Inflection and Derivation

Practice flashcards covering morphological processes, lexeme formation, inflection, and derivation.

What is the definition of lexeme formation?

Lexeme formation refers to the process of creating new lexemes (basic units of meaning or dictionary entries) using various morphological processes.

What is conversion (zero derivation)?

Changing the word class or grammatical category of a lexeme without altering or changing its form (e.g., "text" (noun) → "to text" (verb)).

What is an endocentric compound?

A compound that has a head that determines the meaning (e.g., "toothbrush" is a type of brush).

What is an exocentric compound?

A compound where the meaning is not directly inferred from the components (e.g., "redhead").

What is headedness in English compounds?

Compounds in English are typically right-headed, meaning the rightmost element determines the category.

What is blending in lexeme formation?

Combining parts of two words to create a new word (e.g., "smog" from "smoke" and "fog").

What is clipping?

The process of shortening a longer word to create a more casual form (e.g., "refrigerator" → "fridge").

What is acronym formation?

Creating new lexemes by using the initials of a phrase (e.g., "NASA" for National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

What is back-formation?

Forming a new lexeme by removing what is perceived to be an affix from an existing word (e.g., "editor" → "edit").

What is reduplication?

A less common process in English that involves repeating all or part of a base to form a new word (e.g., "bye-bye," "no-no").

What is lexicalization?

A process where complex lexemes become fixed in the lexicon over time, and their formation process may no longer feel transparent to speakers (e.g., "cranberry," where "cran-" has no independent meaning).

What is inflection?

The process by which different grammatical forms of a word are created without changing the word's basic meaning or its lexeme, serving grammatical purposes such as tense, number, gender, or case.

How do inflection and derivation differ in their outcomes?

Inflection creates a different form of the same word without altering its basic meaning or word class, whereas derivation creates new lexemes with different meanings or grammatical categories.

What grammatical features do verbs inflect for in English?

Verbs inflect for tense (present, past), aspect (progressive, perfect), person (e.g., third-person singular in present tense), and number.

What is zero inflection?

When words undergo no visible change in form between different grammatical forms (e.g., "sheep" in both singular and plural).

What is periphrastic inflection?

Expressing inflectional meaning by using additional words instead of changing the form of a word (e.g., "more beautiful" for the comparative, "most beautiful" for the superlative).

What are the most common inflectional affixes in English?

English inflectional endings primarily include -s (plural, third-person singular), -ed (past tense), -ing (progressive), -er (comparative), and -est (superlative).

What is a paradigm in inflectional morphology?

A paradigm is a set of all the inflected forms of a word.

What does productivity refer to in derivational processes?

How freely a derivational process can be applied to new words (e.g., "-ness" is highly productive, whereas "-th" is less so).

What is blockage in derivation?

A constraint where derivation is blocked if a pre-existing word already conveys the same meaning (e.g., "stealer" is blocked because "thief" already exists).

What is multiple derivation?

A process where words undergo multiple stages of derivation resulting in complex forms (e.g., "modern" → "modernize" → "modernization").

What is the general functional difference between prefixes and suffixes in English derivation?

Prefixes typically modify the meaning of the base word but rarely change its grammatical category, while suffixes often change the grammatical category.