Morphology Overview Quiz

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Questions and Answers

Which of the following best describes function words?

  • They carry significant semantic content.
  • They specify grammatical relations and have little semantic content. (correct)
  • They can stand alone without needing to be attached to other morphemes.
  • They always represent a specific noun or verb.

What characterizes inflectional morphemes?

  • They indicate properties such as tense, number, or person. (correct)
  • They are always free morphemes.
  • They can appear as prefixes only.
  • They change the underlying grammatical category of the word.

What is the primary function of bound morphemes?

  • To represent specific actions in a sentence.
  • To serve as complete words on their own.
  • To convert adjectives into nouns.
  • To attach to other morphemes to convey grammatical meaning. (correct)

Which of the following best defines a suppletive form?

<p>It is a type of inflectional morpheme that changes form unpredictably. (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is the term for the process of changing the vowel of a stem to indicate grammatical information?

<p>Ablaut (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following examples illustrates the characteristics of inflectional morphemes?

<p>The suffix '-ing' added to a verb. (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which statement accurately describes derivational morphemes?

<p>They can change the part of speech. (C)</p> Signup and view all the answers

In the context of morphemes, what does a root refer to?

<p>The morpheme stripped of all affixes. (D)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following statements about morphemes is incorrect?

<p>All morphemes can be freely combined in any structure. (B)</p> Signup and view all the answers

What is one challenge that arises from the definition of morphemes?

<p>The arbitrary nature of morpheme union complicates linguistic analysis. (A)</p> Signup and view all the answers

Flashcards

Function words

Words that express grammatical relationships and have little to no meaning on their own. Examples include articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliaries.

Content words

Words that have independent meaning and can stand alone. Examples include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.

Morpheme

Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in a language. Bound morphemes must be attached to other morphemes, while free morphemes can stand alone. Inflectional morphemes change grammatical properties like tense, number, or person, while derivational morphemes change the word's category.

Suppletive Forms

An inflected morpheme that does not follow regular rules of grammar. Instead, it has an irregular form with a specific meaning. For example, the word 'went' is a suppletive form of the verb 'go' because it doesn't follow the regular past tense form 'goed'.

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Bound Morphemes

Bound morphemes are added to words to change their meaning or grammatical function. This can create new words (derivational morphemes) or express grammatical features (inflectional morphemes). Examples include '-ing', '-ed', '-er', '-s', and '-est'.

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Ablaut (Vowel Alternation)

A change in vowel sounds within a word to indicate a grammatical difference, such as in "sing/sang/sung" or "goose/geese".

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Derivational Morpheme

A morpheme added to a root word to create a new word or change its meaning. It can be a prefix or a suffix and can modify the part of speech.

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Stem

The base form of a word to which affixes can be added. It is created by adding affixes to a root.

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Root

The core unit of a word, remaining after removing all affixes. It may or may not stand alone as a word.

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Study Notes

Morphology

  • Morphology is the study of word formation
  • A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a language
  • The word "tourists" contains three morphemes: tour, -ist, and -s
  • Grammar needs a list of morphemes to understand how words are formed
  • A lexicon lists morphemes (not words), along with their information

Two Classifications of Morphemes

1.1 Classification Based on Form

  • Free morphemes: Stand alone as single words (e.g., system, kill, pretty, badly)

    • Content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs)
    • Represent concepts, actions, attributes, and ideas
    • Function words (articles, prepositions, conjunctions): show grammatical relations, little semantic meaning

  • Bound morphemes: Must attach to other morphemes (e.g., im- in impossible)

    • Inflectional morphemes: Change grammatical properties (tense, number, person) of words, without changing the word class
      • Examples in English: -s (plural), -ed (past tense), -ing (present participle)
    • Derivational morphemes: Change the word class (e.g., -ist changes tour to tourists, making it into a noun)
      • Can change the grammatical category

  • Example - English: Adding -s (suffix) makes the word plural

Morphology continued

  • Clitic is a morpheme which has syntactic properties of a word, but phonologically dependent on another word or phrase
  • Clitics can be attached to a host
  • Example: Contractions (I'm, we've)

1.2 Classification Based on Meaning

  • Lexical morphemes: Directly convey meanings
    • Concrete meanings (verbs, adjectives)
    • High frequency (infrequent in individual words compared to grammatical morphemes)
    • Open word class
  • Grammatical morphemes: Show grammatical relations between words
    • Abstract meanings
    • High frequency
    • Closed word class

Derivation

  • Creates new words from existing ones
  • Allows new words to enter language
  • More efficient for expressing phrases

Inflection

  • Adds grammatical information to a word, based on the context

  • Marks properties like singular/plural, past tense etc

  • Example: marking the tense of a verb

  • Examples of inflectional contrasts: Person, Number, Gender, Case

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