Vocabulary and Terminology Chapter 4: Morphology

Question 1

Affix

Answer 1

A morpheme that is added to a stem or the root word

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

Morphemes that have the same function and are phonetically similar

Question 5

Bound morpheme

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Bound root

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Closed lexical category

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Compounding

Answer 8

Process of forming words by combining two or more independent words.

Question 9

Conjunction

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Content morpheme

Answer 10

Morpheme that carries semantic content

Question 11

Content word

Answer 11

A word whose primary purpose is to contribute semantic content to the phrase in which it occurs.

Question 12

Derivation

Answer 12

A morphological process that changes a word’s lexical category or its meaning in some predictable way.

Question 13

Preposition

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Determiner

Answer 14

The name of a lexical category and syntactic category that consists of expressions such as , the, a, this , all, etc.

Question 15

Form

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Free morpheme

Answer 16

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word

Question 17

Function morpheme

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Function word

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Fusional language

Answer 19

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 20

Hierarchical structure

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Homophony

Answer 21

The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form

Question 22

Incorporation

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Infix

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Inflection

Answer 24

A morphological process whereby the form of a word is modified to indicate some grammatically relevant information.

Question 25

Input

Answer 25

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

Question 26

Lexical category

Answer 26

Class of words grouped together based on morphological properties. Traditionally called parts of speech.

Question 27

Lexicon

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Morpheme

Answer 28

Smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function.

Question 29

Morphology

Answer 29

The study of how words are constructed out of morphemes.

Question 30

Open lexical category

Answer 30

Lexical category into which new members are often introduced.

Question 31

Output

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Partial reduplication

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Polsynthetic language

Answer 33

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

Question 34

Prefix

Answer 34

Affix that attaches to the beginning of a stem.

Question 35

Simultaneous affix

Answer 35

An affix that is articulated at the same time as some other affix or affixes in a words stem.

Question 36

Stem

Answer 36

The base, consisting of one or more morphemes, to which some affix is added.

Question 37

Suffix

Answer 37

Affix that attaches to the end of a stem.

Question 38

Suppletion

Answer 38

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

Question 39

Analytic langauge

Answer 39

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

Question 40

Productive

Answer 40

Describes a morpheme or rule that can be used to produce novel grammatical forms.

Question 41

Pronoun

Answer 41

The name of a lexical category that consists of words such as I, she, us, etc.

Question 42

Reduplicant

Answer 42

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

Question 43

Reduplication

Answer 43

Process of forming new words by doubling either an entire word or part of a word

Question 44

Root

Answer 44

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

Question 45

Alternation

Answer 45

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

Question 46

Ambiguity

Answer 46

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