Morphology

Question 1

morphemes

Answer 1

Smallest unit of linguistic meaning or function, e.g., sheepdogs contains three morphemes, sheep, dog, and the function morpheme for plural, s.

Question 2

form

Answer 2

The phonological or gestural representation of a morpheme or word.

Question 3

meaning

Answer 3

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. See extension, intension, sense, reference.

Question 4

arbitrary

Answer 4

Describes the property of language, including sign language, whereby there is no natural or intrinsic relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.

Question 5

linguistic sign

Answer 5

Sounds or gestures, typically morphemes in spoken languages and signs in sign languages, that have 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”).

Question 6

free morphemes

Answer 6

A single morpheme that constitutes a word, e.g., dog.

Question 7

open class / content words

Answer 7

The class of lexical content words; a category of words that commonly adds new words, e.g., nouns, verbs.

Question 8

closed class / function words

Answer 8

A category, generally a functional category, that rarely has new words added to it, e.g., prepositions, conjunctions. See open class.

Question 9

bound morphemes

Answer 9

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. See free morpheme.

Question 10

affixes

Answer 10

A bound morpheme attached to a stem or root. See prefix, suffix, infix, circumfix, stem, root.

Question 11

prefixes

Answer 11

An affix that is attached to the beginning of a morpheme or stem, e.g., in- in inoperable.

Question 12

suffixes

Answer 12

An affix that is attached to the end of a morpheme or stem, e.g., -er in Lew is taller than Bill.

Question 13

circumfixes

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

infixes

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

derivational affixes / morpheme

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

inflexional affixes / morpheme

Answer 16

A bound grammatical morpheme that is affixed to a word

according to rules of syntax, e.g., third-person singular verbal suffix -s.

Question 17

root

Answer 17

The morpheme that remains when all affixes are stripped from a complex word, e.g., system from un + system + atic + ally.

Question 18

stems

Answer 18

The base to which an affix is attached to create a more complex form that may be another stem or a word. See root, affix.

Question 19

productive

Answer 19

Refers to morphological rules that can be used freely and apply to all forms to create new words, e.g., the addition to an adjective of -ish meaning “having somewhat of the quality,” such as newish, tallish, incredible-ish.

Question 20

suppletive forms

Answer 20

A term used to refer to inflected morphemes in which the regular rules do not apply, e.g., went as the past tense of go.

Question 21

compounds

Answer 21

A 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.

Question 22

head (of a compound)

Answer 22

The rightmost word, e.g., house in doghouse. It generally indicates the category and general meaning of the compound.

Question 23

back-formations

Answer 23

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.