Morphology Flashcards
(46 cards)
Affix
These must be attached to a word - they are prefixes, infixes, and suffixes
Affixation
This is the process of adding affixes to a word.
Agglutinating language
Agglutinate is a verb that linguists use when words are strung together to create new sounds and meanings. An agglutinating language forms words by combining morphemes.
Allomorph
Nondistinctive realizations of a particular morpheme that have the same function and are phonetically similar.
Example) The three pronounciations of plurals (s,z,-es) are allomorphs of the same morpheme
Alternation
Alternation is a variation in the form and/or sound of a word or word part.
Very similar to allomorphs
Ambiguity
When a word, phrase, or sentence has multiple meanings - it is open to interpretation.
Analytic language
Any language that uses specific grammatical words, or particles, rather than inflection to express syntactic relations within sentences.
Bound morphemes
Cannot occur on their own
ex) de- in detoxify, -tion in motion, cran- in cranberry, -s in hands etc.
Bound root
These are root morphemes which cannot appear on its own. (Only the endings)
ex) Dis -suade (dis-) and re -ceive (but not re-)
Closed lexical category
A set of words that finite and do not typically allow new members to be added to the language. They cannot be added to to other morphemes. AKA closed-classes
conjunctions, prepositions, articles, auxiliaries, and pronouns
ex) she, her, but, nor
Compounding
Two or more words together, that also have meaning seperately.
example) swim team, picture frame
Conjunction
Typically function morphemes, they either serve to tie elements together grammatically or express obligatory morphological features like definitness.
ex) You and me, walk by the street
Content morpheme
AKA open-class morphemes. The stems of nouns, verbs, adjectives are content morphemes. We can add morphemes to these words.
Content word
Morphemes that express some general referential or informational contal.
Derivation
A derivational morpheme changes the part of speech of the word when added to the free morpheme (w/ some exceptions)
ex) pre-, un-, -ish, -less, -ly
Determiner
A word that modifies, describes, or introduces a noun.
Ex) this hill, the box
Form
Any meaningful unit of speech such as word, sentence, phrase, structure, morpheme, suffix
Free morpheme
The type of morpheme that can stand alone as words by themselves
*free morphemes have two categories
ex) friend, boy, tree
Function morpheme
Words that do not have clear meaning but has grammatical functions
AKA closed-class
ex) she, we, nor
Function word
A word that expresses grammatical relationship with other words in a sentence
ex) on, near, above
Fusional language
A type of synthetic language where a single morpheme can express multiple grammatical categories by combining them into one form. Similar to agglutination
Hierarchial structure
Visualized using tree diagrams usually - organizes language in nested, layered systems where smaller units combine larger units
ex) unlocakble, 1. un 2. lock 3. able
Homophony
When words have the same pronouncation but differ in meaning
Incorporation
Similar to compounding - the grammatical process where a grammatical category combines with another element to form a compound word
ex) babysit, househunt, sleepwalk
