Week 5, Morphology Part 1

Question 1

Morphology

Answer 1

the study of words, including their structure, function, and distribution

Question 2

What does part of out knowledge of language include?

Answer 2

the ability to understand novel words

Question 3

What do we know when we know a word?

Answer 3

-the arbitrary sounds associated with a word
-the word’s meaning
-the word’s syntactic category (e.g. noun, verb, adverb, adjective, preposition)
-how to use words in sentences - e.g. record (noun) vs record (verb)

Question 4

What don’t we know when we know a word

Answer 4

-Might not know how a word is written
-The etymology (i.e. the origin of the word)

Question 5

Lexicon

Answer 5

our mental dictionary

Includes how its pronounced or its syntactic category

Question 6

What is the difference between a dictionary and our lexicon?

Answer 6

-Dictionaries includes words we don’t know
-Conversely, printed dictionaries don’t include many words that speakers use

Question 7

Morpheme

Answer 7

the smalled linguistic unit that has meaning

Is not equivalent to a word
All words consist of at least one morpheme

Question 8

Discreteness of language

Answer 8

each morpheme is a discrete unity of meaning, which we can manipulate

Question 9

Two types of morphemes

Answer 9

1. Free morpheme
2. Bound morpheme

Question 10

Free morpheme

Answer 10

a morpheme that can stand alone as a complete word (e.g. fast, to, the)

Question 11

Two types of free morphemes

Answer 11

1. Content/lexical
2. Functional

Question 12

Content/lexical morphemes

Answer 12

have a lexical meaning

*Most nouns, adverbs, verbs, and adjectives are content
*These are open class: we can add and do create new content words all the time

Question 13

Functional morpheme

Answer 13

serve some grammatical purpose

*Include pronouns, article, and compounds (e.g. he, she, it, the, a, and, or)
*Difficult to define what these words actually mean (e..g what does “of” actually mean in a sentence)
*These are closed classes: we cannot create new words or morphemes in them

Question 14

What type of morpheme is affected in Broca’s aphasia?

Answer 14

functional morphemes

Question 15

Bound Morpheme

Answer 15

must be attached to a free morpheme (e.g. -ed, -ing, -s, pre-, re-, un-)

Bounds morpheme have been affixed to a root

Question 16

Two types of affixes

Answer 16

1. prefixes
2. suffixes

Question 17

Two types of bound morphemes

Answer 17

1. Inflectional
2. Derivational

Question 18

Inflectional morphemes

Answer 18

Are grammatical, in that they affect the grammar of the word they attach to

Do not typically change a word’s category and attach to a particular category of a word (e.g. -ing attaches to regular verbs: eating, watching, running)

Question 19

Eight inflectional morphemes

Answer 19

1. -s (3rd person singular present)
2. -s (plural)
3. -s (possessive)
4. -ed (past tense)
5. -ing (progressive)
6. -en/ed (past participle)
   Past participle occurs after the verb have (e.g. I have eaten)
7. -er (comparative)
8. -est (superlative)

Question 20

What do inflectional morphemes add?

Answer 20

they add a tiny bit of information, but don’t change the core meaning (e.g. walk vs walked), usually info about when

Question 21

Derivational morphemes

Answer 21

help to derive new word categories (e.g. -ly, -ish, post-, inter-)

Adding a derivational morpheme often changes both the word’s meaning and the “part of the speech”

Question 22

Are derivational morphemes more or less productive that inflectional morphemes

Answer 22

Less productive (i.e. can combine with fewer words)

Question 23

How are morphemes put together?

Answer 23

Morphemes are usually put together in a specific order

they are building blocks

Question 24

How do affixes work?

Answer 24

Certain affixes attach to certain kinds of words

Question 25

What does the affix -able combine with

Answer 25

It only attaches to verbs E.g. -able: loveable (ok) vs catable (not ok)

Question 26

What does the affix -ish combine with?

Answer 26

Combines with adjectives and nouns, not verbs ## Footnote E.g. -ish: reddish (ok) vs helpish (not ok)

Question 27

*What does the affix -ly attach to?

Answer 27

it only attaches adjectives

Question 28

What are two ways to visaulize word structures?

Answer 28

1. brackets 2. word trees

Question 29

Affix

Answer 29

any morpheme that attaches to a root (bound morpheme) ## Footnote affixation is the process of building new words

Question 30

Suffix

Answer 30

affixes that attach after the root ## Footnote e.g. -able

Question 30

Prefix

Answer 30

affixes that attaches before the root ## Footnote e.g. pre-

Question 31

Causitive suffix in English

Answer 31

-en ## Footnote -en is a derivational suffix because it changes the category of the word But it has limited productivity; for example you can’t say, I will purple-en the shirt

Question 32

New intensifier in English

Answer 32

-ass intensifier -Native speakers know intensive -ass is a bound morpheme -E.g. When asked “are you cold?” you can’t replace “very” with the word “ass" despite ass being used this way in the above example -ass must be attached to another word We know the context of when this can be used

Question 33

Circumfix

Answer 33

affixes that surround the root both initially and finally E.g. In German: Lieb = love Ge + lieb + t = loved

Question 34

Infixes

Answer 34

-an affix that attaches inside the root -Makes something into a verb -Includes expletive infixation -“Iz” infixation (e.g. h-iz-ouse