What is morpheme?

Morpheme is the smallest language unit which has both sound-form and meaning. It has these two faces and
it represents a correlation between form and meaning.

Consider the following sentence: Loves a fan club with only two fans. Identify the morphemes, morphs
and allomorphs
morphemes: love, s, a, fan, club, with, only, two, s
allomorphs: s, s

What is grammar?
It is the system of rules and procedures formulated as algorithms operating on the inventory of language
units.

What is inflectional morphology?

The study of changes in the word-form due to different contexts

Illustrate contrastiveness in inflectional morphology.

Provide two illustrations of minimal pairs in morphology

heartache/heartbreak; folding-machine/folding-door

Give two examples of multimember inflectional paradigms

toy-toys; lamp-lamps, Jim-Jims

Give sets of words (i.e. lexical paradigms) gathered around the following root morphemes: read, man, hat,
bed
read, reading (n.), readable, reader, readership, unreadable
man, manly, mankind, manhood, manned, unmanned,
hat, hat box, hatband
bed, twin bed, bed (v.), spare bed, bed blocking, bedbug, bed chamber, bed clothes, bedding, airbed

Give lexical paradigms which share the following prefixes: re-, un-
reconsider, reopen, reread, rewrite, remake
unsophisticated, unreliable, unworthy, unacceptable, unwilling

Give lexical paradigms which share the following suffixes: -let, -ward
booklet, coverlet, cutlet, droplet, froglet, piglet, starlet

Give a rule-of-thumb definition of a word

A word is the smallest language unit which has a definite morphological structure and meaning and which
can be used in isolation.

Identify functional words in the following sentence: Who I heard it from is someone elses business and
not yours.
pronouns, articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions and conjunctions

Morphemes can be free or bound. Say which are which in the following examples: pocketful, post-office,
gold-laced, chimney-sweeper
pocket free; ful bound
post free; office free
gold free; laced free
chimney free; sweeper free

1
 Idioms are said to be lexically complex and semantically simplex. Use the following idioms to explain what
this means: make your flesh creep (as in: This novel has moments to make the flesh creep); loud and clear
(as in: The message coming through loud and clear is that men expect much more of their women than they
do of themselves)
This novel has some unpleasant and frightening moments.
The obvious message

Say whether the following words can be classified as simple or complex. State the number of morphemes
of which the words consist:
red-handed(3), trouble-shooting (3), self-assertiveness (4), understand ?

In the following examples say if we are dealing with transparent or opaque lexemes: undertake,
understand, underestimate, underneath
undertake transparent
understand opaque
underestimate opaque
underneath opaque

Identify bases in the following words: inconsolable, malnourished

console; nourish

Identify roots in the following words: biosphere, microscope

sphere, micro-scope

Name grammatical categories in English.

Person, number, degree, case, gender, definiteness, tense, modality, aspect, voice

Different grammatical categories operate within different parts of speech. Illustrate.

person pronouns (personal, reflexive, emphatic and possessive), possessive determiners, verbs
number nouns, pronouns, verbs
degree adjectives, adverbs
case nouns, pronouns, determiners
gender nouns, pronouns
definiteness determiners
tense verbs
modality verbs
aspect verbs
voice verbs

Give a list of inflectional morphemes in English

{s1} plural, {s2} third person singular present simple tense indicative {s3} genitive, {d1} past simple tense,
{d2} past participle, {ing1} present participle, {ing2} gerund, {er} comparative degree, {est} superlative
degree

What are the exponents of the past tense marker in speech and writing?
{ed} . In regular verbs, this marker, regularly represented as {ed} is realized in writing as d if preceded by
the letter e, or ed in all other cases. The allomorphs of {ed} are /id/ after /t/ and /d/; /d/ after vowels and
voiced consonants; /t/ after voiceless consonants.

What are the allomorphs which realize the definite and the indefinite article. Give the rules. Illustrate.
The indefinite article has 2 allomorphs: //, // and so does the definite article the allomorphs of which are: //,
//. Some words in English are inherently marked for definiteness, such as some kinds of pronouns and determiners
(me is definite, oneself indefinite).
2
 Identify the words containing empty morphs: factual, distributional, sensual, navigational
fact-u-al; sens-u-al

There are nouns with dual gender. Give four examples.

artist, cook, singer, criminal, enemy, fool, foreigner, friend, guest, inhabitant, librarian, musician, neigbour,
novelist, parent, person, professor, servant, speaker, student, teacher, writer

Some verbs in English do not allow the use of the progressive. Pinpoint such verbs in the following group
of examples: continue, progress, repeat, sneeze
continue, progress

What do we mean by agreement in grammar?

Agreement is the term which includes both concord and governemt. By concord is meant formal agreement
in person, number, gender or tense (or more than one simultaneously) between 2 or more lexemes or parts
of a sentence. Government means that one element in a sentence determines which morpheme is added to
another element e.g. agreement between the preposition and the noun or pronoun.

Find the examples illustrating government in the following sentences: This is what you can hope for, and
From whom did you get it?