Morphology (Part1) Flashcards
(19 cards)
Universal Grammar
Innate principles and parameters a person has/knows about grammar
Underlying mental system
Lexicon
Language’s inventory of words
What are the 3 classes of words?
- Lexical content words
- Function words
- Morphemes
Lexical Content Words
Have referential meaning Open class words
Function words
Express grammatical meanings and relations
Closed class
What syntactic categories of words are part of the lexical content words?
- Noun
- Adjective
- Verb
- Adverb
What syntactic categories of words are part of function words?
- Article
- Preposition
- Conjunction
- Pronoun
Morpheme
Smallest unit of linguistic meaning
What governs the internal structure of word?
Rule. Rule-governed.
Root
Irreductible core of a word, with nothing else attached to it.
Part that must always be present
Carries the basic meaning of the word
Free root morpheme/Free base
Single morpheme that constitutes a word by itself
Bound root morpheme/Bound base
Morpheme that only occur in words when attached to other morphemes
Only acquire meaning in combination with certain other morphemes
4 types of bound root morphemes.
- Prefixes
- Suffixes
- Infixes
- Circumfixes
Infixes
Morpheme insert into a root morpheme
Circumfixes
Morpheme attached to the beginning and the end of a root morpheme
2 types of affixes
- Derivational morphemes
2. Inflectional morphemes
Derivational morphemes
Change the meaning or the part of speech Not require by syntax Not very productive (Do not occur with a lot of word) Before inflectional morpheme Prefixes or suffixes
Inflectional morphemes
Refines and give grammatical information about an existing meaning
Serve a grammatical function
Do not change the meaning or part of speech
Very productive
After derivational morphemes
Suffixes only in English
Stem
Part of the word that exist before any inflectional affixes have been added
