Week 2: morphology

Question 1

Morphology

Answer 1

The study of the internal structure of words and the forms of words.

Question 2

Morpemes

Answer 2

The minimal units of languages that carry meaning.

Question 3

minimal pair

Answer 3

a pair of words or phrases that are identical except for a single element and have distinct meaning

Question 4

Allomorphs

Answer 4

a variant phonetic form of a morpheme

Question 5

in contrast

Answer 5

Two linguistic elements that
i) can occur in the same environment
ii) replacing one with the other creates a difference in meaning.

Question 6

method of recurring partial with constant meaning

Answer 6

The process of identifying elements of form which correlate with recurring elements of meaning.

Question 7

compositional sentences

Answer 7

Sentences where the meaning of the sentence is composed in some regular way from the meanings of the individual words.

Question 8

Types of evidence used to form hypothesis about the meanings of words:

Answer 8

a) minimal contract
b) recurring partials
c) pattern-matching

Question 9

Free morphemes

Answer 9

Morphemes which can occur alone as complete words.

Question 10

Bound morphemes

Answer 10

Morphemes which cannot occur alone and must be accompanied by another morpheme.

Question 11

Are a) roots and b) affixes free or bound?

Answer 11

a) Roots can be free or bound (but are more often free).
b) Affixes are always bound

Question 12

Roots

Answer 12

Express the fundamental meaning of the word

Question 13

Affixes

Answer 13

Morphemes which are added to the root and modify its meaning in a consistent way.

Question 14

Types of meaning of roots and affixes?

Answer 14

Roots normally have lexical meaning, affixes normally have grammatical meaning.

Question 15

Lexical morphemes

Answer 15

Contain meanings that are recognisable in the real word.

Question 16

Grammatical morphemes

Answer 16

Have meanings that are intralinguistic.

Question 17

Affixes and roots and class?

Answer 17

Affixes are part of a closed class.
Roots are part of an open class.

Question 18

Closed class

Answer 18

There exists a limited number of morphemes that could be found in the same positions in the word.

Question 19

Open class

Answer 19

There is a (very) large number of morphemes of the same type.

Question 20

Prefix

Answer 20

An affix which occurs before the root.

Question 21

Suffix

Answer 21

An affix which occurs after the root.

Question 22

Compound words

Answer 22

Contain two or more roots.

Question 23

Elements belonging to the same position class

Answer 23

All occur in the same place in a word and only one of them can occur at the same time (i.e. they are mutually exclusive).

Question 24

What are the two types of word that we distinguish between?

Answer 24

Simple words
Complex words (derived and compound)

Question 25

Simple words

Answer 25

Contain a (free) morpheme and inflectional suffixes

Question 26

Derived words

Answer 26

Contain derivational suffixes

Question 27

Derivational affixes

Answer 27

Create new words with new meanings based on other words
Tend to alter the lexical category of the root/base

Question 28

Inflectional affixes

Answer 28

(In English, always suffixes)
They do not alter the meaning but add grammatical information required by the syntactic context/environment.

Question 29

Which attaches to the root first: derivational or inflectional affixes?

Answer 29

Derivational affixes

Question 30

What are concatenative and non-concatenative morphology?

Answer 30

Stringing morphemes together sequentially.
Not stringing morphemes together sequentially

Question 31

compositional compounds

Answer 31

The meaning of the compound is derived in some logical way from the two roots.

Question 32

endocentric compounds

Answer 32

A compound word with its head at the end.
Meaning “a type of…”

Question 33

exocentric compounds

Answer 33

The head is not part of the compound.
(NOT “a type of”)

Question 34

What is shortening/clipping?

Answer 34

Reducing the length of a word

Question 35

What is the difference between acronyms and abbreviations?

Answer 35

Acronyms are pronounced as one word.
In abbreviations, each letter is pronounced individually.

Question 36

What is coinage?

Answer 36

Words derived from trademarks or brands, they go from specific to general.

Question 37

Gloss

Answer 37

A rough translation of a word

Question 38

What are the four broad types of languages (based on morphological features)?

Answer 38

Analytic or isolating
Agglutinating
Synthetic, fusional or inflectional
Polysynthetic

Question 39

Analytic language

Answer 39

(Also known as isolating)
One morpheme per word

Question 40

Agglutinating

Answer 40

Strings of affixes, each marking a single grammatical feature

Question 41

Synthetic

Answer 41

(Also known as fusional or inflectional)
Single affixes marking several grammatical categories at once or suppletive forms

Question 42

What is a portmanteau morpheme?

Answer 42

A phonological sequence that has two or more distinct meanings but cannot be broken down into multiple morphemes

Question 43

What is a suppletive form?

Answer 43

A word that is an inflected from of another word even though the words are not related in origin, e.g. go and went

Question 44

Polysynthetic

Answer 44

Long strings of affixes or incorporated roots in a single word