Week 4

Question 1

Content words

Answer 1

Cat, sleeps, happily, elephant (open class)

Question 2

Functional words

Answer 2

Our, beside, the (closed class)

Question 3

Morphemes

Answer 3

Building blocks; our, cat, sleep, -s, happy, -ly, side, the

The minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function.

Question 4

Free morphemes vs. Bound morphemes

Answer 4

Free: our, cat, sleep, happy, the
Bound (affixes): -s, -ly, -be

Question 5

Affix

Answer 5

Suffix, prefix, circumfix, infix

Question 6

Circumfix

Answer 6

Enlighten

Question 7

Negative prefix

Answer 7

Inaccurate, misaligned, unachievable

Question 8

Modern English lacks…

Answer 8

Circumfixes

Question 9

What is expletive infixation? And what are the restrictions to this?

Answer 9

Minne-fuckin’-sota.

The infix word needs to be in between one vowel and one consonant.

Question 10

Stem/root

Answer 10

Part of the word that remains when all the affixes are removed.

Question 11

Base

Answer 11

Anything to which an affix is added.

Question 12

What is important to remember about stem/roots and bases?

Answer 12

All stems are bases but not all bases are stems.

Question 13

Agreement

Answer 13

Our cat sleeps

Our cat sleeps happily

Question 14

Bound root

Answer 14

Bound roots are bound morphemes. They cannot stand alone to function as words because they are no longer used in Modern English.

Examples: receive, reduce.

Happily, happy, hap (?)… Happen, perhaps. The root hap- occurs in some English words but never occurs on its own.

Question 15

In which languages are bound roots common and in which are they not?

Answer 15

Common in Latin, rare in Germanic languages.

Question 16

Free morphemes can be divided up into…

Answer 16

1. Lexical (open class); noun, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.
2. Functional (closed class): articles, pronouns, propositions.

Question 17

Bound morphemes can be divided up into…

Answer 17

1. Inflectional
   • New forms of same word
   • No change in word class
   • Syntactic function
   Cat-s, sleep-s, great-er.
2. Derivational
   • New Words
   • May change word class
   Catt-y, sleep-less.

Question 18

Inflected words form…

Answer 18

Paradigms (rijtje)

Question 19

Thematic vowels

Answer 19

In paradigms, some endings have different vowels, depending on the verb. Thematic vowels define different conjugation classes.

Question 20

Allomorphs

Answer 20

“-ed” can be pronounced in different ways: -id, -t and -d.

Stems may come in different variants. The German verb ‘bring’ has two stem allomorphs, bring- and brach- which are selected for present and past tense.

Question 21

Suppletion

Answer 21

Members of paradigms are sometimes phonetically distinct.

Good, better
Bad, worse
Go, went

Question 22

How can affixes have allomorphs? How can you predict them?

Answer 22

Present
Fit, buzz (d), cough (t)

Past
Fitted (id), buzzed (d), coughed (t)

The past-tense suffix agrees in voicing with the preceding sound. A vowel is inserted if the preceding sound is an alveolar stop (t, d).

Question 23

How do languages acquire new words?

Answer 23

1. Borrowing
2. Compounding (girlfriend)
3. Affixation (cattiness)
4. Clipping (sci-fi)
5. Back information (sculpt < sculptor)
6. Conversion (bin (v), bin (n))
7. Acronym (Bojo < Boris Johnson)

Question 24

Borrowing often involves…

Answer 24

Nativisation.