Back to the Basics
The study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language
What is morphology?
Not a craft beer, but a widely used system of notation among linguistcs.
IPA
The smallest meaningful unit in a language.
What is morpheme?
In every sentence, these are that words that group together to act as a unit.
What is a constituent? (noun phrase, verb phrase, direct object phrase)
This is the systemic instruction of letter-sound correspondences typically seen in today's early childhood classrooms.
What is phonics instruction?
The study of how words are assembled to yield grammatical sentences.
What is syntax?
Sounds articulated without obstruction.
What are vowels?
An example of a bound morpheme.
What is "-ly," "-s," "re-," any assortment of affixes?
In the sentence, "The gosh-darn goobers are hubadubing all over the whatsit," "goobers" is this lexical category (part of speech).
What is a noun?
Student A (L1 Spanish) reads "scream" as "escream." As their teacher, you might...
- Decide if the error impedes communication or the goal of the activity
- Draw their attention to differences in consonant clusters across languages
One is the study of all possible speech sounds, the other is the study of speech sounds in one language.
The smallest distinct unit of sound in a specified language.
What is phoneme?
The number of morphemes in the word "joyous"
Two: joy + ous
Bonus: What type of morphemes are each of those?
This sentence is ambiguous. "The students saw Mx. Allen and the dog sitting under a tree." Name two possible meanings.
1. The students saw Mx. Allen (who may or may not have been under the tree). They also saw the dog sitting under the tree.
2. Mx. Allen and the dog were sitting under the tree. The students saw them.
You overhear a conversation between two students.
Student A (L1 English): I'm SO embarrassed.
Student B (L1 Spanish): Wow! Congrats! When is the baby coming?
As their teacher, you might...
Discuss false cognates
These rules establish and enforce what we should say or write according to notions of "good" and "bad" grammar.
What is prescriptive grammar?
"Cry" and "___" is an example of a minimal pair.
What is "dry"? (Try, Wry, Fry, etc)
The ability to add new words, phrases, or other meaningful units to language.
What is openness?
The sentence "the dog jumped on the couch" has these kinds of constituent phrases.
What are NP, VP, and PP?
NP: The dog, the couch
VP: jumped (on the couch)
PP: on the couch
Student C reads the word "dogs" as /dɑks/. As their teacher, you might...
- Decide if the error impedes communication or the goal of the activity
- Draw their attention to vowel sounds and assimilation processes
The number of morphemes in "unpredictably"
Five: un + pre + dict(ion) + able + ly