| morphology | the study of word structure and word formation |
| morpheme | the smallest unit of meaning or function in a language |
| allomorphs | variants (different forms) of a morpheme (example: the indefinite article in English has two allomorphs: a and an) |
| affixes | types of bound morphemes; includes prefixes, suffixes, and infixes |
| prefix | an affix that goes in front of its base (example: unhappy) |
| suffix | an affix that goes at the end of its base (example: happiness) |
|
infix |
an affix that goes inside another morpheme (English doesn't do this) |
| free | a morpheme that can be a word by itself (example: train) |
| bound | a morpheme that must be attached (example: -er) |
| simple words | words that are only one morpheme and cannot be divided into smaller parts (examples: boy, dracula) |
| compound (adj) | describes words that are made from two other words (examples: break dance, greenhouse).......note: compound words are complex morphemes |
| complex or complex | describes words that have two or more morphemes |
| root | the core of a word: the part of the word that carries most
of the word's meaning (always one morpheme) |
| base | any form to which an affix is added (can be more than one morpheme) |
| stem | a special kind of base: a base with an inflectional affix (example: learns) |
| form and function |
(1) form: a type, or something that has many types (example: "-s" is one form, but it has two functions: derivational and inflectional) |
| lexicon | your mental dictionary (includes meanings of words, how to use them, and their pronunciation) |
| lexical categories | nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions (these are the normal categories of roots) |