Week 2: morphology Flashcards
Morphology
The study of the internal structure of words and the forms of words.
Morpemes
The minimal units of languages that carry meaning.
minimal pair
a pair of words or phrases that are identical except for a single element and have distinct meaning
Allomorphs
a variant phonetic form of a morpheme
in contrast
Two linguistic elements that
i) can occur in the same environment
ii) replacing one with the other creates a difference in meaning.
method of recurring partial with constant meaning
The process of identifying elements of form which correlate with recurring elements of meaning.
compositional sentences
Sentences where the meaning of the sentence is composed in some regular way from the meanings of the individual words.
Types of evidence used to form hypothesis about the meanings of words:
a) minimal contract
b) recurring partials
c) pattern-matching
Free morphemes
Morphemes which can occur alone as complete words.
Bound morphemes
Morphemes which cannot occur alone and must be accompanied by another morpheme.
Are a) roots and b) affixes free or bound?
a) Roots can be free or bound (but are more often free).
b) Affixes are always bound
Roots
Express the fundamental meaning of the word
Affixes
Morphemes which are added to the root and modify its meaning in a consistent way.
Types of meaning of roots and affixes?
Roots normally have lexical meaning, affixes normally have grammatical meaning.
Lexical morphemes
Contain meanings that are recognisable in the real word.
Grammatical morphemes
Have meanings that are intralinguistic.
Affixes and roots and class?
Affixes are part of a closed class.
Roots are part of an open class.
Closed class
There exists a limited number of morphemes that could be found in the same positions in the word.
Open class
There is a (very) large number of morphemes of the same type.
Prefix
An affix which occurs before the root.
Suffix
An affix which occurs after the root.
Compound words
Contain two or more roots.
Elements belonging to the same position class
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).
What are the two types of word that we distinguish between?
Simple words
Complex words (derived and compound)
Simple words
Contain a (free) morpheme and inflectional suffixes
Derived words
Contain derivational suffixes
Derivational affixes
Create new words with new meanings based on other words
Tend to alter the lexical category of the root/base
Inflectional affixes
(In English, always suffixes)
They do not alter the meaning but add grammatical information required by the syntactic context/environment.
Which attaches to the root first: derivational or inflectional affixes?
Derivational affixes
What are concatenative and non-concatenative morphology?
Stringing morphemes together sequentially.
Not stringing morphemes together sequentially
compositional compounds
The meaning of the compound is derived in some logical way from the two roots.
endocentric compounds
A compound word with its head at the end.
Meaning “a type of…”
exocentric compounds
The head is not part of the compound.
(NOT “a type of”)
What is shortening/clipping?
Reducing the length of a word
What is the difference between acronyms and abbreviations?
Acronyms are pronounced as one word.
In abbreviations, each letter is pronounced individually.
What is coinage?
Words derived from trademarks or brands, they go from specific to general.
Gloss
A rough translation of a word
What are the four broad types of languages (based on morphological features)?
Analytic or isolating
Agglutinating
Synthetic, fusional or inflectional
Polysynthetic
Analytic language
(Also known as isolating)
One morpheme per word
Agglutinating
Strings of affixes, each marking a single grammatical feature
Synthetic
(Also known as fusional or inflectional)
Single affixes marking several grammatical categories at once or suppletive forms
What is a portmanteau morpheme?
A phonological sequence that has two or more distinct meanings but cannot be broken down into multiple morphemes
What is a suppletive form?
A word that is an inflected from of another word even though the words are not related in origin, e.g. go and went
Polysynthetic
Long strings of affixes or incorporated roots in a single word
