Morphology Flashcards
(36 cards)
What is Morphology?
the study of the shape & the internal structure of words
What is a word?
smallest grammatically independent unit in language
What is a morpheme?
the smallest meaningful unit in language
not only lexical meaning but also grammatical information
What is a lexeme?
the word as a unit of meaning; ‘dictionary entry’: cover term for various forms
What is a word form?
specific grammatical form of a lexeme
Lexeme: walk, raven
Word form: walks, walk, walked; raven, ravens
What does “monomorphemic” mean?
simple words
-> consist of one morpheme
e.g. happy
What does “polymorphemic” mean?
complex words
-> consist of several morphemes
e.g. unhappily
What types of morphemes are there?
- Autonomy: free or bound
- Position: prefix or suffix
- Meaning/function: lexical or grammatical
What types of autonomy are there?
- Free morphemes: can appear on their own without any other morphemes attached to them
- Bound morphemes: can only appear in combination with other morphemes
Base (stem) = the element to which a bound morpheme is attached
e.g. motherhood, management -> base
What types of meaning/function morphemes are there?
- Lexical morphemes: content words & derivational morphemes
- Grammatical morphemes: function words & inflectional morphemes
content words: open classes (=noun, verbs, adjectives)
Function words: closed classes (=auxilaries, articles, demonstratives, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns)
What do derivational morphemes do?
- create new lexemes
- can change word class
e.g. -ment, dis-, un-, -er (N)
What do inflectional morphemes do?
- create different forms of a word
- cannot change word class
e.g. -s, -ing, -ed
What is “Position” (=type of morpheme) relevant for?
bound morphemes = affixes
What types of affixes are there?
- Prefixes e.g. un-happy
- Suffixes e.g. settle-ment
- Infixes e.g. abso-bloody-lutely
- Circumfixes e.g. kaufen - gekauft
What are unique morphemes?
- cranberry/blocked morphemes
- type of bound morpheme
- cannot be assigned a meaning nor a grammatical function
- serves to distinguish one word from another
e.g. cranberry, cobweb
What are “Clitics”?
- reduced forms of free words
- phonologically dependent on another word
- have grammatical independence
e.g. I’m, you’re, they‘ve
What is a “morph” ?
a minimal meaningful and/or functionally relevant element of an utterance
What is an “allomorph” ?
a representation of a specific morpheme, whose form is phonologically, lexically or morphologically conditioned.
How do you know which indefinite article you should use?
- [a] before a consonant
- [an] before a vowel
- [a] if stressed
phonologically conditioned
Stressed: Did you find your bike? Well, I found **a **bike.
How are English irregular plurals and regular plurals conditioned?
- Regular plural: phonologically conditioned
- Irregular plural: lexically conditioned
What words are morphologically conditioned?
- demon/demonic
- exclaim/exclamation
[‘di:mən]; demonwise: [‘di:mənwaɪz]; demonic: [dɪ’mɒnɪk]
[ɪks’kleɪm]; exclamation: [ˌ eksklə’meɪ∫ən]
What does “phonologically conditioned” mean?
the shape of the allomorph depends on neighboring sounds
What does “lexically conditioned” mean?
the shape of the allomorph depends on the word as a whole
What does “morphologically conditioned” mean?
the shape of the allomorph depends on the morpheme which precedes or follows
