LING 111 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Suppletion, Ampere
Document Summary
Morphemes: the smallest language elements that have form and meaning. Simple (simplex): words with only one morpheme (monomorphemic) Root: major morpheme, essential part of word. Most english roots are free and can form a word; some are bound (like logy which has a specific meaning of the study of ) Complex: words with more than one morpheme; at least one root plus at least one morpheme (affix) Compound: a word with two or more roots. A word is the smallest language element that constitutes a free form (it can appear in isolation and still have meaning) Morphemes have to co-occur in other words, and have a relatively constant meaning and phonetic form. Minor variations of the sound form may be permissible. Allomorphs: positional variants of the sound shape of a morpheme. Roots form the core of the word"s meaning; have a lexical category (noun, verb, etc. )
