Morphology: the Words of Language

1. Morphology: the Words of Language

2. Questions

• What is an utterance?
• What does it mean to know a word?
• What is the relation between sound and
meaning in a word?
• What is orthography?
• What is grammatical category or syntactic
class of the word?
• What are content words and function words?

3.

• What is a morpheme?
• What is morphology?
• What can the structure of a morpheme be?
How can it be represented?
• What is meant with discreteness of
morphemes?
• What are bound and free morphemes?
• What are prefixes and suffixes?
• What are infixes?
• What are circumfixes?

4.

• What is a root?
• What is a stem?
• What are bound roots?
• What are derivational morphemes?
• What is a derived word?
• What in an inflectional morpheme?
• What do inflectional morphemes represent?
• Are inflectional morphemes productive?
• What is Case Morphology?

5.

• How do you understand the hierarchical
structure of a word?
• What is an ambiguous word?
• What can you say about the rule productivity?
• What is suppletion? Give examples!
• What happens when a new word enters the
language?
• When do lexical gaps appear in English?
• What are back-formations?

6.

• What is a compound?
• Which component is the head of the
compound? Why do we call it a head?
• What is the spelling of compounds in English?
• What can you say about the meaning of
compounds?
• What does it mean idiomatic?
• How are compounds pronounced?
• What is sign language morphology?

7. Task 1: Match each expression under A with the one statement under B that characterizes it.

A
B
a. noisy crow
b. scarecrow
1) compound noun
2) root morpheme plus derivational
prefix
c. the crow
3) phrase consisting of an adjective plus
noun
d. crowlike
e. crows
4) root morpheme plus inflectional affix
5) root morpheme plus derivational suffix
6) grammatical morpheme followed by
lexical morpheme

8. Task 2: write the one proper description from the list under B for the italicized part of each word in A.

A
B
a. terrorized
b. uncivilized
1) free root
2) bound root
c. terrorize
d. lukewarm
3) inflectional suffix
4) derivational suffix
e. impossible
5) inflectional prefix
6) derivational prefix
7) inflectional infix
8) derivational infix

9. Task 3: Here are some words followed by incorrect definitions. Can you guess the source of these “silly” definitions?

Illustrate your
answers by reference to other words or morphemes.
stalemate
‘husband or wife no longer interested’
effusive
‘able to be merged’
tenet
‘a group of ten singers’
dermatology ‘a study of derms’
ingenious
finesse
amphibious
‘not very smart’
‘a female fish’
‘able to lie on both sea and land’
deceptionist ‘secretary who covers up for his boss’

10.

mathemagician
‘”Bernie Madoff’s accountant’
sexcedrin
‘medicine for mate who says “Sorry, I have
a headache”’
testostoroni
‘hormonal supplement administered as
pasta’
aesthetominophen ‘medicine to make you look beautiful’
histalavista
‘say goodbye to those allergies’
aquapella
‘singing in the shower’
melancholy
‘dog that guards the cantaloupe patch’
plutocrat
‘a dog that rules’