[Exam 2] - Morphology

What is affixation?

The attachment of a bound morpheme (affix) at the beginning (prefix), middle (infix), or after (affix) the root.

What is reduplication?

When all (total) or part (partial, typically the first syllable) of a morpheme is repeated and behaves as a morpheme. Indicates some grammatical function.

What is suppletion?

When some form in a paradigm is completely replaced with a different form. (No phonetic or phonological relation to the root)

• To go, I go, he goes, we went.

What is alternation (internal change)?

When some part of the root is changed, indicating morphological change.

• Swim, swam, swum

What is compounding?

The derivational combination of multiple roots together

• ex. Hotdog, blackboard, pick-me-up

Characteristics and subtypes of "synthetic” type languages

In analytic languages, grammatical info is conveyed via free morphemes (individual words) or word order

Subtype: Isolating

Characteristics and subtypes of “synthetic” type langauges

These languages have rich inflectional morphology. “morphology factories.”

Subtypes: agglutinating, fusional, and polysynthetic

Characteristics of an isolating language

A language of analytic type (few affixes), in which (nearly) each word is a single morpheme. There is a bare minimum of inflectional of derivational or inflectional affixes.

• ex. Mandarin

Characteristics of a fusional language

One morpheme serves multiple grammatical functions.

Multiple meanings are fused into a single morpheme.

• ex. Italian

Characteristics of an agglutinating language

Words in this subtype consist of many morphemes, usually with different grammatical meaning

• ex. Bantu languages.

  • Verby, therefore expressive through verbal inflection vs lexical/syntactical methods.

Characteristics of a polysynthetic language

Productive combination of multiple lexical roots in a single word (usually verb + noun (object)).

Poly = multiple roots

• ex. Mohawk (Iroquoian)

Derivation

• Adds nontrivial meaning to a word.

• Can change the category of words (N → V)

• Sounds like the formation of “new words”

ex. RE-construct-TION

Inflection

• Adds grammatical information to the word (tense, plural, etc.)

• Never changes the category of the word

• Still sounds like the same word

• Always happens after derivational morphology

ex. constructs, construct, constructed

What is a morpheme?

The smallest unit of language that carries meaning.

Content morphemes

Open lexical categories (parts of speech) that are open, meaning they can add new members.

• Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.

Function morphemes

Lexical categories (parts of speech) that are closed.

• Prepositions, determiners, complementizers, pronouns, conjunctions

Free morphmemes

Those which can appear in isolation, “is a word”

• ex. believe

Bound morphemes

Those which cannot appear in isolation

• UN-believe-ABLE-LY

What is a lexicon?

A native speakers inventory (dictionary) of morphemes or words, along with their linguistic features.

What are allomorphs?

The different ways in which a single morpheme can be pronounced (surface variants)

Types: Root and Affix

ex. -s in: Cats (voiced), dogs (voiced), and horses (vowel)