What is Morphology?

Question 1

affix

Answer 1

bound morpheme that attaches to a stem

Question 2

affixation

Answer 2

process of forming words by adding affixes to morphemes

Question 3

agglutinating language

Answer 3

a type of synthetic language in which the relationships between words in a sentence are indicated primarily by bound morphemes

Question 4

allomorph

Answer 4

One of a set of nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar

Question 5

alternation

Answer 5

In phonology, a difference between two or more phonetic forms that one might expect to be related

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

the phenomenon by which a single linguistic form can be the form of more than one distinct linguistic expression

Question 7

analytic language

Answer 7

type of language in which most words consist of one morpheme and sentences are composed of sequences of these free morphemes

Question 8

bound morpheme

Answer 8

morpheme that always attaches to other morphemes, never existing as a word itself

Question 9

bound root

Answer 9

morpheme that has some associated basic meaning, but that is unable to stand a lone as a word in its own right

Question 10

closed lexical category

Answer 10

lexical category in which the members are fairly rigidly established and additions are made very rarely and only over long periods if time

Question 11

compounding

Answer 11

word formation process by which words are formed through combining two or more independent words

Question 12

conjunction

Answer 12

A lexical category that consists of function words such as and, but, however, etc.

Question 13

content morpheme

Answer 13

morpheme that carries semantic content (as opposed to merely performing a grammatical function)

Question 14

content word

Answer 14

A word whose primary purpose is to contribute semantic content to the phrase in which it occurs. All free content morphemes are content words.

Question 15

derivation

Answer 15

In phonology, a process by which an underlying form is changed as phonological rules act upon it. In, morphology, a morphological process that changes word’s lexical category or its meaning in some predictable way.

Question 16

determiner

Answer 16

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as the, a this, all etc. Syntactically, consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right result in expression of category noun phrase.

Question 17

form

Answer 17

the structure or shape of any particular linguistic item, from individual segments to strings of words

Question 18

free morpheme

Answer 18

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word

Question 19

function morpheme

Answer 19

Morpheme that provides information about the grammatical relationships between words in a sentence

Question 20

function word

Answer 20

A word that has little semantic content and whose primary purpose is to indicate grammatical relationships between other words within a phrase

Question 21

fusional language

Answer 21

A type of synthetic language in which the relationships between the words in a sentence are indicated by bound morphemes that are difficult to separate from the stem

Question 22

hierarchy structure

Answer 22

The dominance relationship among morphemes in a word, or among constituents in a phrase

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

The phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or nonphrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form, i.e., sound the same

Question 24

incorporation

Answer 24

Morphological process by which several distinct semantic components are combined into a single word in a polysynthetic language

Question 25

infix

Answer 25

A type of bound morpheme that is inserted into the middle of the stem

Question 26

inflection

Answer 26

A morphological process whereby the form of a word is modified to indicate some grammatically relevant information, such as a person, number, tense, gender, etc

Question 27

input

Answer 27

The linguistic form before the application of a rule or a set of rules

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

Class of words grouped together based on morphological properties. Traditionally known as part of speech.

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

A mental repository of linguistic information about words and other lexical expressions, including their form, meaning, morphological, and syntactic properties

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

Smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

The study of how words are constructed out of morphemes

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

Lexical category into which new members are often introduced

Question 33

output

Answer 33

The linguistic form obtained after an application of a rule or a set of rules

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

Morphological reduplication in which only part of a morpheme is reduplicated

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

A type of language that attaches several affixes to stem to indicate grammatical relationships

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

Affix that attaches to the beginning of a stem

Question 37

preposition

Answer 37

The name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc.

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

Describes a rule that can be applied in novel situations to produce novel grammatical forms

Question 39

pronoun

Answer 39

The name of a lexical category that consists of words such as I, she, us, etc.

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

The morpheme or part of a morpheme that is repeated in reduplication

Question 41

root

Answer 41

The free morpheme or bound root in a word that contributes most semantic content to the word and to which affixes can attach

Question 42

simultaneous affix

Answer 42

An affix that is articulated at the same time as some other affix or affixes in a word’s stem; exists only visual-gestural languages

Question 43

stem

Answer 43

The base, consisting of one or more morphemes, to which some affix is added. The stem always includes the root and may also include one more affixes.

Question 44

suffix

Answer 44

Affix that attaches to the end of a stem

Question 45

suppletion

Answer 45

A morphological process between forms of a word wherein one form cannot be phonologically or morphologically derived from the other