Questions tagged [morphology]
Questions regarding morphemes (smallest semantically meaningful units in a language) such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context.
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What is the word for the fusing of, for example, "-ed" and the final consonant "d" to give the ending (with voice removed) of "bent"?
Instead of giving the past tense form bended, the verb bend fuses together bend and -ed and removes voice, producing bent.
Lent and sent are produced in similar fashion.
What's the word for the fusion ...
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Why do we have both “marinate” and “marinade”?
I know marinade is the substance and marinate is the action, but why do we have both? I can’t think of any other verb-noun pairings that change that consonant.
Merriam-Webster says the verb marinade ...
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What are all the orthographic rules for combining morphemes?
In my computational linguistics class, we talked about the complications with parsing English morphemes, and there was a list of orthographic rules for combining morphemes in the slides.
consonant ...
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Why is "i" before a -tion suffix pronounced like a short vowel even though it's an open syllable?
I'm an elementary teacher and my students are learning syllable division. We noticed that before the suffix -tion, the "i" is always a short sound, despite being an open syllable. All the ...
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Are there any truly multisyllabic, unbound morphemes in English?
I thought of water, but my editor told me that this can be divided into wat (wet) and -er, an old form of a plural marker. I'm not sure if this is true or not, as the proto-germanic word is *wadr, ...
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Is 'dead' a form of the word 'die' or 'dies'?
Can you help settle a debate for me and my friends? Last night we were playing a rather silly word game where you have a card with a word or phrase on it, and you have to try to get your teammates to ...
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Any online tool that highlights what grammatical case each word in a sentence belongs to?
I'm absolutely confused when it comes to cases in English, and more so when I'm studying other languages (leisurely). I've tried to learn cases at least three times in my life and every time it just ...
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Numerals 13-19 are based on 10. Why do 11 and 12 follow a different pattern? [duplicate]
11 and 12 mean “one left” and “two left” respectively, referring to number 10. In other words, etymologically, they are NOT remnants of a base 12 number system. They are decimal, just like the -teen ...
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part of speech 'oat'
The word 'oat' in 'My father loves soy, coconut and oat milks'.
I am wondering why the 'oat' is treated as a noun
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Is "vest" the root of "invest"? [closed]
From this link it's somewhat likely that "invest" can be broken down to "in"+"vest". But does that make sense? In that case, which type of derivational morpheme is "...
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textual data or text data? [closed]
What is the correct form in the following example?
"The scientist is an expert at handling text data"
or
"The scientist is an expert at handling textual data"
Are there cases were ...
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Is this word an example of agglutination or compounding? [closed]
One of the longest words* in the English dictionary is supercalifraglisticexpialidocious and introduced in the OED in 1931. However, is this word an example of compounding or agglutination. People say ...
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-ed suffix in compounds [closed]
I read somewhere in a book on morphology that -ed suffix in compounds conveys the notion of having something, therefore "a one-armed man" means " a man having one arm", so i was ...
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Suffixes that are words: why aren't they considered compounds?
There are some common suffixes, -less, -able, -full, and -wise, that are also full words on their own.
Why isn't adding these words on considered compound words instead of suffixes? Or to say it ...
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Why is it some adjectives don't seem to accept negative prefixes and only are used with the negative adverb "not"?
I am specifically thinking of the word angry. If un- is generally used as a negative prefix applied to words of Germanic origin, why not angry, since I believe it comes from Old Norse? Is there a rule ...
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How to unambiguously indicate inflections where letters are sometimes removed?
Consider a lexicon where you look up the words 'jump' and 'dance'. You would often see something like this:
jump -s -ing, etc.
dance -s -ing, etc.
I reckon this notation (is there a name for it?) is ...
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What is morphological analysis of words to estimate their meaning called?
Is there a word for this?
I'll use an example to show what I mean:
Let's say you don't know what sepsis means, which is bacterial infection of blood. So, you start thinking. You break the word up into ...
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Is "stranded" a past participle or an adjective? [duplicate]
Definition of the " leave" :to make or allow sb/sth to remain in a particular condition, place, etc.
Leave the window open. (verb + object+ adjective)
I Left the headlights on. ( verb + ...
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Why is the usage of " but" different in these two sentences? [closed]
He did nothing at all but repeatedly brag what he has done for the country.
I had no choice but to give up the offer.
Why is " but" in above examples respectively followed by a bare ...
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" rely on it " vs " put it on" [closed]
rely on it
put it on
At times I feel confused about usage of some phrasal verbs ending with an adverb or a preposition. Just like the above two examples, the usage of "on" is different. ...
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Is y at the end of muddy derivational
Mud is the root word. If I add -dy to make the word muddy, is that suffix a derivational or inflectional morpheme?
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Why do some words containing a form of “philia” have it at the beginning and some have it at the end?
There are words like “philosophy”, “philology”, “philanthropy”; these have a form of “philia” at the beginning. Why don't these words have it at the end?
Also, there are words like “haemophilia”, “...
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When did people start using “rod” for “ wrought”? [closed]
I’ve seen many online postings for people claiming to sell “ rod” iron rather than “wrought “ iron items.
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What is the root word of "unforgivable"? [closed]
I'm learning about morphology and got confused by the word "unforgivable" when identifying its root. Is it "forgive" or "give"? Thanks for your help!
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Terminology and the morphology of 'librarian'
I was hoping someone could help me out with a terminology question.
