Page 125 - The Language of Humour

112 INDEX OF TERMS
metaphor 30,34 morphology 7, 14
A word or phrase which The structure of individual words
establishes a comparison or in a language (see morpheme).
analogy between one object or
idea and another. For example, ‘I object 20
demolished his argument’ contains An element of a clause. For
a comparison between argument example, direct object e.g. ‘She
and war, also underlining the idea sent a letter.’ Indirect object e.g.
that arguments can be constructed ‘She sent me a letter.’
like buildings. oxymoron 31
modifier 19 An apparent contradiction.
A term used in noun phrase
analysis. paradox 31
morpheme 14 An apparent contradiction.
A morpheme is a basic unit of parody 46, 48
grammar in that it can function to The mocking imitation of a person,
mark a grammatical feature or text or genre.
structure. For example, ‘walks’ passive voice 93
contains two morphemes: ‘walk’ Shows that the subject in a
and ‘s’, the latter morpheme sentence is the agent of the action
marking the tense and person of or is affected by the action, e.g.
the basic or root morpheme ‘Man is bitten by dog.’
‘walk’. Morphemes are normally phonology 7, 8
divided into ‘free’ and ‘bound’ Study of the sounds of a language.
morphemes, the former occurring phrasal verb 16
also as single words and the latter A group of words with a single
only occurring meaningfully when unit of meaning, e.g. ‘put up
joined to the ‘free’ morpheme. with’=‘tolerate’.
Thus, ‘unselfish’ is a word made polysemy 16
up from three morphemes, a ‘free’ A semantic process by which
morpheme ‘self’ and two bound certain words have several
morphemes ‘un’ and ‘ish’. meanings, e.g. ‘lap’.
Morphemes are often studied as pragmatics 29, 38
inflectional or derivational forms: The study of language in use and
inflectional morphemes are the ways that sentences acquire
morphemes such as ‘s’ and ‘ed’ meanings in contexts.
(bound morphemes) which prefix 14
indicate grammatical meanings; A bound morpheme like ‘un-’
derivational morphemes are attached to the beginning of the
morphemes such as ‘ship’, ‘dom’ word ‘unlikely’.
which can form specific preposition 16
grammatical categories—in these A class of word that normally
cases nouns such as ‘friendship’ precedes nouns to indicate
and ‘kingdom’. position in time or space. For