morphology

glossary from my textbook

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