Lexicology Lecture Review

Flashcards covering key concepts from a lecture on Compound Words, Word Formulation, Morphemes, Allomorphs, and Language Sampling.

Compounding

The process of combining two free morphemes to create a new word that has its own distinct meaning separate from its parts.

English Compound Nouns

Compound words that function as nouns (e.g., smartphone, weekend, cheesecake).

English Compound Verbs

Compound words that function as verbs (e.g., breakfast, bypass, snowball).

English Compound Adjectives

Compound words that function as adjectives (e.g., heartbreaking, newborn, spellbinding).

Other English Compound Functions

Compound words that can function as pronouns (nobody), adverbs (nowadays), prepositions (into), or conjunctions (whenever).

Noun + Noun Compound

A compound word formed by combining a noun and another noun (e.g., starfish, sunflower, football).

Noun + Verb Compound

A compound word formed by combining a noun and a verb (e.g., firefly, haircut, snowfall).

Verb + Noun Compound

A compound word formed by combining a verb and a noun (e.g., postman, notebook, breakfast).

Verb + Preposition Compound

A compound word formed by combining a verb and a preposition (e.g., takeaway, drawback, breakup).

Preposition + Verb Compound

A compound word formed by combining a preposition and a verb (e.g., output, overthrow, understand).

Noun + Adjective Compound

A compound word formed by combining a noun and an adjective (e.g., heartbroken, wireless, spoonful).

Adjective + Noun Compound

A compound word formed by combining an adjective and a noun (e.g., superhero, hotdog, blacksmith).

Gerund + Noun Compound

A compound word formed by combining a gerund and a noun (e.g., washing machine, swimming pool, breaking point).

Noun + Gerund Compound

A compound word formed by combining a noun and a gerund (e.g., sightseeing, brainstorming, mind-blowing).

Preposition + Noun Compound

A compound word formed by combining a preposition and a noun (e.g., background, undergraduate, bystander).

Closed Compounds

Compound words written without spaces between the words (e.g., skateboard, firefighter, webpage).

Open Compounds

Compound words written with spaces between the words (e.g., ice cream, cell phone, peanut butter).

Hyphenated Compounds

Compound words written with a hyphen between the words (e.g., merry-go-round, clean-cut, well-being).

Head of a Compound

The morpheme in a compound word that determines its lexical category.

Right-headed Compound

Most English compound words where the head is typically the last (right) member of the compound.

Endocentric Compounds

Compounds where the head is typically the last (right) member and determines the lexical category (e.g., 'blackboard' is a noun because 'board' is a noun).

Exocentric Compounds

Compound words where none of their components act as a formal head, and the meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts (e.g., redhead, redneck).

Tense/Plural Markers in Compounds

Tense/plural markers are added to a compound word as a whole, not just to the first member (e.g., sabretooths, drop-kicked, policemen).

Stress Patterns in Compounds

Stress is more prominent on the first member of a compound, regardless of its spelling (e.g., 'greenhouse' versus 'green house').

Compound Tree Diagram

A visual representation of the morphological structure of a compound word, showing its constituent morphemes and their lexical categories.

Multiple Word Formulation Processes

Occurs when more than one process (e.g., compounding and inflectional suffixation) is used to build a single word (e.g., 'blackboards').

Role of Affixes in Lexical Category

Affixes can help in determining the lexical category of a word, and sentence context can also provide clues.

Free Morpheme

A morpheme that can stand on its own as a complete word.

Bound Morpheme

A morpheme that must be attached to another element and cannot be a word by itself.

Allomorphs

Variant forms of a morpheme (e.g., 'a' and 'an' for indefiniteness, or the different pronunciations of the plural morpheme '-s').

Allomorph Selection Rule (a/an)

'A' is used before words that begin with a consonant sound, and 'an' is used before words that begin with a vowel sound, based on pronunciation, not spelling.

Allomorphic Variation Examples

Changes in pronunciation of the final consonant (e.g., permit/permissive, include/inclusive, electric/electricity) are examples of allomorphic variation, which differs from simple spelling variations (e.g., ride/riding).

Language Sampling

A method involving obtaining 50-100 utterances in a naturalistic setting, recording and transcribing them (including all errors), and analyzing them phonetically, phonologically, morphologically, syntactically, and pragmatically.

Aspects Analyzed in Language Sampling

Include sound inventory, phonetic/phonological errors, intelligibility rating, MLU (Mean Length of Utterance), MLR (Mean Length of Response), TTR (Type-Token Ratio), t-units, grammatical index, sentence structure, clause density, and pragmatic index.

Naturalistic Language Sample

A collection of spontaneous utterances, typically 50-100, recorded from an individual in a natural setting for comprehensive linguistic analysis.