Grammar and Usage Midterm !

Grammar and Usage midterm study guide, Ch's 3,4,5 and 6.

Morpheme

The smallest unit of meaning in language.

Split “Readable” into morphemes.

{Read}+{-able}

Inflectional Morpheme

Used to show grammatical relationships.

Ex. {-s} in baker{-‘s}

Derivational Morpheme

Used to create new words.

Ex. {-er} in bak{er}

Verb Inflections

Identifies person, number, tense, mood, voice and aspects.

Allomorph

Any word with two or more morphemes.

Compounding

Combining two words into one.

Etymology

The study of words.

Verb Inflectional Suffixes

• Third person present singular marker -s

• Play-plays(She plays tennis).

• Past tense marker- ed

• Wait-waited(They waited).

• Progressive mark-ing 

• Sing-singing(They are singing).

• Past participle marker-en 

• Eat-Eaten(She has eaten dinner).

Adjective Inflectional Suffixes

• Comparative marker- er

• Fast-faster(She is faster than you).

• Superlative marker- est 

• Fast-fastest(She is fastest).

Derivational Suffixes

• Suffix V—--A Semantic Effect           

• Able V—--N Able to be X’ed

• Ation V—--N The result of X’ing

• Er V—--N One who X’s 

• Al N—--A Pertaining to X

• Iza N—--V Put in X

• Less N—--A Without X

Derivational Prefixes

• Prefix N—--N Semantic Effect

• Ex A—--A Former X 

• In V—--V Not X 

• Un A—--A Reverse X 

Base

If a word can stand alone it can only be a _____.

Morpheme Split Practice, Veentered

{Ve-} +{Enter}+ {-Ed}

Bound Free Bound

Derivational Base Inflectional

Prefix Suffix

Form class words

Verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs. Can change the form of words by the use of morphemes.

Word formation processes

• Compounding 

• Affixation 

• Blending

• Abbreviation 

• Acronym 

• Borrowing

• Brand names

Subclasses of nouns

Proper, concrete, collective, compound, predicate, plural, and appositive.

Frame Sentences

Structures for writing and speaking in which words have been removed from a sentence.

Frame sentence example

• They must ____ good. 

  They must be good 

  They must feel good

Subject vs Predicative adj’s

• The ____ man is very ____.

• The tall man |  is very happy. 

• SUBJECT |   PREDICATE

Form vs Function

A word could take the form of a noun but could be doing the function of a verb.

Ex of form vs function

Runs is a plural noun but when used like

“this car runs well” runs is used a a verb.

He may study in Europe next summer.

Study is acting as a verb.

My study is in the front of the house.

study is acting as a noun.

Noun subclasses

Common and proper nouns

Types of structure class words

• noun

• adverb

• conjunctions

• verb

• pronoun

• interjections

• adjective

• Prepositions

• Determiners

Preposition

a word or group of words that connects nouns, pronouns, or phrases to other words in a sentence.

Determiners

Articles (the, a, an), possessives (ours, yours, hers, his, mine, theirs), demonstratives (that, this, there, these, those), and quantifiers (all, many, few).

Interjections

An exclamation, especially as a part of speech (e.g. ah!, dear me! ).

Interrogatives

who, what, when, and where.