chap 2 morphology: the words of L Flashcards
(40 cards)
affix
A bound morpheme attached to a stem or root.
back-formation
Creation of a new word by removing an affix from an old word: e.g., donate from donation; or by removing what is mistakenly considered an affix: e.g., edit from editor.
base
Any root or stem to which an affix is attached.
blocked
A derivation that is prevented by a prior application of morphological rules: e.g., when Commun + ist entered the language, words such as Commun + ite (as in Trotsky + ite) or Commun + ian (as in grammar + ian) were not needed and were not formed.
bound morpheme
A morpheme that must be attached to other morphemes: e.g., -ly, -ed, non-. Bound morphemes are prefixes, suffixes, infixes, circumfixes, and some roots such as cran in cranberry.
case morphology
The process of inflectional morphemes combining with nouns to indicate the grammatical relation of the noun in its sentence: e.g., in Russian, the inflectional suffix -a added to a noun indicates that the noun is an object.
circumfix
A bound morpheme, parts of which occur in a word both before and after the root: e.g., ge—t in German geliebt, ‘loved,’ from the root lieb
closed class
A category, generally a functional category, that rarely has new words added to it: e.g., prepositions, conjunctions.
compound
word composed of two or more words, which may be written as a single word or as words separated by spaces or hyphens: e.g., dogcatcher, dog biscuit, dog-tired
content words
The nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that constitute the major part of the vocabulary.
derivational affix
A morpheme added to a stem or root to form a new stem or word, possibly, but not necessarily, resulting in a change in syntactic category: e.g., -er added to a verb like kick to give the noun kicker.
derived word
The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme: e.g., firmly from firm + ly.
discontinuous morphemes
morpheme with multiple parts that occur in more than one place in a word or sentence: e.g., ge and t in German geliebt, ‘loved.’
form
The phonological or gestural representation of a morpheme or word.
free morpheme
A single morpheme that constitutes a word: e.g., dog.
function word
A word that does not always have a clear lexical meaning but has a grammatical function; function words include conjunctions, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, complementizers, and pronouns.
grammatical category
Traditionally called “parts of speech”; also called syntactic categories; expressions of the same grammatical category can generally substitute for one another without loss of grammaticality: e.g., noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective, auxiliary verb.
head (of a compound)
The rightmost word: e.g., house in doghouse. It generally indicates the category and general meaning of the compound.
infix
A bound morpheme that is inserted in the middle of another morpheme: e.g., Tagalog sulat ‘writing’ but sumulat ‘to write’ after insertion of the infix um.
inflectional affix
A bound grammatical morpheme that is affixed to a word according to rules of syntax: e.g., third-person singular verbal suffix -s.
lexical gap
A possible but nonoccurring word; a form that obeys the phonotactic constraints of a language yet has no meaning: e.g., blick in English.
linguistic performance
The use of linguistic competence in the production and comprehension of language; behavior as distinguished from linguistic knowledge: e.g., linguistic competence permits one-million-word sentences, but linguistic performance prevents this from happening.
linguistic sign
sound or gesture, typically a morpheme in a spoken language and a sign in a sign language, that has a form bound to a meaning in a single unit: e.g., dog is a linguistic sign whose form is its pronunciation [dag] and whose meaning is Canis familiaris (or however we define “dog”).
meaning
The conceptual or semantic aspect of a sign or utterance that permits us to comprehend the message being conveyed. Expressions in language generally have both form—pronunciation or gesture—and meaning.
