Midterm #2 Study Guide: Morphology and Syntax

These flashcards cover key vocabulary and concepts related to morphology and syntax necessary for the upcoming midterm exam.

Morphology

The study of the structure and form of words in a language, including the formation and composition of morphemes.

Morpheme

The smallest grammatical unit in a language; a morpheme is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.

Content morpheme

A morpheme that carries semantic meaning, such as a dictionary word (e.g., 'chair', 'walk').

Function morpheme

A morpheme that has a grammatical function but does not carry semantic content by itself (e.g., conjunctions, prepositions).

Bound morpheme

A morpheme that cannot stand alone and must be attached to another morpheme (e.g., ‘-ed’, ‘-s’).

Free morpheme

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word (e.g., 'the', 'a').

Inflectional morpheme

A bound morpheme that modifies a word's tense, aspect, mood, or number but does not change its grammatical category (e.g., 'walked').

Derivational morpheme

A morpheme that is added to a word to create a new word or change its grammatical category (e.g., 'drink' to 'drinker').

Allomorph

Variations of a morpheme that serve the same grammatical function but differ in pronunciation based on context (e.g., '-s' in hats, cans, busses).

Brown's morphemes

A set of morphemes that children typically acquire in a specific order, including the present progressive, plural forms, and others.

Present Progressive

A grammatical construction indicating ongoing action, typically formed by adding '-ing' to a verb (e.g., 'running').

Regular Plural Inflection

The attachment of '-s' or '-es' to a noun to indicate that it is plural (e.g., 'cats', 'buses').

Irregular past tense verbs

Verbs that do not follow standard rules for past tense conjugation (e.g., 'ate', 'ran').

Uncontractible copula

A form of the verb 'to be' that cannot be contracted (e.g., 'He was happy').

Articles

Words used to define a noun as specific or unspecific, including 'the' and 'a'.

Third Person Present Tense

The grammatical form used to indicate an action that occurs in the present, typically using ‘-s’ (e.g., 'he walks').

U-shaped development

A phenomenon in language acquisition where a child's correct usage of a rule decreases before increasing again as they master exceptions.

Modal auxiliary

Helping verbs that express necessity or possibility (e.g., 'can', 'must').

Declarative sentence

A type of sentence that makes a statement and ends with a period.

Interrogative sentence

A type of sentence that asks a question and typically begins with a WH-word or has a change in intonation.

Negative sentence

A sentence that expresses negation, usually by including words like 'not' or 'no'.

Narrative

A spoken or written account of connected events; a story.

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)

A measure used to evaluate language development by calculating the average number of morphemes per utterance.