Grammar and Linguistics Quiz

English Morphosyntax

• Morphology is a grammar component focusing on word structure.
• Grammar is a set of rules for understanding language, comprised of morphology and syntax.
• Morphology studies words, while syntax studies sentence formation.

Example

• The word "unbelievable" has four morphemes: "un-" (negative prefix), "believe" (base word), "-able" (suffix meaning "able to").

What is a Word?

• In morphology, a word is a single language unit for writing/speaking.
• "Friend" and "friends" are different words with separate purposes, "friend" cannot be divided further, but "friends" needs an "s" to make it plural.
• A word is divided into word and lexeme: word being the most basic meaningful unit, and lexeme being the dictionary form (e.g., "run" is the lexeme, while "runs" or "running" are different forms).

What is a Morpheme?

• A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in language (e.g., "friend" or "-s" for plural).
• Morphemes can be lexical (carry main meaning) or grammatical (show relationships, e.g., "-s" in "friends").
• Morphemes are abstract concepts that build up words.

Special Cases

• Blended words (e.g., Instagram = "instant" + "photograph") combine existing words with blended meanings in between.
• Unforgivable and unbelievable have three each.

Polymorphemic vs Monomorphemic Words

• Polymorphemic words have multiple morphemes (e.g., unbelievable).
• Monomorphemic words have one morpheme (e.g., friend).

Types of Morphology

• Inflectional Morphology focuses on grammatical changes in word form, such as pluralization or tense changes in words. (e.g., adding -s to form the plural form of a noun).
• Derivational Morphology creates new words or meanings by adding prefixes or suffixes (e.g., adding the prefix "un-" to change the meaning of the word "happy" to "unhappy").
• Creating words with the rise of social media is a new form of morphology, like the word "defriend".

Morphemes, Morphs, and Allomorphs

• Morpheme is the abstract idea of the smallest language unit with meaning.
• Morph is the physical manifestation of a morpheme in speech or writing.
• Allomorph is a variation of the same morpheme, with different forms in different contexts (e.g., the plural forms of cat, cats, and watch/watches).

Types of Morphemes

• Free morphemes can stand alone (e.g., "friend," "book").
• Bound morphemes must attach to other words to have meaning (e.g., "-s" for plural, "-able" in "believable").
• Bound morphemes include prefixes and suffixes; prefixes attach before the root, suffixes attach after the root (e.g., "unhappy" or "believable").

Word Formation Processes

• Compounding combines free morphemes to create new words (e.g., "password" from "pass" + "word").
• Compounding can be written together (e.g., "greenhouse"), with a space (e.g., "school day"), or with a hyphen (e.g., "fund-raiser").

Affixation

• Affixation adds prefixes or suffixes to existing words to create new words with altered meanings or parts of speech.
• Prefixes come before the root; suffixes follow the root (e.g., "unhappy", "re-usable.").

Conversion (Zero Derivation)

• Conversion changes a word's part of speech without altering its form (e.g., "dry" (adj.) → to "dry" (verb)).

Backformation

• Backformation creates new words by shortening existing words by removing affixes (e.g., "edit" from "editor").

Acronyms and Initialisms

• Acronyms are words made from the initials of phrases, pronounced as a single word (e.g., "RAM," "LOL").
• Initialisms are like acronyms, but pronounced letter by letter (e.g., "USA").

Blending

• Blending combines parts of two or more words to create a new term (e.g., "brunch" from "breakfast" and "lunch").

Reduplication

• Reduplication forms new words by repeating parts of existing words (e.g., "mama," "zig-zag").

Loanwords (Borrowing)

• Loanwords are words borrowed from another language (e.g., "pizza" from Italian).

Idioms

• Idioms are groups of words with fixed meanings (e.g., "spill the beans," "under the weather").

Word Formation Issues

• The usage of "-ly" can be both inflectional or derivational; prefixes/suffixes may or may not change the word class, only change the meaning.
• Compounds combine words, while phrases do not always act as compounds. Phrases do exist however (e.g., verb phrases, noun phrases).

Grammatical Categories

• Lexical and grammatical morphemes build words and structure sentences.
• Synthetic languages use inflections, while analytic languages use word order.
• Major grammatical categories in English include noun categories.

Noun Categories (Types of Nouns)

• Common nouns are general items (e.g., "dog").
• Proper nouns are specific names (e.g., "Milan").
• Aggregate nouns refer to groups (e.g., "police").
• Collective nouns are singular, but can also indicate plural meanings (e.g., "team", "family").
• Count nouns can be counted (e.g., "book").
• Noncount nouns cannot be counted or pluralized (e.g., "water").

Abstract Nouns

• Abstract nouns refer to ideas or concepts, unlike concrete things.

Gender Categorization

• Inanimate nouns refer to non-living things.
• Animate nouns refer to living things (humans/animals)

Verbal Categories (Tense, Aspect, Mood, Voice)

• Tense indicates when an action happened.
• Aspect shows how an action is viewed (complete/ongoing).
• Mood reflects the speaker's attitude (fact/non-fact).
• Voice indicates whether the subject performs the action (active) or receives the action (passive).

Modals

• Central modals (e.g., "can," "could," "may") and marginal modals (e.g., "ought to," "used to") express possibilities, permissions, or obligations.

Aspects of Verbs

• Perfect Aspect indicates a completed action connected to the present.
• Progressive Aspect describes an ongoing action.

Voice

• Active voice shows the subject doing the action.
• Passive shows the subject receiving the action.

Practical Exercises

• Analyze sentence parts(e.g., subjects, predicates, objects).
• Identify phrase types (noun, verb, etc.).
• Classify clauses (simple, compound, complex)