Chapter 1

Exercise 1.1

A grammatical word is a word that is specified for grammatical categories and can occur as such in a sentence. Thus, walked in (a) is a grammatical word because it is a verb that is specified for tense, in this case past tense. In (b), walk is also a grammatical word, because it is a verb used in the second person (even though second person is not overtly marked on the verb). Walked, walk, and walking are all different forms, i.e. ‘word-forms,’ of one underlying word, the so-called lexeme, walk. The word-forms walked, walk, and walking are also orthographic words, because they occur between blank spaces. The word-form walking is part of a larger grammatical word, the compound walking stick (‘a stick for walking’). This compound is represented by two orthographic words.

Exercise 1.2

Morpheme: the smallest meaningful unit, e.g. walk and -ed in walked.

Prefix: a bound morpheme that is attached in front of a base, e.g. de- in decolonialize.

Suffix: a bound morpheme that is attached after a base, e.g. -ed in walked.

Affix: the cover term for prefix, suffix, infix, e.g. de-, -ed, -bloody- are all affixes.

Compound: a word made up of two bases, e.g. apartment building.

Root: the smallest, central, meaningful element of the word, e.g. colony in decolonialize.

Truncation: a morphological process by which the derived word is created by subtracting material from the base, as in Rob (← Robert).