Introduction to English Linguistics and Grammar: Morphology (4-6)-Karteikarten | Quizlet

Morphology

study of the smallest meaning-bearing units of language, morphemes and morphs, and processes through which these units can be combined to form more complex units, words

Morpheme

the smallest possible combination of phonemes with a recognizable and more or less stable meaning.

lexical morpheme

have lexical-semantic content, i.e. a more or less readily identifiable and specifiable meaning.

grammatical morpheme

express more abstract grammatical meanings and functions

free morpheme

can stand on its own as a separate word in a sentence

bound morpheme

cannot occur on its own but must be attached to other morphemes.

Affixes (prefix, suffix, infix)

an additional element placed at the beginning or end of a root, stem, or word, or in the body of a word, to modify its meaning.

base

any combination of morphemes to which an affix is attached

root

single morpheme stripped of all affixes; core of a word (carries pincipal meaning)

productivity

scope and frequency with which an affix attaches to base forms

historical/etymological morpheme

bound morpheme which was once productive and may have had an identifiable meaning some time in the past but which now has lost productivity while its original meaning has become obscure

regular morpheme

productive, phonologically predictable and, at least in English, additive

irregular morpheme

unproductive, phonologically less predictable and, in English, tend to be replacive rather than additive (suffix, ablaut, suppletion)

zero morphemes

singular meaning units which have no distinct or perceptible phonological form. This means that there is no apparent diffrence between the base form and the related affixed form.

morph

used for the phonological form, which expresses a morpheme

allomorph

positional variants of a morph

derivational affixes

create new words, either by changing the basic meaning of the base form to which they are attached and/or by changing the lexical class of the base

Inflectional affixes

they do not change the lexical class of the base to which they are attached, nor do they change the basic meaning of the base.

word

linguistic form which expresses a self-contained unit of meaning

simple word

consists of only one root morph (and possibly an inflectional morph)

compound word

consists of two or more roots (and possibly an inflectional morph)

complex word

contains minimally one bound derivational morph in addition to the root morph

lexeme

a single, self-contained unit of lexical or grammatical meaning which is realised in a number of inflectionally related word-forms.

lemma

used in dictionaries as headword

loan words /borrowings

words taken from other languages

composition

refers to the general process whereby two or more morph(eme)s are combined to form a new word. It consists of two sub-processes.

derivation

also known as, affixation, involves attaching a derivational morpheme to a base, either as a prefix or as a suffix.

compounding

the process whereby two or three (rarely more) free root morphemes combine to form one lexeme.

endocentric compound

general meaning and lexical class is determined by the head root (usually last root)

exocentric compound

no clear head + idiomatic meaning

conversion

process whereby the grammatical class of a base form is changed without any derivational affixation

shortening

the process whereby a shorter word is created from either a longer one or from a series of words

backformation

deletion of a suffix from a complex word

clipping

deletion of a word segment which is not a derivational prefix or suffix

abbreviation

word consisting of the initials of a series of words, pronounced as separate letters.

acronym

word consisting of the initials of a series of words, pronounced as an ordinary word.

blending

fusion of the forms and meanings of two existing lexical bases to create a new lexical base (portmanteau word)

coining

formation of a completely new root morph from unrelated elements (neologism)

lexical classes

word classes, parts of speech, ...

nouns

boy, horse, table, Brussels, John, peace, destruction, ...

adjectives

good, nice, green, beautiful, British, kind, ...

adverbs

well, badly, nicely, fast, very, extremely, yesterday, ...

verbs

know, live, want, eat, hit, explode, act, ...

pronouns

I, you, he, me, him, this, those, why, when, ...

Determanitives

an, the, my, his, much, few, those, mine, ...

Prepositions

in, on, after, for, since, during, across, ...

conjunctions

and, but, or, because, until, however, ...

Interjections

yes, no, well, shit, uhuh

semantic properties

refers to the general type of meaning which a word expresses, or to its grammatical function

morphological properties

refers to the derevational affixes that a word may contain and the inflectional affixes that it can take

syntactic properties

positions in the structure of sentences and 'phrases' where members of lexical class may typically be found, and to the grammatical functions that are associated with these positions.

open lexical classes

have a comparatively large membership, which is open to new items while other items may become obsolete and disappear. express lexical semantic content. Includes nouns, adjectives, adverbs and most verbs.

closed lexical classes

contain a fixed and limited number of items, do not have a clearly identifiable semantic meaning but mainly serve a grammatical function. This includes pronouns, determinatives, conjunctions and prepositions.

phrase

unit of language between word and sentence