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Ling2030 Mid Term

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2 views3 pages

Ling2030 Mid Term

Uploaded by

amytsuihoyan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Term Definition

Morphology 1. the branch of linguistics that deals with the internal


structure of words / how new words are coined / how form of
words change according to the environment
2. the mental system involved in word formation
- intuitive knowledge of how to form words
- recognise and understand new words
word 1. one or more morpheme that can stand alone in a language
2. superordinate term for lexemes and word-forms
lexeme an abstract vocabulary unit which can be thought of a family
of words that differ only in their grammatical endings or
grammatical forms
word-forms particular phonological forms that realise a certain lexeme
morpheme the smallest indivisible units of semantic content and/or
grammatical function
morph the different phonological realizations of a morpheme
allomorph phonologically distinct variants of the same morpheme
root the core part of a word that is left after all affixes have been
removed
fundamental part of a lexeme
base any item that affixes can be added
stem a base to which inflectional affixes can be added
affix bound morphemes that are attached to a base to produce
words
mental lexicon the sum total of everything an individual speaker knows
about the words of the language

affixation (inflectional/derivational)
- Suffixation an affix is attached after its base
most common
- Prefixation an affix is attached before the base
- Circumfixation a prefix and a suffix work together to surround a base
neither occurs independently and two jointly realise a single
morpheme
discontinuous morphemes (very rare)
- Infixation an affix is inserted inside its base
must interrupt another morpheme
- Transfixation distributed throughout the base (e.g. Semitic: Hebrew, Arabic)
often in the form of vowels
reduplication the process of forming new words by repeating all or part of
the base
ICONICITY: the form of the word reflects its meaning
(plurality/intensity/repetition)
base modification Apophony: modifying the quality of an internal
vowel/consonant
- consonant mutation morphological processes are indicated by changes in
consonants rather than vowels
- ablaut morphological process that alter the quality, quantity or tonal
patterns of vowels
- umlaut ablaut that results from assimilation to the vowel of a
following suffix
suppletion the word forms of the same lexeme differ significantly
zero morph the functional difference between homophonous forms
analytic languages each word consists of only one morpheme
agglutinating languages one-to-one mapping between morphemes and morphs, e
ach morpheme corresponds to a single meaning or function
fusional languages allows formation of complex words with multiple morphemes
rarely one-to-one mapping between morphemes and morphs
polysynthetic languages words are highly complex with multiple morphemes
one morpheme can have more than one meaning
lexical morphemes carry core meaning
- Have a lexical entry
- Belong to open classes (PoS)
- Have explicit forms
- Rarely exhibit exact synonymy
functional morphemes modify the meaning of a word (derivational) / encode
grammatical information (inflectional)
- Closed classes
- Have grammatical functions
- Can be null
- May exhibit exact synonomy
- Cannot use them to create new words
Item-and Arrangement morphemes are stored as independent units in the mental
Morphology lexicon
words are formed by arranging morphemes hierarchically,
following morphological rules
highly effective for agglutinating languages
Item-and-Process treat functional morphemes as rules and processes that apply
Morphology to lexical morphemes
more suitable for fusional languages
better accounts for reduplication, ablaut, prosodic
morphology, templatic morphology
Analytic Principles 1. Forms that consistently exhibit the same meaning or
functions and phonological shape in all occurrences are
considered instances of the same morpheme
2. (ALLOMORPHS) Morphs that share the same
meaning/functions but have different phonological shapes
may belong to the same morpheme if their distribution do not
overlap

3. Not all morphemes are segmental

4. A morpheme may have a zero morph as one of its


allomorphs, IF it has a non-zero morph.

conditioning environment specific allomorphs are used instead of others under certain
(predictable) linguistic conditions

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