Ch. 4 Morphology Vocabulary

Question 1

affix

Answer 1

is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed. They are bound morphemes by definition; prefixes and suffixes may be separable affixes.

Question 2

affixation

Answer 2

a morphological process whereby a bound morpheme, an affix, is attached to a morphological base. Affixation falls in the scope of Morphology where bound morphemes are either roots or affixes.

Question 3

agglutinating language

Answer 3

is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes remain, in every aspect, unchanged after their unions.

Question 4

allomorph

Answer 4

In linguistics, an allomorph is a variant phonological form of a morpheme, that is, when a unit of meaning varies in sound without changing the meaning. The term allomorph explains the comprehension of phonological variations for specific morphemes.

Question 5

alternation

Answer 5

is the phenomenon of a morpheme exhibiting variation in its phonological realization. Each of the various realizations is called an alternant. The variation may be conditioned by the phonological, morphological, and/or syntactic environment in which the morpheme finds itself.

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

When a word, phrase, or sentence has more than one meaning, it is ambiguous. The word ambiguous is another of those words that has a specific meaning in linguistics: it doesn’t just mean that a sentence’s meaning is vague or unclear. Ambiguous means that there are two or more distinct meanings available.

Question 7

bound morpheme

Answer 7

is a morpheme that can appear only as part of a larger expression
A bound morpheme is a type of bound form

Question 8

bound root

Answer 8

A bound root is a root which cannot occur as a separate word apart from any other morpheme.

Question 9

closed lexical category

Answer 9

Closed lexical categories rarely acquire new members. Closed lexical categories include pronouns, determiners, prepositions, and conjunctions.

Question 10

compounding

Answer 10

is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. That is, in familiar terms, compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make one longer word or sign.

Question 11

conjunction

Answer 11

are linguistic elements that link two or more words, phrases, clauses, or sentences within a larger unit, in such a way that a specific semantic relation is established between them.

Question 12

content morpheme

Answer 12

A content morpheme or contentive morpheme is a root that forms the semantic core of a major class word. Content morphemes have lexical denotations that are not dependent on the context or on other morphemes.

By adding the suffix -ful (another functional morpheme), the adjective beautiful is formed.

Question 13

content word

Answer 13

are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur.

Question 14

derivation

Answer 14

Derivation, in descriptive linguistics and traditional grammar, the formation of a word by changing the form of the base or by adding affixes to it (e.g., “hope” to “hopeful”). It is a major source of new words in a language. In historical linguistics, the derivation of a word is its history, or etymology.

Question 15

determiner

Answer 15

is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a particular number or quantity, etc.

Question 16

form

Answer 16

a meaningful unit of speech (such as a morpheme, word, or sentence)

Question 17

free morpheme

Answer 17

is one that can stand alone.

a free morpheme is a type of free form.

Question 18

function morpheme

Answer 18

also sometimes referred to as functors, are building blocks for language acquisition. A functional morpheme is a morpheme which simply modifies the meaning of a word, rather than supplying the root meaning.

Question 19

function word

Answer 19

are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning and express grammatical relationships among other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker.

Question 20

fusional language

Answer 20

is a language in which one form of a morpheme can simultaneously encode several meanings

Fusional languages may have a large number of morphemes in each word, but morpheme boundaries are difficult to identify because the morphemes are fused together

Question 21

hierarchical structure

Answer 21

refers to any ordering of units or levels on a scale of size, abstraction, or subordination. Adjective: hierarchical. Also called syntactic hierarchy or morpho-syntactic hierarchy.

The hierarchy of units (from smallest to largest) is conventionally identified as follows:

Phoneme
Morpheme
Word
Phrase
Clause
Sentence
Text

Question 22

homophony

Answer 22

is when a set of words are pronounced identically, but have different meanings. It is not necessary for homophonic words to be spelled the same way, which is called homography.

Question 23

incorporation

Answer 23

is a phenomenon by which a grammatical category, such as a verb, forms a compound with its direct object or adverbial modifier, while retaining its original syntactic function. The inclusion of a noun qualifies the verb, narrowing its scope rather than making reference to a specific entity

Question 24

infix

Answer 24

is a word element (a type of affix) that can be inserted within the base form of a word—rather than at its beginning or end—to create a new word or intensify meaning. The process of inserting an infix is called infixation.

Question 25

inflection

Answer 25

In linguistic morphology, inflection is a process of word formation, in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness.

Question 26

input

Answer 26

Input refers to the exposure learners have to authentic language in use. This can be from various sources, including the teacher, other learners, and the environment around the learners. Input can be compared to intake, which is input then taken in and internalized by the learner so it can be applied.

Question 27

lexical category

Answer 27

lexical category (plural lexical categories) (grammar) A linguistic category of words (or more precisely lexical items), generally defined by the syntactic or morphological behaviour of the lexical item in question, such as noun or verb

Question 28

lexicon

Answer 28

A lexicon, word-hoard, wordbook, or word-stock is the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language’s inventory of lexemes. The word lexicon derives from the Greek λεξικόν (lexikon), neuter of λεξικός (lexikos) meaning ‘of or for words’.

Question 29

morpheme

Answer 29

A “morpheme” is a short segment of language that meets three basic criteria: 1. It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning. 2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder.

Question 30

morphology

Answer 30

In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes.

Question 31

open lexical category

Answer 31

A lexical category is open if the new word and the original word belong to the same category. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are open lexical categories

Question 32

output

Answer 32

is the language they produce, either in speaking or writing (i.e. The productive skills).

Question 33

partial reduplication

Answer 33

is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.

Reduplication is used in inflections to convey a grammatical function, such as plurality, intensification, etc., and in lexical derivation to create new words. It is often used when a speaker adopts a tone more “expressive” or figurative than ordinary speech and is also often, but not exclusively, iconic in meaning.

Question 34

polysynthetic language

Answer 34

polysynthetic languages are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able to stand alone).

Question 35

prefix

Answer 35

A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word

Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the words to which it is affixed.

Question 36

preposition

Answer 36

A preposition is an adposition that occurs before its complement.

or postposition typically combines with a noun or pronoun, or more generally a noun phrase, this being called its complement, or sometimes object. … Some linguists use the word preposition in place of adposition regardless of the applicable word order.

Question 37

productive

Answer 37

In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. It compares grammatical processes that are in frequent use to less frequently used ones that tend towards lexicalization.

Question 38

pronoun

Answer 38

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated PRO) is a word that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase. It is a particular case of a pro-form.

The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent.

Question 39

reduplicant

Answer 39

Noun. reduplicant (plural reduplicants) (linguistic morphology) The reduplicated segment in a word resulting from a reduplication process. The second bar in the Ancient Greek word barbaros is a reduplicant.

Question 40

root

Answer 40

A root is a word that does not have a prefix in front of the word or a suffix at the end of the word. The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents.

Question 41

stem

Answer 41

A stem is the root or roots of a word, together with any derivational affixes, to which inflectional affixes are added.

Question 42

simultaneous affix

Answer 42

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

Question 43

suppletion

Answer 43

Suppletion is the replacement of one stem with another, resulting in an allomorph of a morpheme which has no phonological similarity to the other allomorphs.

Question 44

analytic language

Answer 44

Analytic language, any language that uses specific grammatical words, or particles, rather than inflection (q.v.), to express syntactic relations within sentences. An analytic language is commonly identified with an isolating language (q.v.), since the two classes of language tend to coincide.

Question 45

reduplication

Answer 45

Reduplication is a morphological process in which a root or stem or part of it is repeated.

Question 46

suffix

Answer 46

A suffix is an affix that is attached to the end of a root or stem.