Introductory Linguistics and Morphology Flashcards

A set of vocabulary flashcards reviewing key concepts in linguistics, including properties of language, grammatical categories and functions, and morphological structure.

Arbitrariness

A design feature of language where there is no intrinsic connection between the sound of a word and its meaning.

Iconic

A property of a signal or word that inherently resembles its meaning.

Discreteness

The property of human language where signals are perceived as a string of separate units that can be recombined to express different meanings.

Displacement

The ability of language to communicate about things or events that are not physically present in the immediate environment.

Productivity

The ability of language users to produce and understand an infinite number of novel sentences using a finite set of memorized words.

Discrete Infinity

The capacity of language to use a finite set of discrete signals to express an infinite number of meanings.

Linguistic Competence

The subconscious system of language knowledge stored inside a speaker's mind.

Linguistic Performance

The actual sounds or sentences produced by a speaker, serving as an imperfect reflection of their underlying competence.

Criterion of Mutual Intelligibility

A benchmark used to determine whether two linguistic systems are dialects of the same language (if speakers understand each other) or distinct languages (if they do not).

Dialect

A regional variety of a particular language.

Grammatical Categories

Sets of words that share grammatical properties, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions.

Content Words

Open-class words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) that carry descriptive meaning and readily accept new words or morphological additions.

Function Words

Closed-class words (determiners, conjunctions, auxiliaries) that carry grammatical meaning and cannot accept new words or morphological additions.

Grammatical Function

The structural role that a phrase plays within a sentence, such as serving as subject, object, complement of preposition, or possessor.

Subject

A grammatical function fulfilled by a noun phrase (NP) that combines with a predicate to form a sentence.

Object

A grammatical function fulfilled by a noun phrase (NP) that directly follows a verb and completes the idea introduced by that verb.

Complement of Preposition

A grammatical function fulfilled by a noun phrase (NP) that directly follows a preposition and identifies its reference point of relation.

Possessor

A grammatical function fulfilled by a noun phrase (NP) that occurs inside a larger NP and has a relational connection to the following noun.

Morpheme

A fundamental unit of word structure that carries meaning and cannot be further subdivided.

Allomorphs

Variant pronunciations or phonetic forms of the exact same morpheme.

Free Morpheme

A morpheme that can stand alone as an independent word.

Bound Morpheme

A morpheme that cannot stand alone as an independent word and must combine with another morpheme.

Root

The core morpheme that contributes the primary and most significant element of meaning to a word.

Affix

A bound morpheme that attaches to a base and modifies the meaning of that base.

Base

The form (either a single root or a combination of a root and affixes) to which an affix attaches.

Infix

An affix that attaches inside of its base, splitting the base into two parts.

Expletive Infixation

A morphological process in English where an expletive is inserted into the middle of a word, such as 'fan-freaking-tastic'.

Simple Word

A word that consists entirely of a single root morpheme.

Complex Word

A word that consists of a root morpheme combined with one or more affixes.

Morpheme Hierarchy

The taxonomy that classifies morphemes into bound and free, roots and affixes, and sub-types such as prefixes, infixes, and suffixes.

Morphological Guideline #1

The rule stating that every intermediate base created in a morphological tree diagram must form a possible real word.

Morphological Guideline #2

The rule stating that an affix should combine with the syntactic category that it normally combines with.