Lexical and semantic change

Descriptivism is...

• Not being pedantic

• Accepting change

• Seeing worth in all varieties of language

• Wanting clearer rules

Lexical change: compounding is..

• taking parts of words to make new ones

• putting whole words together to make a new one

• taking a word from another country

Lexical change: clipping

• when words are made longer

• when words are made shorter

• when words are blended together

Semantic change: narrowing

• meaning becomes more general

• meaning becomes more specific

• meaning becomes more positive

Semantic change: ameiloration is...

• words acquires a more negative meaning

• words acquires a more positive meaning

• words acquires a broader meaning

Semantic change: euphemism means...

• an impolite way of referring to a topic

• a polite way of referring to a topic

• a metaphor

In the words "recollection, idealistic, and ex-prisoner", "re-, -ion, -ist, -ic, ex-, and -er" are _________.

• a free root

• a bound root

• an inflectional affix

• a derivational affix

The words “take” and “table” are called _____ because they can occur unattached.

• free words

• bound morphemes

• free morphemes

• inflectional morphemes

Morphemes that represent tense, number, gender and case are called ____________ morphemes.

• inflectional

• free

• bound

• derivational

Etymology is the study of...

• word origins

• insects

• aliens

• accents