Week 4 Flashcards
Why do SP need to know how the structure of words work?
- We can understand how language works
- How words are structured
- We support clients who experience difficulties with understanding or using the rules that govern word structure
- As competent English speakers we often know these rules implicitly
What does it mean to Trumpify?
Words have internal structures and the rules that govern these structures are part of native speaker competence
What is a morpheme?
Is the smallest unit of linguistic meaning
What is morphology?
The study of the structure or form of words. It is the area of linguistics concerned with the study of morphemes
What is morphological analysis?
Refers to the analysis of a word based on the meaningful parts contained within that is, the morphemes. 3 morphemes = un + button + ed. Each are considered morphemes because they carry their own linguistic meaning
What are the parts of words? Why is morphological analysis conducted?
Root, Affix, Prefix, Suffix, Monomorphemic, Polymorphemic
Morphological analysis is conducted by looking at both meaning and grammatical function
e.g. Unbuttoned = Un (prefix), button (root), ed (suffix)
What do we need to do to conduct morphological analysis?
- All parts of the word should be accounted for with no leftovers
- For words with more than one morpheme - polymorphemic words - it should be possible to give examples of other words that contain the same morphemes
- Morphemes should have the same or vaguely similar meanings or grammatical functions wherever they occur
e.g. Pencil (1 morpheme), misreading (3 morphemes)
What are free, bound roots and bound morphemes?
- Morphemes that can occur in isolation are called free morphemes (or free forms) e.g. button, jump, drink
- Morphemes that cannot occur in isolation but must occur in combination with other morphemes are called bound morphemes (or bound forms) e.g. affixes
Bound roots: not all root words are free morphemes e.g. structure and construct ‘struct’ is a bound root (because struct isn’t a valid root word by itself)
What are Allomorphs?
- Alternative of morphemes
- Allo = other/different
- Morph = shape/form
- e.g. Make = 1 morpheme (make), making = 2 morphemes (mak +ing), Mak is a bound form of make, effects on spelling only
- e.g. Nation =1 morpheme, National = 2 morphemes, effect on pronunciation only (morphology)
e.g. romance = 1 morpheme, romantic = romant (bound root) +ic (bound morpheme), effect on pronunciation and spelling
What are the common prefixes and they’re meaning?
Anti: Against
De: Reverse, undo
Dis: Reverse, undo
Ex: Former
Ill, In, Im, Ir: Negative
Inter: Between
Intra: Within
Mis: Falsely
Pre: Before
Pro: In favour
Re: Again
Trans: Across
Un: Negative, reverse
What are the two types of suffixes?
Inflectional and Derivational
What is an inflectional suffix?
- a bound morpheme that is added toa word to assign a particular grammatical property to that word. Inflectional morphemes in English include the bound morphemes: -s, es, ‘s, s’, ed, en, er, est, ing
- Inflectional suffixes are important elements of grammar (e.g. in signifying tense, plurals, possessives)
- Each major word class category (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, adverb) has specific inflectional suffixes associated with it
There are only 8 inflectional suffixes
How many inflectional suffixes do nouns have? What are they?
2
Plural s:
- Regular form (-s)
- e.g. I have a bag full of apples
- Meaning=more than one
- Examples or irregular forms: people, men, women, children, mice, oxen, sheen etc.
- There are many irregular forms and these often involve high-frequency words
Possessive s:
- Regular form: -‘s (apostrophe s), or if plural s’
- e.g. singular: the cat’s fur is black, Plural the students’ assignments were well done
- Meaning: ‘belonging to’
- Examples of irregular forms: none
Further points: should not be confused with contracted forms such as that’s nice, he’s gone: These ARE NOT a suffix
How many verb inflectional suffixes are there? What are they?
4
Third person singular present tense:
- Regular form: -s
- e.g. he likes chocolate
- Meaning: This suffix has a grammatical function rather than a meaning
- Examples of irregular forms: n/a
- Further points: if -s is attached to a noun, the it will be a plural or possessive. If it is attached to a verb then it will be third person singular present tense
Past tense/simple past:
- Regular form: -ed
- e.g. yesterday I baked a cake
- Meaning: refers to the past
- Examples of irregular forms: made, wrote, thought, took, knew, built
- Further points: difficulty with past tense is considered to be a key behavioral marker of developmental language disorder
Past participle/passive participle:
- Regular forms: -ed, -en
- e.g. finally I have succeeded! My bag was taken!
- Meaning: refers to the past
- Examples of irregular forms: made, thought, known, built, sung, flown, and many more
- Further points: used in the passive tense, or in the perfect past (an action in the past that is completed). Often occurs with ‘to be’ or ‘to have’ verbs e.g. has, have, was, were
Progressive:
- Regular form: ing
- e.g. I am cooking
- Meaning: ongoing action
- Examples of irregular forms: n/a
Further points: ing is only the progressive suffix when used with an auxiliary verb sometimes called present tense
How many Adjective/Adverb inflectional suffixes are there? What are they?
2
- Regular form: er
- e.g. my dog is taller than me
- Meaning: can be paraphrased as more e.g. taller
- Examples of irregular forms: better, worse, more, less
- Further points: words of more than one syllable tend to have more added rather than the suffix er, though there are exceptions
Superlative:
- Regular form: est
- e.g. the highest mountain, the tallest girl
- Meaning: can be paraphrased as most X e.g. most tall
- Examples of irregular forms: best, worst, most, least
What is a derivational suffix?
If a suffix is not one of the 8 inflectional suffixes, it is derivational e.g.
er, or, ly, ic, ise, ize, ish, ity, ness, y
What’s the difference between inflectional and derivational suffixes?
- Category change: Derivational suffixes can change the word class, whereas inflectional suffixes never change the word class e.g. boyish: boy (a noun) becomes boyish (adjective
- Sequences of suffixes: a word can contain more than one derivational suffix (e.g. structurally - struct + ure + al + ly) but generally only one inflectional suffix)
Order: When a word contains several suffixes, derivational appear before inflectional e.g. allowances not allow + s + ance
- Sequences of suffixes: a word can contain more than one derivational suffix (e.g. structurally - struct + ure + al + ly) but generally only one inflectional suffix)
Morphemes and Mean Length Utterance
- Morphemes are clinically useful for speech pathologists as they help us measure the complexity of language development
- Speech pathologists calculate the mean length of utterance (MLU)
MLU = Count the number of utterances, count the number of morphemes in each utterance, then divide the total number of morphemes by the total number of utterances
- Speech pathologists calculate the mean length of utterance (MLU)
What are the stages and ages of MLU?
Stage 1: 12-25 months: 1-2 MLU
Stage 2: 27-30 months: 2-2.5 MLU
Stage 3: 31-34 months: 2.5-3 MLU
Stage 4: 35-40 months: 3-3.75 MLU
Stage 5: 41-46 months: 3.75 - 4.5 MLU
Stage 5 plus: 47 plus months: 4.5 plus MLU
What is the difference between past tense and past participle?
The depict action states which have occurred in the past:
Past tense: Used as a main verb, can stand alone. Occurs at a specific time in the past e.g. walked, ate
Past Participle: Used as an auxillary verb, cant stand alone, forming perfect tenses and passive voice or as an adjective e.g. have has had was
(passive voice: where the subject of the sentence receives the action)
