Week 8: Morphology II

Question 1

Define: ETYMOLOGY

Answer 1

The study of the origins of words

Question 2

Define: ETYMOLOGICAL FALLACY

Answer 2

Taking an earlier meaning as the ‘true’ meaning or as still present somehow in the modern word

Question 3

Define: ALLOMORPHS

Answer 3

Variant forms of morphemes that occur when a unit of meaning varies in sound without changing the meaning e.g. ‘abil’ in ‘predictability’ is an allomorph of ‘able’

Question 4

Define: LIST-RULE FALLACY

Answer 4

The (mistaken) idea that we either store all words as wholes, or we store all parts of words

Question 5

Define: DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Answer 5

Always creates a new lexeme that often has a different word class and is not required by grammar

Question 6

Define: INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY

Answer 6

The lexeme always stays the same, the word class never changes and is required by grammar e.g. ‘s’

Question 7

Define: THE CONTINUUM OF SYNTHESIS

Answer 7

Isolating - Synthetic - Polysythetic

• Refers to the number of morphemes per word within a language
• Isolating = few morphemes per word

Question 8

Define: SUPPLETION

Answer 8

The occurrence of an unrelated form to fill a gap in a the creation of derived forms (conjugation) e.g. ‘went’ as the past tense of ‘go’