Week 5 Morphology Flashcards
Lexicon
a ‘dictionary’ of all the speaker’s words (vocab) and morphemes
Includes:
* Phonological representation
• Orthographic representation
• Grammatical (syntactic) information
Morphology
Study of the structure of words
Morpheme
Smallest unit of linguistic meaning or function at a word level
Word classes
Content words
eg nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives
(referred to as open class because new words can be added)
Function words
eg conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns, auxiliaries
(referred to as closed class - rarely new words added)
Content words
nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives
Function words
conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns, auxiliaries
Nouns
Objects (physical and abstract) and people - proper nouns, common nouns, abstract nouns
Eg
- person
- place
- animal
- thing
- idea
Verbs
‘doing’ words - describes actions, processes, states or events
Gerund
A word that functions as a noun but looks like a verb. Eg skiing, cooking
V - He was skiiing down the mountain.
N - Skiiing is a good form of exercise.
V - She was cooking dinner.
N - Cooking is her favourite hobby.
Adjectives
‘describing’ words - modifies a noun
- refers to qualities or states
- can be gradable (comparative, superlative)
Absolute, Comparative and Superlative adjectives
eg
Absolute tasty good old
Comparative tastier better elder/older
Superlative tastiest best eldest/oldest
Adverb
Adds meaning to the verb in relation to time, manner, quantity and frequency
eg
• He arrived late.
• He arrived quickly.
• He never arrived.
• He arrived often.
Is a morpheme the same as a word?
No, some words are one morpheme, other words have more that one morpheme - depends on the word.
Free (content) morpheme
stands alone
E.g. words like gentle, cat, love and jump
Bound (grammatical) morpheme
Must be attached to another word
E.g. un-, -dis, -er, -s, -ing
What are affixes?
prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes
What is a prefix
Precedes other morphemes. e.g un-, pre- (unhappy, prejudge)
What is a suffix?
Follows other morphemes. e.g. -ing, -er, -ist, -ly (eating, singer, typist, manly)
What is an infix?
Only in English slang – usually swear words: • e.g., fan - freaking – tastic • ‘un – bloody –likely’
What is a circumfix?
Added to beginning and ending of a morpheme eg un-friend-ly
What are derivational morphemes?
They change the meaning of the root word or change the word class.
- Noun to verb - moral +ise; en+joy
- Verb to adjective - read+able
- Verb to verb - like; dis+ like
What is Back-formation?
E.g. the verb to peddle came from the noun peddler based on interpretation of the –er suffix.
What is a compound word?
two or more free roots may be joined to form a new word
eg bittersweet, poorhouse, whitewash
What are inflectional morphemes? • Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that mark grammatical features of language such as tense and number. • They never change the syntactic category of the root or stem: • I sail the ocean blue • He sails the ocean blue • John sailed the ocean blue • John has sailed the ocean blue • John is sailing the ocean blu
Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that mark grammatical features of language such as tense and number.
They never change the syntactic category of the root or stem:
eg
- I sail the ocean blue
- He sails the ocean blue
- John sailed the ocean blue
- John has sailed the ocean blue
- John is sailing the ocean blue
What are inflectional morphemes? • Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that mark grammatical features of language such as tense and number. • They never change the syntactic category of the root or stem: • I sail the ocean blue • He sails the ocean blue • John sailed the ocean blue • John has sailed the ocean blue • John is sailing the ocean blu
Inflectional morphemes are bound morphemes that mark grammatical features of language such as tense and number.
They never change the syntactic category of the root or stem:
eg
- I sail the ocean blue
- He sails the ocean blue
- John sailed the ocean blue
- John has sailed the ocean blue
- John is sailing the ocean blue
Stems and root words
Start with a root word - add a stem (affix). New word becomes new root word and a stem may be added to that.
Eg
root word - friend
stem - ly (friendly)
New root word - friendly
stem - un (unfriendly)
