October 2006

BASIC CONCEPTS
1. What is morphology?
2. What is minimal pair? Provide illustrations of minimal pairs in morphology. - MINIMAL PAIR -
two words identical in all respects but one (which is referred to as distinctive feature). For
example: the words heartache and heartbreak have identical morphological make-up, but they
are different in that one word in the pair has a 'locative' meaning component and the other
hasn't; in the pair bottle-washer bottle-washer (where we are dealing with total homonymy)
one member of the pair has a 'purpose' marker and the other hasn't; in the pair folding-machine
- folding-door the first member of the pair has an 'agentive' meaning component whereas the
other hasn't. The 'locative', 'purpose', and 'agentive' components can be said to be distinctive.
See word meaning and differential meaning.
3. What is a syntagmatic chain? Provide illustrations of syntagmatic chains. - Syntagmatic chain is
an allowed combination of phonemes in a word-love not lov, morphemes in a word-happily not
lyhappy, and words in a sentence-I love you not Love you I.
4. Give lexical paradigms which include the words which share un-, multi-. unbearable,
unswerving, unnoticeable, unkind, unjustified; multinational, multiplayer, multitasking,
multiple
5. Give examples of multimember paradigms including the roots take and wash. -
decentralization, defrost, deduction; go-went-gone, like-liking-likely, see-saw-seen-seeing; I, you,
he, she, it, we, you, they?
6. Name grammatical categories in English. - In English grammatical categories are the following:
person, number, degree, case, gender, definiteness, tense, modality, aspect and voice.
7. Assign word-class to the following words: and conjunction, or conjunction, beyond
preposition, adverb; contemplate verb, contemplation noun, ah exclamation
8. Give 2 examples of nonce words and two examples of neologisms. nonce words: hard-liner,
kidney-shaped, hah-hah (v.), eelionnaire, wiskify; neologisms: chain-smoker, distancitis,
jokethon, guesstimate
MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH WORDS
1. Which types of morphological analysis do you know? Contrastive, statistical, immediate
constituent analysis, distributional analysis and co-occurrence, transformational, computational,
componential
2. Divide the words incurable and three-cornered into morphemes. in+cur+able; three- +
corner+ -ed
3. Analyze the words impossibility and window dressing by means of immediate constituent
analysis. Identify the constituents: immediate and ultimate. Represent hierarchical structure of
the words using tree diagrams. impossibility im+possibility im - + possibl- + -ity; immediate
constituents: possibility, -ity, possible; ultimate constituents: possible, im, ity; window-shopping
window + shopping window + shop + ing; immediate constituents: shopping, shop, window;
ultimate constituents: window, shop
4. A word has a different lexical meaning depending on its distributional pattern. Illustrate. - sky
blue: blue sky
5. The identity of distributional pattern, however, does not necessarily mean that the words have
the same meaning. Illustrate. - make in make a car or make a move or move in move the table
and move in move somebody. or give in give a present, give a push, give a cry, give a smile
6. Consider the following pair of words consisting of the words that are structurally the same:
cupful helpful. Apply transformational analysis to disambiguate them. Reveal the difference
of the logical structure and meaning. cupful the amount held by a cup, helpful useful, ready

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 to help; cupful is derived from a noun, by adding the suffix ful, and helpful can be derived from
both the verb to help and the noun help by adding the suffix -ful to the root.
7. Apply transformational analysis to see if the following words embody the same logical pattern:
extraterrestrial extramarital extraterrestrial: (coming from) outside the planet Earth,
extramarital: describes a married person's sexual relationship with someone who is not their
husband or wife; extraterrestrial: extra + terrestr+ i+ al, extramarital: extra + marit + al =
extraterrestrial has an empty morph, and extramarital does not?
8. Apply contrastive analysis to the following pair of words to show the difference of stylistic
meaning: James Jamasie - ???
MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSES
1. Name 3 adverb-forming derivational affixes in English. - -ly, -wise, -ward
2. Give 2 examples illustrating 3rd degree derivation. unlawfully, unsurprisingly
3. Give the rules regulating the writing of past simple tense affix. - 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.
4. Give 2 examples of prefixes of native and foreign origin in English. un- native, uni- foreign, ???
5. Give two examples of metaphorical formations in Netspeak. - ???
6. Explain the following neologisms from the point of view of word-formation: tele-shopping and
psychoanalyze. tele-shopping: compounding, psychoanalyze: combining