linguistic morphology In linguistics, morphology () is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morph ...

, 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. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

. 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 proces ...

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. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

), 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 wikt:obsolete#Adjective, obsolete but remains in current use due to its presence within an idiom, word sense, or phrase. An example for a word sense is 'navy' in 'merchant navy', which means 'commercial flee ...

s. The term fossilization or

interlanguage An interlanguage is an idiolect that has been developed by a learner of a second language (L2) which preserves some features of their first language (L1), and can also overgeneralize some L2 writing and speaking rules. These two characteristics ...

fossilization is also used in reference to the observation that most adult second language learners never reach a native-language learners' level of proficiency. These Second language learner routinely suffer from errors that can be categorized into four distinctive categories, phonological fossilization, lexical fossilization, syntactic fossilization and pragmatic fossilization. These errors occur regardless of exposure to the language or education level. In one noted example an older Japanese student completed a master's degree is English Education and then later moved to the United States. However, even after seven years of daily exposure to English, this second language learner still made noticeable errors when communicating via email. "I miss a cozy, sunny weather in Fresno. I have put on a heavy down jacket, a glove and a cap. The strong, chilly wind attacks me. I am in the process of getting used to a mean weather."

References

Linguistic morphology {{Ling-morph-stub