morphology
studies the structure of words and describes the smallest meaningful components
morpheme
smallest meaningful component of language which contains one or more morphemes
duality
meaningless phonemes which are physically articulated are combined into meaningful morphemes
free morphemes
words
lexical morphemes
the ones you find in dictionary
functional morphemes
with grammatical function
bound morphemes
not words, but may be added to them
derivational morphemes
change lexical category
inflectional morphemes
do not create new words, involve the grammatical categories
visible morpheme
can be visually split into morphemes
invisible morpheme
cannot be visually split (men = man + s)
allomorph
different phonological realisation of one morpheme or a different shape of one morpheme
derivation
root + bound morpheme
compounding
free + free morpheme, two actual words
transparent compounds
adjective + adjective, black&white
semi-transparent compounds
adjective + noun, blackboard
compound + derivation
head-hunter, head + hunt + er
conversion
change of word class without changing the word’s form
clipping
shortening, no change in category, decreases formality
back-formation
manipulating the final section, change of category
acronyms
using initial sounds of a compound as a lexical entry
blending
beggining of one word + end of another, motorist + hotel = motel
borrowing
adding to the lexicon from another language