Student resources for Chapter 04: Morphology
Study guide for Chapter 04: Morphology
Definitions
You should be able to simply explain the following terms, and provide an example:
| Morphology | Morpheme | Root |
| Affix | Prefix | Infix |
| Suffix | Circumfix | Free/bound |
| Word | Lexeme | Allomorph |
| Derivational | Inflectional | Compounds |
| Case | Nominative | Accusative |
| Degree of synthesis | Isolating/analytic | Polysynthetic |
| Lexicalization | Phonologically conditioned allomorphy | |
| Degree of fusion | Lexically conditioned allomorphy | |
| Fusional | Agglutinating | |
Skills
You should be able to do the following:
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Discuss how can you tell what counts as a word in a language.
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Break words in English or other languages into composite morphemes.
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Identify whether a morpheme is free/bound, its type (if an affix), and whether it is derivational or inflectional.
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Understand the difference between a highly productive and a less productive morphological process, and give examples of each.
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List allomorphs of a morpheme and their environments.
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Make simple statements about distribution of allomorphs.
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Make simple statements about the phonological processes that give rise to allomorphs.
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State the morphological type of a language.
Hints for Conducting Morphological Analysis
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Isolate and compare forms that are partially similar in form and meaning.
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Basic Assumption: constancy of form means constancy of meaning.
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Look for correspondences between sound and meaning, see how they line up.
Remember:
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If a single phonetic form has two distinct meanings, it must be analyzed as two morphemes. Example: English –er in rider versus colder.
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If one meaning is associated with different phonetic forms, these different forms all represent the same morpheme, and are allomorphs.
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Different languages have different morphological categories.
