Morphology Quiz: Test Your Linguistic Knowledge

The correct answer is that derivational morphemes are affixes that can change the meaning or parts of speech of words. This means that when a derivational morpheme is added to a word, it can alter its meaning or change it into a different part of speech. For example, adding the derivational morpheme "-er" to the verb"teach" creates the word"teacher," which is a noun that means  “a person who performs the action of teaching.”

Free morphemes can stand alone and have meaning on their own, while bound morphemes cannot stand alone and must be attached to a base morpheme or root to convey meaning. This is the main difference between free and bound morphemes.

The morpheme "-s" in "books" is an inflectional morpheme that indicates the plural form of the noun.

The example "regret --> regrets" shows an inflectional morpheme because the addition of the "-s" at the end of "regret" indicates the plural form of the word. Inflectional morphemes are used to express grammatical relationships, such as tense, number, or possession, without changing the core meaning or part of speech of the word. In this case, the addition of "-s" indicates that the word "regret" is being pluralized, but the meaning and part of speech are not changing.

Derivational morphemes create new words or change the word class. For example, adding "-ly" to "quick" changes it from an adjective to an adverb.

A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a word. It is a combination of sounds that has a specific meaning in a language. For example, in the word "cats," there are two morphemes: "cat," which refers to the animal, and "s," which indicates plurality. Each morpheme carries its own meaning and cannot be further divided into smaller meaningful units. Therefore, the correct answer is "The smallest meaningful unit of a word."

An inflectional morpheme is a morpheme that does not change the grammatical category or meaning of a word, but rather indicates a grammatical feature such as tense, number, or comparison. In this case, the inflectional morpheme "-er" is added to the adjective "tall" to indicate the comparative form "taller". This does not change the word's meaning or category, but rather indicates a comparison between two things.

The word "antiestablishment" has three morphemes: "anti," "establish," and "ment." The prefix "anti" means against, "establish" is the root word, and the suffix "ment" is added to form a noun. Each of these morphemes carries its own meaning and contributes to the overall meaning of the word.

Morphology is the study of the rules that govern word formation. It focuses on the structure and formation of words, including the analysis of prefixes, suffixes, and other morphemes. This field of linguistics examines how words are created and how they can be modified to convey different meanings. By studying morphology, linguists can better understand the building blocks of language and how words are formed in different languages.

Compounding is a word formation process where existing words are combined to create new words. This process involves putting together two or more words to form a new word with a different meaning. For example, the words "sun" and "flower" can be compounded to create the word "sunflower." This process is commonly used in English to create new words and expand the vocabulary of the language.

Blending involves merging parts of two words to form a new one, as seen in "brunch" (breakfast + lunch). It is different from compounding, which combines entire words.

Clipping involves shortening a longer word without changing its meaning. In this case, "telephone" is shortened to "phone," making it more efficient in casual use.

The closed class refers to functional categories, such as prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns, that cannot be derived from other words. These categories are considered closed because they have a limited number of members and do not easily admit new words. Therefore, the statement that the closed class is the functional category of words that are not derivable is true.

The word "disappear" is an example of using affixation to form new words. In this case, the prefix "dis-" is added to the base word "appear" to create a new word with a different meaning. The prefix "dis-" indicates negation or reversal, so "disappear" means to cease to be visible or to vanish. This process of adding a prefix to a base word to create a new word is a common way of forming words in the English language.

Derivation rules can be applied multiple times to a stem to produce new lexical items. For example, from the stem "friend," we can apply the derivation rule "-ly" to create the word "friendly," and then apply another derivation rule "-ness" to create the word "friendliness." Therefore, the statement that derivation rules can only be applied once to a stem is false.

The given examples show various derivational morphemes that change the meaning or part of speech of the base word. In the case of "walk --> walked," the suffix "-ed" is added to form the past tense of the verb "walk." The meaning of the word does not change, nor does the part of speech.

The morpheme "anti-" means opposition or negation. In "antidisestablishmentarianism," it signifies opposition to a concept.

Because these derivational morphemes change the part of speech of a word (for example, “-ment” changes word from a verb to a noun) and they all have different meanings, they are not allomorphs. Allomorphs are different representations of the same morpheme that all change the meaning of the word in the same way, such as making the word plural or negative. They do not change the part of speech of a word.

The property of "having a written form" is not a required property of a word. Words primarily need to convey meaning and have speech sounds (in spoken languages) to function as words. Many languages and words exist and are fully functional without a formal written system, relying solely on oral tradition and spoken communication. Thus, having a written form is not essential for a word to fulfill its role in language.