Chapter 4

Question 1

a grammatical case that marks noun phrases that occur as objects of clauses

Answer 1

accusative

Question 2

morpheme attached to a root, e.g., the English plural ‑s

Answer 2

affix

Question 3

morphological structure in which the boundaries between morphemes are clear‑cut and generally encode a one‑to‑one morpheme‑to‑meaning ratio; contrasts with fusional

Answer 3

agglutinative

Question 4

a phonetic variant of a morpheme, often motivated by the same phonetic forces that govern the occurrence of allophones; allomorphs of the English plural suffix include /s/, /z/, and /?z/

Answer 4

allomorph

Question 5

morpheme that cannot stand on its own as a word, e.g., English un‑

Answer 5

bound morpheme

Question 6

the morphological marking of the syntactic and (in some cases) semantic relations that hold between the noun phrases and the verb of a sentence

Answer 6

case

Question 7

a construction type that typically increases by one the number of core arguments in a clause; in a causative clause an agent typically causes a patient to perform some action; also used to refer to an affix that adds the meaning ‘cause’ or ‘make’, e.g., the English en‑ of en‑able

Answer 7

causative

Question 8

affix that surrounds the root, with one part before it and another after it; circumfixes add meanings beyond those of the components

Answer 8

circumfix

Question 9

the situation in which two or more sounds occur in mutually exclusive environments, i.e., there is no single environment in which more than one of the allophones could occur; sounds in complementary distribution are allophones of a single phoneme

Answer 9

complementary distribution

Question 10

word composed of two roots, stems, or words

Answer 10

compound

Question 11

morphological processes that create new lexemes, or new mental dictionary entries; derivational processes may change the word class of the stem they are added to, e.g., govern/govern‑ment (verb ? noun), though this is not always the case

Answer 11

derivation

Question 12

cover term for a set of word classes that can occupy a single slot in a noun phrase; in English these include articles, demonstratives, and possessives

Answer 12

determiner

Question 13

morpheme that can stand on its own as a word, e.g., English house or of

Answer 13

free morpheme

Question 14

morphological structure in which the boundaries between morphemes are no longer clear‑cut; the English plural noun feet shows fusional structure: it is difficult to separate the root ‘foot’ from the plural suffix (see Seneca language profile for an excellent example of a fusional language)

Answer 14

fusional

Question 15

the translated representation of a morpheme’s meaning; frequently won’t capture the full meaning of a morpheme, due to translational issues

Answer 15

gloss

Question 16

affix that appears inside of the root (not just inside of the word)

Answer 16

infix

Question 17

morphological processes that do not create new lexemes (mental dictionary entries), but simply add grammatical meaning such as past tense, plural number, or case

Answer 17

inflection

Question 18

morphological structure in which each word has very few morphemes, usually just one, i.e., there are no or only several affixes or clitics; common in a number of Southeast Asian languages, such as Vietnamese; contrasts with synthetic or polysynthetic

Answer 18

isolating or analytic

Question 19

a type of morphological description that specifies the environment where each of two or more allomorphs occur

Answer 19

item and arrangement

Question 20

a type of morphological description that posits a basic form of each allomorph and then states a set of processes (phonological rules) that derive each of the non‑basic allomorphs

Answer 20

item and process

Question 21

vocabulary item in the mental lexicon; a single lexeme, e.g., English freeze , might have several word forms, such as freeze, freezes, freezing, froze, and frozen

Answer 21

lexeme

Question 22

the addition of a morphological formation to the mental lexicon as a single unit, or a recognizable vocabulary item (lexical item); inappropriateness is lexicalized, whereas inelegantness is not, though it could become lexicalized if it were used often enough

Answer 22

lexicalization

Question 23

allomorphs whose occurrence (distribution) cannot be predicted on the lexical semantics basis of the sounds around them, but simply must be learned with the individual word, e.g., the plurals mice and alumni

Answer 23

lexically conditioned

Question 24

semantic relation of location and/or the grammatical marking of location by case; refers to static location when contrasting with categories of source and/or goal.

Answer 24

locative

Question 25

the smallest meaningful part of a word; includes roots, affixes, clitics, and particles

Answer 25

morpheme

Question 26

the study of the internal structure of words and the principles underlying such structuring

Answer 26

morphology

Question 27

an affix that creates nouns; the English suffixes ‑ness, ‑ity, and hood are all nominalizers: sweet/sweet‑ness, scarce/scarc‑ity, woman/woman‑hood

Answer 27

nominalizer

Question 28

a grammatical case that marks noun phrases that occur as subjects of clauses

Answer 28

nominative

Question 29

allomorphs whose occurrence (distribution) can be predicted on the basis of the sounds around them, e.g., occurrence of the English plural allomorphs /‑s/, /‑z/, and /‑?z/ can be predicted based on their phonological environment

Answer 29

phonologically conditioned

Question 30

morphological structure in which words tend to have large numbers of morphemes; characteristic of many languages of North America and the Caucasus; contrasts with isolating

Answer 30

polysynthetic

Question 31

affix that occurs before the root, e.g., the English negative un‑ ‘not’

Answer 31

prefix

Question 32

in morphology, degree to which a particular morphological formation is used by speakers to create new words; the English suffix ‑hood of mother‑hood is no longer very productive, but the suffix ‑ness of words like happi‑ness is highly productive

Answer 32

productivity

Question 33

the main morpheme of a word, the foundation to which other morphemes may be added; roots typically carry the core meaning of the word, e.g., late in English be‑late‑d‑ly

Answer 33

root

Question 34

an apical ‘hissing’ fricative or affricate, such as s, z, ts, dz, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ and dʒ; sibilants are also described with the feature [+strident]

Answer 34

sibilant

Question 35

noisy sound (typically a fricative or affricate) which involves the funneling of air against the back of the teeth

Answer 35

strident

Question 36

affix that occurs after the root, e.g. the English plural ‑s.

Answer 36

suffix

Question 37

derivational affix that creates verbs, e.g., English ‑ize, as in real‑ize ‘make real’

Answer 37

verbalizer