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Morphology/Syntax
Dr. Bay Winter 26 Morphology/Syntax Exam
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| morphemes | smallest unit of meaning in a language (e.g. plurals, past tense, future tense, etc) |
| morphology | study of the structure of words |
| allomorph | variant forms of a single morpheme (e.g. /s/, /z/, and /ɪz/ for the plural morpheme) |
| free morpheme | standalone words, also called monomorphemes (e.g. house, car, bat) |
| bound morpheme | a morpheme that must be attached to another word or morpheme (e.g. prefixes, suffixes, binding forms, affixes, etc |
| borrowing | word creation from taking a word or part of a word from another language (e.g. "deja vu" or "straw that broke the camel's back") |
| compounding | word creation from combining free morphemes, put together into a single word; either hyphenated or not (e.g. "greenhouse" vs "green house"; emphasis differentiates them) |
| clipping | word creation from shortening a polysyllabic word by deleting syllables (e.g. "fridge" from "refrigerator") |
| blending | word creation from mixing non-morphemic parts of two existing ideas, also called portmanteau; one word must be clipped (e.g. "brunch" from "BR[eakfast]" and "[l]UNCH") |
| hypocorism | word creation from creating a diminutive (e.g. "barbecue" to "barbie"; "grandmother" to "granny"; 아/야 in Korean) |
| backformation | word creation from removing what seems to be an affix to adapt it to a new part of speech (e.g. "beggar" - "-er" = "beg"; "disgruntled" - "dis-" = "gruntled"; "crowdfunded" - "-ed" = "crowdfund") |
| eponym | word creation from the name of a famous person/thing (e.g. "gerrymander" from "Gerry" and "salamander"; "cardigan" from "7th Earl of Cardigan") |
| retronym | word creation from giving a new name to an older word that have been surpassed (e.g. "phone" to "landline"; "guitar" to "acoustic guitar"; "camera" to "film camera") |
| conversion | word creation from taking a preexisting word and using it as a new part of speech; often uses stress changes (e.g. "email" as a noun to "email" as a verb; "cheat" as a verb to "cheat" as a noun; "dirty" as an adjective to "dirty" as a verb) |
| coining/neologism | word creation from making a new word to fill a lexical gap; Shakespeare often used conversions (e.g. quark, googol, nerd) |
| acronym | word creation from the initial letters of a compound word or phrase, pronounced as a word (e.g. laser, scuba, NASA, NATO) |
| initialism | word creation from the initial letters, each letter stands for the first letter of another word, pronounced like letters (e.g. FBI, PDF, PNG) |
| reduplication | grammatical/semantic contrast by repeating all or part of the base (e.g. "קֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים" (Holy of Holies) repeats the morpheme קֹדֶשׁ, meaning holy to denote superlative) |
| reanalysis | word creation from redistributing the sounds of a morpheme for a new morpheme (e.g. "apron" from "a napron" to "an apron") |
| combining forms | word creation from a word form used in conjunction with affixes or other word forms to create a new word (e.g. "-wise" in "clockwise") |
| derivational morphemes | adding an affix to an existing word, either through a prefix, suffix, infix (insertion of an affix into the word, see Hebrew examples), or circumfix (affix goes around the root morpheme); changes SEMANTIC meaning |
| inflectional morphemes | change words by adding grammatical information, always a suffix in English (i.e. plurals, possessives, temporal tense, degree); changes GRAMMATICAL meaning |
| suppletion (not on study guide) | replacing a morpheme to indicate grammatical contrast (e.g. "good" and "better") |
| cliticization (not on study guide) | morphemes that behave like words in meaning or function, but cannot stay independent because of phonology (e.g. contractions) |
| eggcorn (not on study guide) | word creation from hearing a word incorrectly and creating something new that makes sense (e.g. "duck tape" from "duct tape"; "spitting image" from "spit and image") |
| syntax | literally means arrangement together; rules that describe how we organize words into phrases, clauses, and sentences |
| constituent | a complete phrase or clause |
| phrase | a syntactic unit headed by a noun, verb, adjective, or preposition |
| clause | largest syntactical unit, contains a predicate (verb and complements), often contains a subject (usually a NP (noun phrase)) |
| head | main word that determines the type of phrase |
| substitution constituency test | substituting a phrase with another phrase of the same kind and it still makes sense; use proform substitution (e.g. "[Harry and Ron] disarmed the student" and "[They] disarmed the student", therefore "Harry and Ron" is one constituent) |
| movement constituency test | moving a group of words to a different location in the sentence and it still makes sense (e.g. "Jen bought a dress [at the shop]" and "[At the shop], Jen bought a dress") |
| coordination constituency test | joining a possible constituent with another of the same kind of phrase (NP+NP, VP+VP, etc) through a conjunction and it still makes sense (e.g. "The students [will study for the exam] and [might sleep early]") |
| noun | a word that expresses a concrete or abstract thing |
| verb | a word that expresses an action |
| adjective | a word that expresses a description |
| preposition | a word that expresses the relation between a word and another word or clause, in English the preceding word with the following clause |
| adverb | a word that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb; specifier for VP |
| determiner | a word that precede nouns and specify their reference, such as definiteness (the/a), quantity (many/some), possession (my/their), or proximity (this/that); specifier for NP |
| degree word | a word (often adverb) that modifies an adjective; specifier for a AP |
| auxiliary | a type of verb that expresses grammatical distinctions such as tense, aspect, mood, voice, or modality |
| modal auxiliary | a verb that pairs with a main verb and expresses a modal modification, may express permission, ability, prediction, possibility, or necessity (can, could, may, might, must, ought, shall, should, will, and would) |
| non-modal auxiliary | can be head verbs in a VP |
| conjunction | a word used to connect clauses or sentences or to coordinate words in the same clause |
| phrase structure | in X' (X-bar) schema, graphically represent hierarchy of phrases; one phrase (XP) CAN contain a specifier, MUST contain a head (under X'), and CAN contain a complement; NP uses determiners, VP uses adverbs, AP uses degrees, PP uses degree |
| merge operation | combine words to make phrases, phrases, to clauses, clauses to sentences; use TP (sentence) with NP as the subject and VP as the predicate, T indicates ±Past |
| complement clause | one kind of verbal complement, dependent clauses that begin with a complementizing conjunction (that, whether, it, etc); creates a larger X' structure with CP; relative clauses are complements of a NP |
| move operation (yes/no questions) | allows a move of an auxiliary found under T to the front of the operation to form a yes/no question |
| deep structure | the simple; merge gives the basis of the statement, sentence behind the transformation (e.g. Flitwick is teaching charms, merges NP and VP) |
| surface structure | what is actually said/understood after transformations (e.g. "Is Flitwick teaching charms?" is derived from "Flitwick is teaching charms.") |
| complement | a phrase that completes the meaning |
Created by:
asherhlee
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