abessive case
without, lacking
ablative case
(away) from
absolute case
marks both subject of intransitive verb and object of transitive verb
acceptability judgement
native speaker’s assessment of whether a word/sentence in possible in that language
accusative case
marks direct object
active voice
semantic agent is syntactic subject
actual (usual) word
lexeme familiar to most speakers
adjunct
a participant in an event that’s optionally expressed
adposition
refers collectively to prepositions and postpositions
affirmative mood
indicates factuality of argument
affix
morpheme that has to attach to base and can’t occur alone
affixation
operation of stringing together a base affix
agent
semantic role; instigator of an action
agentive adjective
deverbal adjective denoting action performed by modified noun (typing monkey)
agent noun
deverbal noun refers to agent participant of action (drinker)
agglutinative language
almost all words are formed by concatenation of morphemes
agreement
syntactic relation requiring related constituents to show same marking for certain inflection values
allative case
motion towards, onto
allomorph (morpheme alternant)
2 roots/morphological patterns that express same meaning and occur in complementary distribution
alphabetism
abbreviation consisting of initial letters read with letter’s alphabet values (CD)
alternation
differences in pronunciation between 2 (+) phonological allomorphs
analogical extension
an analogical change in which an existing morphological pattern is applied to a new or different lexeme
(analogical) levelling
an analogical change in which a word-form is changed based on another word-form belonging to the same lexeme
analogy (analogical change)
use of similar existing words as models in the modification and creation of words
analytic language
language that uses little morphology
animacy
semantic property of nouns that denotes whether the noun is a living (sentient) thing
anticausative
event changing operation signaling that there’s no cause and no agent role in derived event structure
antipassive
function changing operation that backgrounds the patient
aorist (tense)
indicates occurrence of action in past, w/o indicating if action is completed
appositional compound
compound denoting entity that fulfills several descriptions simultaneously (student worker)
argument
semantic role assigned to a noun by the verb
argument inheritance
deverbal derived word exhibits this when its argument (and function) structure match and are dependent upon the argument/function structure of the verbal base from which it’s derived
aspect
inflectional feature of verbs having to do with the internal temporal constituency of an event (perfective, imperfective etc)
attenuative adjective
deadjectival adjective denoting a reduced degree of the base (bluish)
augmentative noun
denominal noun denoting larger (or otherwise pragmatically special) version of base noun
automatic alternation
a purely phonologically conditioned sound alternation
auxiliary
verb that co-occurs with a main verb in phrase to indicate values of verbal features like tense or mood
back-formation
formation of a shorter, simpler word from a longer word that’s perceived as morphologically complex
base
element to which a morphological operation applies
base modification
umbrella term for morphological operations that change the pronunciation of part of the base, usually w/o adding segmentable material
blend
lexeme whose stem was created by combining parts of 2 other lexeme stems (smog)
(synonymy) blocking
when the application of a productive rule is pre-empted by an existing word w/same meaning
bound form
a word-form or affix that is prosodically dependent on its host and can’t stand on its own in a variety of ways
bound stem
base that’s not a word-form by itself and only occurs in combination with another morpheme
case
inflectional feature that serves to code noun phrase’s semantic role
categorial periphrasis
when a given inflectional value is always expressed by a periphrastic (multi-word) expression
category-conditioned degree of productivity
a measure of productivity, ratio of number of hapax legomena with a given morphological pattern to total sum token frequency of all word-forms with that pattern
causative
event-changing operation referring to an event that is caused by version of the base event
causative verb
deverbal verb denoting action that has caused the action represented by the base verb to occur
cell
position in a paradigm defined by the possible combos of inflectional values
circumfix
discontinuous affix occurring on both sides of base
citation form
word-form used by convention to refer to a lexeme (like when listing a lexeme in a dictionary)
classifier
morpheme (usually lexical stem) used to classify noun as belonging to a semantically based group
clipping
method of forming a shortened word that doesn’t differ semantically from a longer version
clitic
bound word-form
clitic group
expression formed by 1 or more clitics and the host
coalescence
diachronic change whereby 2 formerly free syntactic elements turn into one word-form
combinatory potential (subcategorization frame)
info in a lexical entry about the surrounding elements with which a word/morpheme can/must combine
combining form
bound stem that only occurs in a compound
competence
speaker’s knowledge of linguistic system
complementary distribution
when 2 morphs occur in non-overlapping environments
complex event noun
deverbal noun referring to event/action itself and inherits the base verb’s agreement structure
complex word
word that is one of a group of words showing systematic covariation in form and meaning (morphological structure)
complexity based ordering
idea that restrictions on affix order are emergent from the structure of the lexicon-- affixes that are more likely to be stored in lexicon together with their stems must occur closer to the root than affixes that are likely to be decomposed
compositional meaning
meaning of a complex word is equivalent to the sum of the meanings of its component morphemes
compound (lexeme)
complex lexeme made of more than one lexeme stem
compounding
formation of compounds
concatenate operation
consists of stringing morphemes together (affixation/compounding)
conceptual structure (event structure)
formal semantic decomposition of a verb’s meaning
concrete noun
deverbal noun that’s similar to an event noun, but doesn’t refer to the event/action itself but refers to the product of the action, a group of people associated w/action, etc
conditional mood
hypothetical, unrealized action
conditioning
environments in which different allomorphs of same morpheme can occur
conjugation
inflection class of a verb/verb inflection in general
constituent
subgrouping within the structure of a word/sentence
contextual inflection
part of inflectional morphology consisting of feature that are assigned to a word bc of the syntactic context in which it appears (result of agreement/government)
continuative aspect
indicates an ongoing action
continuum approach
hypothesis according to which morphological patterns are understood as lying on a continuum (from canonical inflection to canonical derivation, no sharp boundaries between types)
controller (of agreement)
in syntax, the constituent whose properties determine the properties of the agreeing constituent (when a noun determines gender property of an adjective that agrees w/it, the noun is the controller)
converb
a verb-form that is used for adverbial subordination
conversion
morphological pattern in which pronunciation of base doesn’t change
coordination ellipsis
test for word status, 1 or 2 identical elements in a coordinated phrase can usually be deleted, but a compound member can’t be deleted in this way
coordinative (dvandva) compound
refers to multiple referents corresponding to the compound members (elun-ai, adult and child, elun adult ai child)
coreferential
two nouns that refer to the same entity
count noun
can refer to individual entities and can have both singular and plural forms
creativity
creation of neologisms by unproductive patterns
cross-formation
formation of a complex word from a base that’s complex already, by removing part of the base
cumulative expression (fusion)
expression of multiple morphological meanings simultaneously by one un-analyzable element
dative case
indicates indirect object of a verb
deadjectival
formation whose base is an adjective
declarative mood
indicates the preposition expressed is an unqualified statement of fact
declension
inflection case of a noun/noun inflection in general
decomposition route
means of lexical access in which a complex word is broken up into component morphemes, and info about the word is retrieved through the morphemes’ lexical entries
default route
rule that applies in general case, no other more specific rules apply
defective
a lexeme with some empty cells (of its inflectional paradigm), some inflectional meanings it can’t express
definite
inflectional value of feature definiteness
degree
inflectional feature of adjectives having to do w/comparison of gradable properties (comparative, superlative)
degree of exhaustion
measure of productivity; ratio of words exhibiting a given morphological pattern to all words in the domain of that pattern
degree of generalization (profitability)
measure of productivity; type of frequency of the relevant morphological pattern
denominal
formation whose base is a noun
dependent
element in a compound/syntactic phrase that modifies the head