Grammar: Morphology - A-Level Language Terms

Refers to the smallest unit of meaning. For example, in the word ‘helped’, both ‘help’ and ‘ed’ convey meaning and therefore both elements are ________. In this case, the ________ help can convey meaning on its own, meaning it is a free _______ whereas the _______ ‘ed’, while conveying that the action is in the past, needs to attach to another ________ to make sense, making it a bound ________.

• plurality

• person

• morpheme

• affix

Refers to the bound morphemes that indicate a shift in grammatical tense e.g. plurals and tense markers

• inflectional morpheme

• affix

• prefix

• derivational morpheme

Refers to the bound morphemes that change a word’s class or meaning e.g. suffixes such as -ful, -less, -able.

• plurality

• derivational morpheme

• suffix

• inflectional morpheme

Refers to the main word that others are built from using prefixes and suffixes.

• affix

• prefix

• suffix

• root or stem

Refers to a bound morpheme that can be attached to existing words to create new ones.

• affix

• prefix

• suffix

• plurality

Refers to an affix that is placed at the beginning of a root word. For

example, dis-, un-, anti-.

• affix

• prefix

• suffix

• irregular

Refers to an affix that is placed at the end of a root word. For example, -ity, -ment, -tion.

• affix

• prefix

• suffix

• tense

Refers to when there is more than one of something, usually indicated by the addition of an inflectional morpheme e.g. on regular nouns -s or -es is used to show _________.

• irregular

• regular

• plurality

• morpheme

Refers to words, typically nouns and verbs, which follow typical patterns grammatically. For example, to play is an example of a _______ verb as it uses typical suffixes to indicate tense e.g. -ed, -ing, -s.

• plurality

• irregular

• regular

• root or stem

Refers to words, typically nouns and verbs, which do not follow typical patterns grammatically. For example, the plural of mouse is mice making mouse an ________ noun.

• prefix

• regular

• person

• irregular