What is it called when you remove a letter to add a derivational bound morpheme to a free morpheme (i.e. library + -ian = librar(y)...
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"Crossed-referenced", "Crashed-landed", and other twice-inflected verbs
For about a month now, I've been cataloging every compound verb I encounter that, for whatever reason, causes some people to inflect both of its components in the past tense (see title for examples). ...
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Is a punctuation error also a morphological error at the same time?
Are punctuation errors counted as morphological errors?
For example, is writing Johns car instead of John's car a morphological error?
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Is there any way, I can get to the brief history of any words or phrases?
It's hard to remember the word until I get to the history or until I feel the word.
I'm wondering any apps or sites to help me out with this.
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Are morphemes commonly found at the end of words considered suffixes?
Are morphemes commonly found at the end of words considered suffixes?
For example: "erate", found at the end of words like accelerate, operate, refrigerate, considerate, nonliterate, etc.
I ...
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Resources for morphological etymology research
I am attempting to write a short paper on English etymology focusing on Germanic, French, and Latin morphology. I need to present a means of identifying these roots by common morphologies in English, ...
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Dealing with pronouns
“You can tell him...."
"Me tell him?”
Is this structure appropriate? Why / why not?
“Me” is usually an object pronoun. I would say that the structure is inappropriate, because “Me” is an ...
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How to identify the type of phrase?
Sometimes, the phrases that I analyze look like they fit more than one category, and other times I do not understand why a phrase is a certain type. (We are taught 5 types: NP, VP, PP, AdjP, AdvP.)
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How many morphemes are there in "assertion"?
Is it "a+sert+tion" or "assert+tion"? I found an article here that says its the former, but the answer key of the quiz which this question is in says otherwise, Help?
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Why does "prayer" end with -er?
Why is the noun form of pray "prayer"?
Typically, -er is tacked onto the end of verbs to denote a person or thing that does the verb. Hence, print(er), compute(r), write(r), watch(er), do(er)...
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How is "art" related with "artificial"
I have actually never related both words together, but coincidentally, I realized that in germen, "art = Kunst" and "artificial = künstlich", namely people do relate both concepts together. So how is ...
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What do you call a made up name?
Many businesses create new words for themselves or their products. Is there a term for these words? For example, in the movie, "Bladerunner," androids are called, "Replicants." So the word Replica + ...
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the plural of the name of the letter e is ees [duplicate]
According to the wikipedia article of letter e
The plural of the name of the letter e is ees (the plural of the
letter itself is rendered E's, Es, e's, es).
Therefore, is ees then a regular ...
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The installer of an installer
This is probably one of many questions brought forward by this computing age; but what can I call a person who installs an installer?
I was thinking installee, which isn't a word given we already had ...
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Is 'hand' in 'beforehand' a morpheme?
I'm not 100% sure if the 'hand' in 'beforehand' is a morpheme as it can function as a standalone word instead of the suffixes and prefixes which make up most morphemes, such as -ly, -ing, -ed, etc. I'...
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How is 'compound noun' defined in CGEL?
This question is specifically about The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language by Huddleston and Pullum.
Here's CGEL's definition of word:
In order to avoid possible misunderstanding we will ...
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How does suffixing adjectives with "ass" work out grammatically?
Why is it grammatically correct apparently to say, for example "My annoying-ass art teacher"? Or is it? If ass is a noun normally, then what part of speech is it when used to suffix an adjective? Can ...
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General way to describe words like "understand", based on archaic senses of their component parts
The word "understand" is fascinating. A surface parse of the word gives little insight into how the components are related to the concept associated with the word. In contrast, with words like "...
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employ, employer, employee - can I generalize this pattern to (verb), (verb)er, (verb)ee? [duplicate]
As a non-native speaking programmer, I need a general pattern to name input and output variables of operations where the variables are of the same type and I noticed that employ, employer employee is ...
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Add -al to verb to make a noun
Do you have any examples of nouns that are formed by adding -al to a verb?
I can think of one example (rental), but would like to have a few more. Thank you for your help!
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noble - can it be split into morphemes?
Can I split noble into nob + the suffix -le?
-le is found in other adjectives such as little, brittle, fickle
nob is found in noble, nobleman, nobleness, nobler, noblesse, noblest, nobly. But ...
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X vs. X-al adjectives (asymptotic vs asymptotical, etc.)
Right now I am writing a technical report, where I describe asymptotic(al) curves, expansions etc. My understanding after a bit of web browsing is that asymptotic and asymptotical are near-synonymous ...
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Is 'non-work' a word?
I'm working in a big company with lots of employees.
We have 'Skype for business application with which we communicate and interact with each other .
I want to update my status to something like:
I'm ...
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Is the affix/root/combining-form model necessary to understand medical terminology?
I am learning medical terminology. My medical terminology textbook has me confused about roots, prefixes, suffixes, and combining forms. As a neophyte to morphology, I am trying to understand why it ...
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Why is 'hyper-' considered a prefix, but 'tachy-' is considered a combining form?
I am learning medical terminology. My medical terminology textbook has me all confused about roots, prefixes, suffixes, and combining forms; so I have been doing some research. I've found that most ...
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Is it explosive dog or explosives dog?
I can't seem to find a justification either way for this example. Can anyone help me out? Thank you!
In the context of a bomb-sniffing dog, what grammar rule would justify using the (s)? Is it simply ...
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