Introduction to Linguistics - Morphological Processes

Flashcards covering key vocabulary related to morphological processes from the lecture notes.

Morphological Process

Any technique that a language uses to build words, such as affixation and compounding.

Affixation

The process of adding an affix to a unit containing a root.

Prefixation

• happy (Adj) → unhappy (Adj)

Suffixation

• refuse (V) → refusal (N)

Infixation

• sulat ‘write’ (V) → sinulat (‘wrote’) (V)

(Tagalog)

Compounding

The process of combining two units that each contain a root.

Blending

Combining parts of existing words.

Internal Change

Changing a sound in the base word.

Suppletion

Using a form whose pronunciation is completely different from that of the base.

Partial Suppletion

Using a form whose pronunciation is almost completely different from that of the base.

Reduplication

Repeating all or part of the base.

Derivational Morphology

Morphology that creates different words and adds new dictionary entries.

Inflectional Morphology

Morphology that creates different grammatical forms of the same word without adding new dictionary entries.

Isolating/Analytic Languages

Languages with morphologically simple words and grammatical information expressed with small function words.

Synthetic Languages

Languages with complex morphologically rich words and grammatical information expressed with inflection.

Agglutinative Languages

Languages where affixes are easy to break apart, each with its own meaning.

Fusional Languages

Languages that combine many meanings into one affix.

Rhyming Reduplication

A type of reduplication that produces rhymes such as 'super-duper' and 'teeny-weeny'.

Contrastive Focus Reduplication

A type of reduplication used for emphasis, like 'I like him, but I don’t LIKE (HIM) like him.'