linguistic morphology In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, including the principles by which they are formed, and how they relate to one another within a language. Most approaches to morphology investigate the structure of words in terms of morphemes, wh ...

, fossilization refers to two close notions. One is preserving of ancient linguistic features which have lost their grammatical functions in

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

. Another is loss of

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proce ...

of a grammatical paradigm (''e.g.'' of an

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...

), which still remains in use in some words.''The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics'', by Robert Lawrence Trask
p. 125
/ref> Examples of fossilization include fossilized morphemes and

fossil word A fossil word is a word that is broadly obsolete but remains in current use due to its presence within an idiom or phrase. An example for a word sense is 'ado' in 'much ado'. An example for a phrase is ' in point' (relevant), which is retained ...

s. The term interlanguage fossilization refers to common types of errors made by most adult second-language learners, differing from the idiomatic usage of native-language learners. These are erroneous generalizations or simplified language rules, which may be classified as phonological fossilization, lexical fossilization, syntactic fossilization and pragmatic fossilization. These errors occur regardless of exposure to the language or education level.

References

{{reflist Linguistic morphology