Morphology Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The compound blackboard is an endocentric compound, option (A). In an endocentric compound the whole is a kind of one of its parts, which is the head, so a blackboard is a kind of board. A copulative compound, option (B), joins two elements of equal status, as in poet-painter. An exocentric compound, option (C), has no head within it, as in redskin, which names a person and not a kind of skin. A simple idiom, option (D), has a meaning that cannot be got from its parts, which is not the case here.

Answer: C

Both assertions are correct, so option (C) is right. Many languages have very rich aspectual markings that change the meaning of the base verb in subtle ways, which is Assertion I. It is also very common for a single inflectional morpheme to signal a complex mixture of tense, aspect, mood and polarity, as in many fusional languages, which is Assertion II. Options (A), (B) and (D) each call at least one of these true statements wrong.

Answer: A

Once an inflectional affix is added to a word, no further attachment of a derivational affix is possible. In English derivational affixes come before inflectional ones, so one can form teachers but not a word in which a derivational suffix follows the plural.

The options that say both kinds can be added, that nothing happens, or that the word becomes a clitic are wrong. This is why the order of affixes in a word is fixed in many languages, with derivation nearer the root and inflection at the outer edge of the word.

Answer: B

The correct match is a-iv, b-iii, c-ii, d-i. A root is what remains after all affixes are taken out. A stem is a form of a word that takes inflections, and a base is a form that takes derivations. Suppletion is the replacement of one form of a word by a quite different one, as go and went.

The other options pair these terms with the wrong descriptions. A suppletive form is not made by affixation, since the old and the new forms have no shared sounds, which is why it is set apart from the root, stem and base.

Answer: C

Statements (a) and (d) are correct. Declension of nouns in inflectional languages means that nouns are marked for gender and number and have case endings, as in Latin and Sanskrit.

Statement (b), grammaticalization, is the process by which words become grammatical forms, and (c) tense, aspect and mood are categories of verbs and not of nouns, so (b) and (c) are not part of declension.

Answer: D

Both statements are true. The forms -s, -z and -iz of the English plural are allomorphs of one morpheme, and the choice among them is decided by the last sound of the word, so they are phonologically conditioned.

The form -z is taken as the underlying form of the plural marker, because from it the others are derived by simple rules, voicing assimilation after a voiceless sound and the addition of a vowel after a sibilant.

Answer: B

Languages whose words typically contain a linear sequence of morphs are agglutinating. Each morph carries one meaning and the morphs are strung together like beads, as in Turkish and the Dravidian languages.

Isolating languages have words of one morph and inflectional languages merge several meanings in one form. In an agglutinating language the boundaries between morphs are clear and each morph has a constant shape, as in the Turkish plural and case suffixes.

Answer: A

The correct pairing is a-iv, b-ii, c-iii, d-i. Mandarin Chinese is the standard example of an isolating language, Eskimo is incorporating, Hungarian is agglutinating, and Sora is polysynthetic, as the key states.

The other code strings switch these types, for example making Hungarian incorporating or Sora isolating, so they fail on at least one pair. A good method is to fix the one or two pairs you are sure of first and strike out every code that disagrees with them, which leaves a single code.

Answer: C

The correct pairing is a-i, b-iii, c-iv, d-ii. UNESCO is an acronym, Dalda is a coinage (a made-up brand name), 'embolden' takes the circumfix em-...-en, and 'intercom' is a blend of 'internal' and 'communication'.

The other code strings give the examples to the wrong processes, so they fail on at least one pair. A good method is to fix the one or two pairs you are sure of first and strike out every code that disagrees with them, which leaves a single code.

Answer: A

A compound word is different from a phrase because some compounds can be without a head, the exocentric compounds, while phrases cannot be without a head. A phrase is always built around a head.

The reverse claim is wrong, and so are the options saying both can be headless or that both must have a head in every language, since exocentric compounds exist. The other choices are terms from the same area of linguistics, which is why they look plausible, but each names a different notion and so does not fit the wording of the question.