the end of a stem.

Question 46

suppletion

Answer 46

A morphological process between forms of a word wherein one form cannot be phonologically or morphologically derived from the other.