Branches
the study of sign systems or communicative systems and the processes by which meaning is created
what is semiotics?
the concrete realisations of a morpheme in actual language use
what is a morph?
the smallest meaningful units in language
what is a morpheme?
words that contain more than one morpheme
what are polymorphemic words?
the study of the internal structure of words and their formation processes
what is morphology?
the study of the way the organs of speech are used to produce speech sounds
what is articulatory phonetics?
word-formation through truncation of names and other words
what is clipping?
the part of a word that cannot be broken down further; the most fundamental contribution to a word’s meaning
what is the root?
word-formation through combination of initial letters pronounced as one word
what is acronymy?
the study of the way humans make, transmit and receive speech sounds
what is phonetics?
the study of linguistic meaning
what is semantics?
a part of a word to which morphological operations apply
what is a base?
the part of a word that remains after all inflectional morphemes are removed
what is the stem?
word-formation through suffix-deletion
what is back-formation?
the study of the patterns which show how smaller linguistic units ultimately combine into conventional sentences
what is syntax?
the study of the conventionalised structure of a language, including inflectional morphology and syntax
what is grammar?
word-formation through combination of initial letters pronounced individually
what is initialism (alphabetism)?
creating lexemes by adding derivational morphemes
what is affixation (derivation)?
a subdivision of morphology that deals with morphological processes relevant for syntax and the creation of word-forms
what is inflection?
the study of the physical properties of speech sounds
what is acoustic phonetics?
the study of word meaning
what is lexical semantics?
the combination of two (or more) lexemes to form a new lexeme
what is compounding?
forming a new lexeme without any formal change (sometimes referred to as zero-derivation)
what is conversion?
‘telescoped’ compounding, that is, merging of two (or more) lexemes with loss of morphological and phonetic material
what is blending?
the study of phenomena which extend over more than one phoneme, e.g. syllables, stress, intonation and rhythm
what is supra-segmental phonology?