Words Flashcards
(25 cards)
What is a written word? Orthographic
A string of letter bounded by a space at each end or punctuation mark at each end
What is a spoken word? Phonological
Allows only one main stress and is bounded by pauses
What are the problems with the written word definition?
Not all languages mark word boundaries
irregularities such as cannot
Non-literate cultures can still isolate words in speech
What are the problems with the spoken word definition?
Hard to identify boundaries sometimes
Some phrases only have one stressed syllable but aren’t all one word
Define lexeme
Abstract, basic, uninflected form of a word (found in dictionary)
eg. eat
Define lexical item
One individual inflexion form of a lexeme
eg. eating
Define lemma
The whole set of inflectional variations of a word
eg. eating, eaten, ate
Define mental lexicon
The large complex network which stores lexical entries in our brains
How are words organised in our mental lexicon?
Theory that they’re arranged on a systematic basis
Define semantic network
The links we make between words and their meanings, creating a network
What is the prototype theory and who came up with it?
Rosch and Mervis, 1975
Conceptual theory (bird) is represented by a prototype
Define prototype
An average of all of the exemplars in a category
Not all real, just abstract
How can we understand how words are stored?
Slips of the tongue, theoretical linguistics, speech disorders, psychological experiments
What are the 3 headings for lexical entry?
Form, Syntax and Meaning
What comes under the lexical entry heading Form?
Orthographical, Phonological and Morphological
What comes under the lexical entry heading Syntax?
Word class and Phrase structure
What comes under the lexical entry heading Meaning?
Core meaning and differs from meanings of…
Define inflectional morphology
Morphemes used to mark grammatical functions and properties
Define derivational morphology
Morphemes used to create a new lexeme.
Two types, class changing and class maintaining
Give 3 differences between derivational and inflectional morphology
- Infl. is always suffixational, deriv. is not
- Deriv. changes part of speech, infl. doesn’t change part of speech
- Deriv. is not syntactically relevant, infl. is
Define lemma
The group of all lexical items and the lexeme
Define content words
Those that are open class and carry meaning
eg. Nouns
Define function words
Those that are closed class and carry grammatical meaning
eg. Conjunctions
What’s the difference between content and function words in terms of processing?
Function requires matching to a phonological sequence stored in the brain, content requires matching and meaning to be accessed
