Week 7: Morphology and Syntax

Question 1

What is morphology?

Answer 1

The field of linguistics that examines the internal structure of words and the rules that govern processes of word formation

Question 2

What are the two types of free morpheme?

Answer 2

• lexical/content

- functional

Question 3

What are content words? What do they include?

Answer 3

• Words that denote concepts such as objects, actions, attributes and ideas
• Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs

Question 4

Why are content words open class?

Answer 4

Words can be added regularly to this class (hence open)

Question 5

What are function words? What do they include?

Answer 5

• Words that have no clear lexical meaning, or do not associate to an obvious concept
• conjunctions, prepositions, articles, pronouns and auxiliary verbs

Question 6

Why are function words closed class?

Answer 6

We almost never add words to this class

Question 7

What is neologism? What else is it known as?

Answer 7

The creation and acceptance of a new word in the language (also known as coinages)

Question 8

What is borrowing?

Answer 8

The taking of words from other languages

Question 9

What is a calque?

Answer 9

• A direct translation of the elements of a word

- Superman comes from german Übermensch (literally superman)

Question 10

What is compounding?

Answer 10

The combination of two words of a grammatical category (e.g two nouns or two adjectives) to make a new word (e.g wallpaper, good-looking)

Question 11

What is blending?

Answer 11

• A combination of two words where part of each has been deleted and then they’ve been combined to make a new word (e.g smog, brunch)

Question 12

What is clipping?

Answer 12

Reducing a word to one syllable (ad = advertisement, fan = fanatic, pub = public house)

Question 13

What is hypocorism?

Answer 13

• When a word is changed to become more familiar by added an e sounding ending (telly, bickie, hankie)

Question 14

What is backformation?

Answer 14

When a verb is created from a noun (donation - donate, liaison - liaise, option - opt)

Question 15

What is conversion?

Answer 15

When a noun or adjective is also used as a verb and vice versa (to bottle, to chair, a printout, a takeover, to dirty, to empty)

Question 16

What is the most common word-formation process in English? How does it work?

Answer 16

• Derivation

- Makes use of affixes and combines them to other (fully-fledged) words (e.g mis-understanding)

Question 17

Affixes that are combined at the beginning of a word are called what?

Answer 17

Prefixes (e.g un-, mis-. pre-)

Question 18

Affixes that are combined at the end of a word are called what?

Answer 18

Suffixes (e.g -ful, -less, -ish, -ism, -ness, ly)

Question 19

Some languages also have affixes called infixes. What are these?

Answer 19

• An affix that is placed inside the word

Question 20

What is a circumfix?

Answer 20

• An affix that has two parts (a prefix and a suffix) that appear at the beginning and at the end of the word

Question 21

What is a morpheme?

Answer 21

The minimal linguistic sign that is the smallest component of a word which has some meaning and which contributes to the meaning of the word
(the smallest functioning unit in the composition of words)

Question 22

Word with two morphemes or more are called what?

Answer 22

• Polymorphemic words

Question 23

What is a lexeme?

Answer 23

• An abstract notion or meaning of a word (what you have in your mind when a word is mentioned) - cat and dog are different lexemes but cat and cats are the same lexeme

Question 24

What are the two characteristics of a morpheme?

Answer 24

• A morpheme must be identifiable from one word to another in a consistent pattern AND
• A morpheme must also contribute in some way to the meaning of the word

Question 25

What is a free morpheme?

Answer 25

• A morpheme that can stand as a word on its own

Question 26

What is a bound morpheme?

Answer 26

• A morpheme that needs to be joined to another morpheme

Question 27

What are the two types of bound morphemes?

Answer 27

• Derivational morphemes

- Inflectional morphemes

Question 28

What are derivational morphemes?

Answer 28

• affixes that create new words or are used to change the grammatical category of a word

Question 29

What are inflectional morphemes?

Answer 29

• Used to indicate aspects of the grammatical function of a word (e.g plural or singular, past tense, progressive or perfect aspect, comparative and possessive form)

Question 30

What do morphologically complex words consist of?

Answer 30

• A morpheme (the root) and one or more affixes

Question 31

Does a root stand alone?

Answer 31

Yes and no (can be either free or bound) PAINT-er vs re-CEIVE

Question 32

What is formed when a root morpheme is combined with an affix?

Answer 32

• A stem (also base)

Question 33

What are the two ways to represent morphemes?

Answer 33

• By dividing it up with hyphens or plus signs

- By using a tree diagram