ENGLISH 105 QUIZ 2
Backformation
- A backformation removes a part of the word that resembles a morpheme in order to coin a new word. - For example, in the word burglar, English speakers misanalyzed the -r as an agentive suffix (a suffix that indicates someone does something), similar to the -r in writer. This process left us with the verb burgle, meaning 'steal'.
Blending
- A blend combines two words to create a new word. - Blending: A blend is a word formed by joining parts of two words after clipping. - An example is smog, which comes from smoke and fog, or brunch, which comes from 'breakfast' and 'lunch'. - One subcategory of blending is the reduction of a word to one of its parts, e.g., fax (facsimile), flu (influenza) and bot (robot).
Noun
- A noun is a word used for a person, place, or thing. Nouns are often described as naming words. Examples of Nouns Here are some examples of nouns: Anne Policeman Town Exeter Crayon The Eiffel Tower Thought Swimming Dream Table Grass Oxygen Ounce Day
Preposition
- A preposition is a word (usually a short word) that shows the relationship between two other nearby words. EXP: ##The book about the wizard ##The book by the wizard ##The book near the wizard ##The book behind the wizard ##The book under the wizard - A preposition precedes a noun (or a pronoun) to show the noun's (or the pronoun's) relationship to another word in the sentence. In the examples above, the preposition preceded the noun wizard to show that noun's relationship with the noun book. - Here is a list of common prepositions: above, about, across, against, along, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, inside, into, like, near, of, off, on, since, to, toward, through, under, until, up, upon, with and within.
Adjectives
- Adjectives: a word or phrase naming an attribute, added to or grammatically related to a noun to modify or describe it. - Adjectives are describing words. Large, grey, and friendly are all examples of adjectives. In the examples below, these adjectives are used to describe an elephant.
Adverb
- An adverb is a word used to modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. - She swims quickly. (Here, the adverb quickly modifies the verb swims.) - She swims extremely quickly. (Here, the adverb extremely modifies the adverb quickly.) - When an adverb modifies a verb, it usually tells us when, where, how, in what manner, or to what extent the action is performed. Here are some examples of adverbs modifying verbs: - How: He ran quickly. - When: He ran yesterday. - Where: He ran here. - In what manner: He ran barefoot. - To what extent: He ran fastest.
clipping
- Clipping is the reduction of a word into one of its component parts. The recently-coined word app meaning 'application for a mobile device' is clipped from application. - Clipping is the word formation process which consists in the reduction of a word to one of its parts. - Clipping is also known as "truncation" or "shortening". - For example, "playing a video game against a bot" is not the same as "playing a video game against a robot".
Compounding
- Compounding is the combining of two or more roots to make a new word, such as birdhouse or redneck ('hillbilly'). - A recently-formed compound is pumphead: a person who has lost mental acuity after being attached to a heart-lung machine during heart surgery.
Conjunctions
- Conjunctions join words or groups of words together. The most common ones are and, or, and but. - Coordinating Conjunctions Coordinating conjunctions are the ones that spring to mind when people think about conjunctions. They include and, but, or, nor, for, so, and yet. - Correlative conjunctions appear in pairs. For example, either...or, neither...nor, whether...or, and not only...but also. EXP:This man is either dead or my watch has stopped. - Subordinating conjunctions include: after, although, as, because, before, if, once, since, than, that, though, till, until, when, where, whether, and while.
Interjections
- Interjections are words used to express strong feeling or sudden emotion. They are included in a sentence (usually at the start) to express a sentiment such as surprise, disgust, joy, excitement, or enthusiasm. - Examples of interjections (shaded): Hey! Get off that floor! Oh, that is a surprise. Good! Now we can move on. Jeepers, that was close.
Prefix
- Prefix: An affix that attaches to the front of a word stem. - A prefix is added to the front of a word to change its meaning Both prefixes and suffixes (added to the back) are affixes. Examples of Prefixes Here are some examples of prefixes: microscope (The prefix is micro-.) tripod (The prefix is tri-.) devalue (The prefix is de-.)
Pronoun
- Pronoun: A term used for several closed categories of words. - Traditionally defined as taking the place of nouns (or more accurately noun phrases), personal pronouns, such as it, me, he, she, they, and you, are the most familiar type. - Other types include relative pronouns (who, whose, which, that), demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those), interrogative pronouns (who, which, whose), and indefinite pronouns (anyone, someone). A pronoun is a word that can be used to replace a noun. For example: Marcel is tall enough, but he is not as fast as Jodie. (The word he is a pronoun. It replaces the noun Marcel.) Our family loves flapjacks. We eat about a dozen of them a day. (The word we is a pronoun. It replaces the noun phrase Our family. The word them is a pronoun. It replaces the noun flapjacks.)
Verb
- Verbs are often described as doing words. A verb usually tells us what action is being performed. For example: He ate the cake. She read the book. - A word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence, such as hear, become, happen. - A verb is the part of speech (or word class) that describes an action or occurrence or indicates a state of being.
Acronym
Acronym An abbreviation formed by combining the initials of an expression into a pronounceable word. - Examples: NATO, SARS, radar, yuppy, scuba (but not USA, UK, EU, UN, PC, BBC, ATM, whose pronunciations merely voice the names of the letters, as in B-B-C).
Affix
Affix: bound morpheme that attaches to a root or stem - morpheme (called the root or stem). -Prefixes and *suffixes are the most common types of affixes in the world's languages; less common are infixes and *circumfixes
Bound morpheme
Bound morpheme: A morpheme that cannot stand alone as a word. - Examples: -MENT (as in establishment), -ER (painter), and 'PLURAL'(zebras).
Derivational morpheme
Derivational morphemes generally: 1) Change the part of speech or the basic meaning of a word. Thus -ment added to a verb forms a noun (judg-ment). re-activate means "activate again." 2) Are not required by syntactic relations outside the word. Thus un-kind combines un- and kind into a single new word, but has no particular syntactic connections outside the word -- we can say he is unkind or he is kind or they are unkind or they are kind, depending on what we mean. 3) Are often not productive -- derivational morphemes can be selective about what they'll combine with, and may also have erratic effects on meaning. Thus the suffix -hood occurs with just a few nouns such as brother, neighbor, and knight, but not with most others. e.g., *friendhood, *daughterhood, or *candlehood. Furthermore "brotherhood" can mean "the state or relationship of being brothers," but "neighborhood" cannot mean "the state or relationship of being neighbors." 4) Typically occur between the stem and any inflectional affixes. Thus in governments,-ment, a derivational suffix, precedes -s, an inflectional suffix. 5) In English, may appear either as prefixes or suffixes: pre-arrange, arrange-ment.
Free morpheme
Free morpheme: A morpheme that can stand alone as a word. - Examples: ZEBRA, PAINT, PRETTY, VERY.
Infix
Infix : A bound morpheme that is inserted within another morpheme.
Inflectional morpheme
Inflectional morpheme: A bound morpheme that creates variant forms of a word to mark its syntactic function in a sentence. - Examples: The suffix -s added to a *verb (as in paints) marks the verb as agreeing with a third-person singular *subject; -er (taller) marks *adjectives for comparative *degree.
Suffix
Suffix : An affix that attaches to the end of a word stem A suffix is added to the end of a word to change its meaning Here are some examples of suffixes: tenderness (The suffix is -ness.) expensive (The suffix is -ive.) painted (The suffix is -ed.)