Chapter 3: Morphology II

Morphological tree

Morphological tree

A diagram used to represent the internal structure of a word and its morphemes.

Free morphemes

Words that consist of a single morpheme and can function independently, such as 'red' and 'fly'.

Affixation

The process of adding affixes (prefixes or suffixes) to a base word to create new words.

Derivational affixation

A word formation process that changes the meaning or syntactic category of a word by adding a derivational affix.

Compounding

A process of creating new words by joining two existing words, usually resulting in a new unit with its own meaning.

Endocentric compounds

Compounds where the meaning is related to the head of the compound, such as 'earthworm'.

Exocentric compounds

Compounds where the meaning is not derived from the head, such as 'boldface'.

Reduplication

A word formation process that repeats a free morpheme or part of it to create new words.

Zero derivation

The process of changing a word's syntactic category without changing its form, for example, 'Google' used as a verb.

Clipping

The process of shortening a multi-syllabic word by deleting one or more syllables.

Blending

Creating new words from parts of existing words, like 'brunch' from 'breakfast' and 'lunch'.

Backformation

The process of creating a new word by removing a supposed morpheme from an existing word.

Acronyms

Words created from the first letters of other words, pronounced as a single word, like 'NASA'.

Initialisms

Abbreviations pronounced as a series of letters, such as 'USA'.

Coinage

The creation of new words from scratch, often related to new inventions or concepts.

Eponyms

Words that are created from the names of people, such as 'Morse code'.

Internal change

A process related to inflection where one non-morphemic element is substituted for another.

Suppletion

The process where a morpheme is replaced by an unrelated phonological form, as seen in 'go' and 'went'.

Ablaut

A form of internal change involving vowel alternations to indicate grammatical contrasts.

Morphological ambiguity

The presence of multiple meanings in a word due to its structural configuration.