Morphemes Vocab

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. In agglutinating languages, morphemes are joined together loosely so that it is easy to determine where the boundaries between morphemes are.

Question 4

allomorph

Answer 4

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

Question 5

alternation

Answer 5

The morphological process that uses morpheme-internal modifications to make new words or morphological distinctions.

Question 6

ambiguity

Answer 6

two or more distinct meaning available

Question 7

analytic language

Answer 7

a language that primarily conveys a relationship between to words in a sentence by way of helper words

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

a root word that can not stand without a morpheme

Question 10

closed lexical category

Answer 10

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

Question 11

compounding

Answer 11

a word that consist of more then 1 stem

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 a 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 expression that when combined with an expression of category noun to their right results in an expression of category noun phrase.

Question 17

form

Answer 17

meaningful unit of speech

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

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

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

hierarchical structure

Answer 22

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

Question 23

homophony

Answer 23

Affixes that sound alike but have different meanings or functions are homophonous.

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 person, number, tense, gender, etc.

Question 27

input

Answer 27

processible language the learners are exposed to while listening or reading

Question 28

lexical category

Answer 28

Lexical categories are also called parts of speech, which are classes of words that differ in how other words can be constructed out of them.

Question 29

lexicon

Answer 29

language inventory

Question 30

morpheme

Answer 30

Smallest linguistic unit that has a meaning or grammatical function.

Question 31

morphology

Answer 31

Morphology is the component of mental grammar that deals with types of words and how words are formed out of smaller meaningful pieces and other words.

Question 32

open lexical category

Answer 32

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are called open lexical categories because new words added to the language usually belong to these categories.

Question 33

output

Answer 33

language produced when speaking or writing

Question 34

partial reduplication

Answer 34

Morphological reduplication in which only part of a morpheme is reduplicated.

Question 35

polysynthetic language

Answer 35

Languages in which words are confirmed of many morphemes

Question 36

prefix

Answer 36

affix that goes at beginning of root

Question 37

preposition

Answer 37

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

Question 38

productive

Answer 38

Describes a rule (such as a morphological rule stating under what circumstances an affix may be added to a stem) 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. Syntactically, pronouns belong to the category noun phrase.

Question 40

reduplicant

Answer 40

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

Question 41

reduplication

Answer 41

Reduplication is a process of forming new words by doubling either an entire free morpheme (total reduplication) or part of it (partial reduplication).

Question 42

root

Answer 42

word that holds meaning

Question 43

simultaneous affix

Answer 43

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 44

stem

Answer 44

use morpheme: Root word and affix connected

Question 45

suffix

Answer 45

Affix that goes at end of root word

Question 46

suppletion

Answer 46

use of one word as an inflection of another word when the two words are not cognat. irregular or highly irregular