English Linguistics - Assignment 4 James Madison University

[This assignment will be marked only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.]

1. Give an example of a word created in your lifetime.
2. Create a new "word" that contains at least two English morphemes and that is logically possible using English morphology, but that does not actually exist. (ie., find a lexical gap in English that wasn't mentioned in class. :) )
3. Use an etymological dictionary to find the etymology of two of the following words: "awful", "amorous", "jurisdiction", and then explain the etymology in your own words. (As an alternative to this, look up just "antidisestablishmentarianism" and then explain the likely hierarchical order of the morphological derivation of this word.) One possible source is the on-line OED, which can be accessed electronically on-campus and has a link on the bottom of this page. If you cannot use the online OED, the library also has physical copies of the OED and other etymological dictionaries.
4. List at least 5 content words in English (other than those mentioned in class or in your text) that you believe to be monomorphemic, including at least two that are multi-syllabic.
5. List at least 5 content words in English that you believe to be polymorphemic, including at least two that are monosyllabic.
6. Write down a sentence (at least 6 words long) from a favorite novel or story and then remove all the words that you think are function words. Is the basic meaning of the sentence still intact? What is lost?
7. Do Exercise 2 on page 107 in your text.
8. Chapter 3 discusses other ways new words may enter a language. Find your own examples in English of three other ways words entered the language. (You may use "borrowing" as yet another way, though the textbook doesn't mention this until a later chapter. :) )