Linguistics Reference

Phonetics

Physical sounds of speech

Aspiration in English "pin" vs "spin"

Phonology

Sound systems and patterns

English /p/ and /b/ are distinct phonemes

Morphology

Word structure and formation

un- + break + -able = unbreakable

Syntax

Sentence structure

SVO (English) vs SOV (Japanese, Latin)

Semantics

Meaning

"bank" = financial institution or riverbank

Pragmatics

Meaning in context

"Can you pass the salt?" = request, not question

Etymology

Word origins

"salary" from Latin salarium (salt money)

Derivation

Adding affix to change category/meaning

happy → unhappy, happy → happiness

Compounding

Combining two free morphemes

fire + wall = firewall

Blending

Merging parts of two words

smoke + fog = smog

Clipping

Shortening a word

laboratory → lab

Acronym

Initial letters pronounced as word

NATO, SCUBA, LASER

Initialism

Initial letters spelled out

CPU, HTTP, DNS

Back-formation

Removing affix from existing word

editor → edit

Conversion

Changing category without affix

network (noun) → to network (verb)

Eponym

From proper name

algorithm (al-Khwarizmi), bluetooth (Harald Bluetooth)

Indo-European

English, Spanish, Hindi, Russian, Greek, Latin

Largest family; inflectional morphology

Semitic

Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic

Consonantal root system (3-letter roots)

Sino-Tibetan

Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan

Tonal; isolating morphology

Japonic

Japanese

SOV order; agglutinative; honorific system

Turkic

Turkish, Uzbek, Kazakh

Vowel harmony; agglutinative

Austronesian

Malay, Tagalog, Hawaiian

Reduplication; verb-initial (some)

Free morpheme

Stands alone as a word

cat, run, fire

Bound morpheme

Must attach to another morpheme

-ing, un-, -tion

Prefix

Bound morpheme before root

re-boot, un-do, pre-fix

Suffix

Bound morpheme after root

run-ning, teach-er, hope-ful

Infix

Bound morpheme inside root

Rare in English; Tagalog: sulat → sumulat

Root

Core meaning carrier

struct in construction, destruction, restructure

SOV

Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Latin, Hindi

~45%

SVO

English, Spanish, French, Mandarin

~42%

VSO

Arabic, Irish, Welsh, Hawaiian

~9%

VOS

Malagasy, Fijian

~3%

OVS

Hixkaryana

<1%

OSV

Warao

<1%