Grammar: Person, Number, and Gender

The smallest unit of meaning or grammatical function in a language.

A morpheme that can stand alone as a word.

A morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word.

A morpheme that changes the grammatical function of a word.

A morpheme that changes the meaning of a word.

Words that carry the main meaning of a sentence.

Words that provide grammatical structure to a sentence.

The core meaning of a word.

When an inflectional morpheme doesn't follow the regular rules of a language and has a unique form. For example, 'went' is a suppletive form for the past tense of 'go'.

The ability of a language to form new words by combining morphemes, allowing for greater vocabulary expansion.

A new word's entry into the lexicon might make certain derivations impossible. For example, you won't see "gram-arian" because "commun-ist" already exists.

When a new word is formed by applying morphological rules, other possible derivations might be blocked. For example, "commun-ist" might prevent "gramm-arian".

The characteristics of grammatical morphemes, including their abstractness, frequency, closed-set membership, functional nature, and ability to attach to other suffixes.

Grammatical morphemes express abstract concepts such as tense, number, and case, unlike lexical morphemes which focus on concrete meanings.

Grammatical morphemes are very common in a language, unlike lexical morphemes which are more diverse.

Grammatical morphemes are limited in number and don't change much over time, while lexical morphemes have an open set.

Grammatical morphemes have a functional role, providing structural information in sentences, while lexical morphemes carry the core meaning.

Creating new words by adding prefixes, suffixes, or other affixes to existing words. It allows for more concise language and introduces new vocabulary.

Adding grammatical information to existing words, like tense or number, without changing the core meaning. Inflection follows specific grammatical rules within a language.

The process of creating new words from existing ones. It's like building a word from smaller parts.

Morphological processes are used to create new words and add grammatical information. It's about how our languages build and change words.

Inflectional morphemes (like -s for plural) don't change the grammatical function of the word they are added to. For example, 'cat' remains a noun even after adding '-s' to make 'cats'.

They can be added to new words to create new forms. For instance, any new noun can become plural by adding '-s'.

They can't usually be followed by other suffixes. The only exception is when plural '-s' and the possessive '-s' occur together, as in 'learners's pamphlets'.

Inflectional morphemes can be productive, meaning they are used to create new forms of words based on existing patterns, like adding '-ed' to verbs to form the past tense.

Inflectional suffixes usually cannot be followed by other suffixes, unless they are followed by the possessive '-s', as in 'learners's pamphlets'.

A grammatical feature that distinguishes entities referred to in an utterance. First person refers to the speaker (I), second person refers to the addressee (you), and third person refers to everything else.

A grammatical property of nouns that indicates how many entities are being referred to. The most common contrast is between singular and plural.

In many languages, nouns are sorted into different categories called 'genders'. This is a system of classification for nouns, and does not always reflect the actual sex of the entity.

Refers to the use of grammatical markers, such as suffixes or prefixes, to change the form of a word to indicate different grammatical functions. This is how languages mark features like person, number, and tense.

The process by which words form new meanings by adding morphemes. These changes can potentially alter the grammatical category of the word from noun to verb, adjective to noun, etc.