Morphology in Linguistics

A collection of vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts related to morphology, emphasizing definitions and distinctions between terms.

Morphology

The component of grammar concerned with words and word formation.

Morpheme

The smallest component of language that carries meaning or function.

Bound Morpheme

A morpheme that must be attached to another element and cannot stand alone.

Free Morpheme

A morpheme that can occur by itself and holds meaning.

Complex Word

A word that consists of more than one morpheme (e.g., 'builders').

Simple Word

A word that consists of only one morpheme (e.g., 'train').

Affix

A morpheme that is always bound and does not belong to a lexical category.

Root

The morpheme in a word that contains the major component of the word's meaning.

Allomorph

A variant of a morpheme that can have different pronunciations depending on context.

Derivation

The process of adding an affix to change the meaning and/or lexical category of a base.

Lexical Category

A category that includes nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions based on a word's function.

Infix

An affix that occurs inside another morpheme, usually much rarer than prefixes and suffixes.

Non-concatenative Morphology

A morphological pattern in which words are not built in a linear way by adding prefixes or suffixes.

Blocking

The avoidance of creating new words through derivation due to existing words with similar meanings.

Ambiguous Structures

Complex morphemes that can have more than one possible tree structure based on affix attachment.

Phonological Constraints

Restrictions on how certain affixes combine with base words based on their phonological properties.