MT1 - morphology Flashcards
(36 cards)
morphology
the study of morphemes
morpheme
the smallest meaningful units in a language that cannot be analysed further
types of morphemes
free/bound (affixes), lexical (have semantic weight) / grammatical (create or alter grammatical relations between other units)
bound grammatical morphemes can be…
derivational affixes (used to create new words or change class), inflectional affixes (attach grammatical info to words)
ways to create new words (3)
compounding (free + free), derivations (free or derivation + bounded), clipping/acronym
compounding
first receives stress, second is “head” and determines word class
noun-compounds
wheelchair, blueberry, flipchart
verb-compounds
sleepwalk, manhandle, dryclean
adj-compounds
colourblind, clear-sighted, stinking rich
analysable
compounds whose component morphemes are easy to see
opposite of analysable + example
darkened compounds (ex. cranberry)
create derivational affixes through
grammaticalization or analogy
stem + DA ->
changed word class
inflection
when an affix is added to a word to provide grammatical information
point about inflections
fused with the stem (i.e. changes sound)
analytic languages
every word is a single free morpheme (isolating)
synthetic languages (3 types)
agglutinative, inflecting (fusional), polysynthetic
agglutinative
each morpheme = 1 piece of info, ex. Finnish
inflecting (fusional)
often fuse, each contains several pieces of information, ex. Romance languages
polysynthetic
words composed of several morphemes and one stem, ex. Mohawk
inflection in English (4 examples + 1 point)
nouns (-s *2), adj (-er/est), pronouns are irregular, verb agreement. lessens importance of word order
alternatives to inflection
1) ablaut (vowel mutation), ex. wrote
2) suppletion (i.e. whatever), ex. go->went
preposition
refers to relations between things, or between an action and its object (ex. in, to, for)
determiners
precede noun phrases (ex. the/a/this/these)