Complete the following test to find out how much you know about basic morphology.

Complete all answers and find out your results. There is no negative marking.
Top of Form
1. What is morphology?
(A) The study of the rules governing the sounds that form words
(B) The study of the rules governing sentence formation
(C) The study of the rules governing word formation
    

2. Which best describes the English language?

(A) English has complex morphology and less rigid syntax.
(B) English has less complex morphology but more rigid syntax.
(C) English has complex morphology and rigid syntax.
    

3. What can words often be divided into?

   

4. How many different lexemes are there in the following list?

man, men, girls, girl, mouse
     

5. Which sentence describes inflectional morphology? 

(A) Adding a morpheme to produce a new word but the same lexeme.
(B) Adding a morpheme to produce a new word and different lexeme.
(C) Adding a morpheme to produce the same word but different lexeme.
    

6. Which sentence describes derivational morphology? 

(A) Adding a morpheme to produce a new word but the same lexeme.
(B) Adding a morpheme to produce a new word and a different lexeme.
(C) Adding a morpheme to produce the same word but a different lexeme.
    

7. In the English language inflectional morphemes can be...

     

8. In the English language derivational morphemes can be...

     
 Compounds may be compositional, meaning that the meaning of
the new word is determined by combining the meanings of the
parts, or noncompositional, meaning that the meaning of the new
word cannot be determined by combining the meanings of the
parts. For example, a blueberry is a berry that is blue. However,
a breakup is not a relationship that was severed into pieces in an
upward direction.

 Clipping is the word formation process in which a word is reduced or

shortened without changing the meaning of the word. Clipping differs from back-
formation in that the new word retains the meaning of the original word. For
example:
 advertisement – ad
 alligator – gator
 examination – exam
 gasoline – gas
 gymnasium – gym
 influenza – flu
 laboratory – lab
 mathematics – math
 memorandum – memo
 photograph – photo
 public house – pub
 raccoon – coon
 reputation – rep
 situation comedy – sitcom
 telephone – phone
The four types of clipping are back clipping, fore-clipping, middle clipping, and
complex clipping. Back clipping is removing the end of a word as
in gas from gasoline. Fore-clipping is removing the beginning of a word as
in gator fromalligator. Middle clipping is retaining only the middle of a word as
in flu from influenza. Complex clipping is removing multiple parts from multiple
words as in sitcom from situation comedy.
 Blending
 Blending is the word formation process in which parts of two or more words
combine to create a new word whose meaning is often a combination of the
original words. For example:
 advertisement + entertainment → advertainment
 biographical + picture → biopic
 breakfast + lunch → brunch
 chuckle + snort → chortle
 cybernetic + organism → cyborg
 guess + estimate → guesstimate
 hazardous + material → hazmat
 motor + hotel → motel
 prim + sissy → prissy
 simultaneous + broadcast → simulcast
 smoke + fog → smog
 Spanish + English → Spanglish
 spoon + fork → spork
 telephone + marathon → telethon
 web + seminar → webinar
Blended words are also referred to as portmanteaus.
 noun-noun compound: note + book → notebook
 adjective-noun compound: blue + berry → blueberry
 verb-noun compound: work + room → workroom
 noun-verb compound: breast + feed → breastfeed
 verb-verb compound: stir + fry → stir-fry
 adjective-verb compound: high + light → highlight
 verb-preposition compound: break + up → breakup
 preposition-verb compound: out + run → outrun
 adjective-adjective compound: bitter + sweet → bittersweet
 preposition-preposition compound: in + to → into

Examples and Observations:

 "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

(Winston Churchill, remarks at a White House luncheon, Washington, D.C.,
June 16, 1954)
 "Hands off the man,
the flim flam man.
His mind is up his sleeve
and his talk is make believe."
(Laura Nyro, "Flim Flam Man")

 Newspaper editor: We're looking for a new food critic, someone who
doesn't immediately pooh-pooh everything he eats.
Homer: Nah, it usually takes a few hours.
("Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" The Simpsons, 1999)

 "I don't dally much with riff-raff these days, and he's a pretty raffy kind of a
riff."
(Bob Hope as Turkey Jackson in Road to Morocco, 1942)

 "Enough chit-chat. Let's see how you like flaming garbage!"

(Moe in ""A Tale of Two Springfields." The Simpsons, 2000)

 "Bing bang, I saw the whole gang

Dancing on my living room rug, yeah.
Flip flop, they was doing the bop.
All the teens had the dancing bug."
(Bobby Darin and Murray Kaufman, "Splish Splash")

 "I had no notion of being lost in so much light; but I had wander'd out of the
main streets, and was got into the crinkum-crankum parts of London, where
there are turnings and windings on every side."
 (Peter Thrifty, "A Farmer's Description of the Illuminations in London." The
Sporting Magazine, Feb. 1802)

 "Items with identical spoken constituents, such as goody-goody and din-

din, are rare. What is normal is for a single vowel or consonant to change
between the first constituent and the second, such as see-saw and walkie-
talkie.

"Reduplicatives are used in a variety of ways. Some simply imitate

sounds: ding-dong, bow-wow. Some suggest alternative movements: flip-flop,
ping-pong. Some are disparaging: dilly-dally, wishy-washy. And some intensify
meaning: teeny-weeny, tip-top. Reduplication is not a major means of creating
lexemes in English, but it is perhaps the most unusual one."