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What is morphological analysis of words to estimate their meaning called?

English Language & Usage Asked on June 1, 2021

Is there a word for this?

I’ll use an example to show what I mean:

Let’s say you don’t know what sepsis means, which is bacterial infection of blood. So, you start thinking. You break the word up into what is most likely its components. In this case, it’s likely you’d recognize its stem, seps, and its nominal suffix, is. Then, looking at seps, you remember the Seps, a snake whose venom caused putrefaction in a Greek bestiary. Then, you remember your house’s septic tank, and the theme of putrefaction continues. With some more medical context, adding a non-linguistic logical element to your analysis (which in other examples might not be needed), you infer that sepsis is a bacterial infection of the blood. Other parts of the analysis might include looking for clues to find out what language the word stems from, and what languages it might have been transferred to, which further informs the analysis.

So, is there a word for this kind of analysis? Morpho-semantic analysis perhaps?

Note: I asked this question on Lingusitic.SE as well.

One Answer

In fact the term "Morphosemantic analysis" has been coined, and it corresponds to your feeling of what it should mean, although this new branch of knowledge is certain to be greatly limited in the importance of the results to be expected.

From Morphosemantics and their limits: three Inuit examples - Sedyl (PDF)

Morphosemantics may be defined as the semantic analysis of words through their constituent morphemes (Dorais 1984a: 3; 2010: 137). In polysynthetic languages, where lexemes generally result from the aggregation of several morphemes, morphosemantics can offer a particularly interesting and, hopefully, useful tool for getting access to the underlying meaning of words, often yielding significations that go beyond the surface meaning of the lexeme.

Here is a definition of the term "morphosemantics" (ref.).

Morphosemantics is generally a knowledge in linguistics, pertaining to morphological analysis combined with a semantic interpretation of words.

Correct answer by LPH on June 1, 2021

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