AFFIX: a bound morpheme that occurs attached to another morpheme (called the root or stem). PREFIXES (attached to the beginning of the root or stem; ex.: debrief, unwind, antisemite) and SUFFIXES (attached to the end; ex.: algebraic, weakness, boyhood) are the most common types of affixes. Less common in the world's languages are INFIXES (inserted within the root or stem).
ANTONYMY: refers to opposite meanings: words with opposite meanings (ex.: deep/shallow; oral/nasal) are said to be antonymous.
BASE: see ROOT.
BOUND NORPHENE: a morpheme that functions as part of a word but cannot stand alone as a word. Ex.: ‑ment (as in establishment), ‑er (painter), and plural morphemes (zebras).
CONJUGATION: the term used for the set of inflectional variants of a verb. Ex.: go, goes, went, going, gone. Compare with DECLENSION.
CONTENTIVE (CONTENT NORD): a word whose primary function is to describe objects, ideas, qualities, and states of being in the world; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are contentives. Opposed to FUNCTORS/FUNCTION WORDS.
DECLENSION: the set of all the inflectional variants of a particular noun. Ex.: child/child's/children/children's. Compare with CONJUGATION.
DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME: a morpheme that serves to derive a word of one class or meaning from a word of another class or meaning. Ex.: ‑ment (as in establishment), which derives a noun from a verb, and ‑re (repaint), which alters the meaning (paint àpaint again).
FREE MORPHEME: a morpheme that can stand alone as a word (opposed to bound morpheme). Ex.: zebra, paint.
FUNCTOR (FUNCTION NORD): a class of words such as prepositions and conjunctions whose primary role is to mark grammatical relationships between content words. These are the words left out in telegraphic speech/style.
Opposed to CONTENTIVES/CONTENT MORDS.
HOMONYMY/HOMOPHONY: the state of sounding the same but having different meanings. Ex.: sun/son; clause/claws; nun/none. Homonyms can be just homophonic (as in the previous examples) or BOTH ‑homophonic and homographic (ex.: file, plant, sole, stock, tank).
INFIX: see AFFIX.
INFLECTIONAL MORPHEME: a morpheme used to create variant forms of a word to mark the syntactic function of the word in its sentence. Ex.: the suffix ‑s (as in eats) indicates that the verb agrees with a third‑person singular subject; the suffix ‑ed indicates the past tense for regular verbs.
NOTE: In English ALL inflectional (syntactic) morphemes are suffixes.
LEXICON: the list of all words and morphemes of a language that is stored in a native speaker's memory; the internalized dictionary.
MONOMORPHEMIC WORD: a word that has a single morpheme and that is therefore indivisible. Ex.: I; God; love; aardvark; crocodile.
MORPHEME: the smallest meaningful unit; the most elemental unit of meaning; from the Greek morphe = form. A morpheme may be represented by a single sound, by one syllable, or by several syllables. Morphemes combine according to the morphological rules of the language.
MORPHOLOGY: The study of word formation, of etymology (origin of words), and of the internal structure (the organizational principles) of words.
MORPHOPHONEMICS: study of how sounds alternate in particular morphemes. Morphemes and allomorphs are concepts parallel to phonemes and allophones (morphemes have variations, which are called allomorphs). The rule that determines the phonetic form is a MORPHOPHONENIC rule (determined by BOTH the morphology and the phonology, hence the name). Ex.: the three alternate phonetic forms that correspond to the English morpheme ‑s for plural.
POLYSEMY: the term is used to refer to multiple meanings/varied senses for the same word (a word is polysemic when it has more than one meaning, as with heart, action, or paper). These senses, though distinct, are linked.
PREFIX: see AFFIX.
ROOT: also known as base or stem; main morpheme; it has lexical content and affixes are attached to it. Ex.: glamour is the root in "glamorous" or "unglamorous."
STEM: see ROOT.
SUFFIX: see AFFIX.
SUPPLETIVE FORM: an alternate form, not predictable by regular or general rules; in other words, an exception. Ex.: man/men; phenomenon/phenomena; go/went; hold/held.
SYNONYMOUS: the term used to refer to words or sentences that mean the same thing. Ex. (bearing in mind Dr. Samuel Johnson's* remark that words are seldom exactly synonymous): couch/sofa; salt/ sodium chloride; buy/purchase.
TENSE: a category of the verb that expresses time reference, for example as past (wslked) or present (walk).
ZERO FORN: a morpheme that has no phonological representation. Ex.: the past tense of the verb hit is hit, the plural of sheep is sheep.
[* Dr. Samuel Johnson was the author of the two‑volume Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755]