What is Morphology and Syntax?
Morphology
There are two basic divisions in morphology :
(1) lexical morphology (word formation)
(2) inflectional morphology (grammar, conjugation/declination)
(2) inflectional morphology (grammar, conjugation/declination)
• Morphology is concerned with the study of word forms. A word is best defined in terms of internal stability (is it further divisible?) and external mobility (can it be moved to a different position in a sentence?).
• A morpheme is the smallest unit which carries meaning. An allomorph is a non-distinctive realisation of a morpheme.
• Morphology can further be divided into inflectional (concerned with the endings put on words) and derivational (involves the formation of new words).
• Affixation is the process of attaching an inflection or, more
generally, a bound morpheme to a word. This can occur at the beginning
or end and occasionally in the middle of a word form.
• Morphemes can be classified according to whether they are bound or free and furthermore lexical or grammatical.
• Word formation processes can be either productive or lexicalised (non-productive). There are different types of word-formation such as compounding, zero derivation (conversion), back formation and clipping.
• For any language the distinction between native and foreign
elements in the lexicon is important. In English there are different
affixes used here and stress also varies according to the historical
source of words.
Syntax
• Syntax concerns the possible arrangements of words in a language. The basic unit is the sentence which minimally consists of a main clause (containing at least a subject and predicate). Nouns and verbs are the major categories and combine with various others, such as adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. to form more complex sentences.
• Linguists often distinguish between a level on which the unambiguous semantic structure of a sentence is represented, formerly referred to as deep structure, and the actual form of a sentence, previously called surface structure.
• Sentence structure is normally displayed by means of a tree diagram which is intended to display the internal structure in a manner which is visually comprehensible. Such a diagram is not assumed to correspond to any encoding of language in the brain.
• The term generation is used in formal linguistics to describe exhaustively the structure of sentences. Whether it also refers to the manner in which speakers actually produce sentences, from the moment of having an idea to saying a sentence, is a very different question and most linguists do not make any such claim.
• Universal grammar represents an attempt to specify what structural elements are present in all languages, i.e. what is their common grammatical core, and to derive means for describing these adequately.
• Language would appear to be organised modularly. Thus syntax is basically independent of phonology, for instance, though there is an interface between these two levels of language.
The purpose of analysing the internal structure of sentences is
1) to reveal the hierarchy in the ordering of elements
2) to explain how surface ambiguities come about
3) to demonstrate the relatedness of certain sentences
Students should be aware of how syntax is acquired by young children.
Acquisition of syntax (greatly simplified)
| Input | Language heard in child’s surroundings |
| Step 1 | Abstraction of structures from actual sentences |
| Step 2 | Internalisation of these structures as syntactic templates (unconscious knowledge) |
What is Difference between Morphology and Syntax ?
Morphology is the study of morphemes, which are the
smallest unit of meaning in a language. A morpheme can be one whole word
or a prefix or suffix that is understood to change the meaning of the
word and therefore takes on meaning itself. Morphology includes the
concepts of inflection and derivation, which allow words to be made
plural or for the tense of a word to be changed. The study of morphology
attempts to understand how people use and understand the way that words
work, in an attempt to understand the difference that one morpheme
makes to many words and how words relate to each other.
Syntax and morphology are both important to the way that people derive meaning from language, but they are different in that syntax refers to the order and use of words, and morphology refers to the parts of words that create meaning. For example, it is possible to create a sentence that is grammatically correct, but that makes no sense to a speaker of the language. This is possible because syntax only governs the order of a sentence and not what the words in it mean. On the other hand, a combination of words may make sense when used together, but lose their meaning when rearranged in a way that violates the rules of syntax. Syntax and morphology are different but are dependent on each other.
Syntax and morphology are both important to the way that people derive meaning from language, but they are different in that syntax refers to the order and use of words, and morphology refers to the parts of words that create meaning. For example, it is possible to create a sentence that is grammatically correct, but that makes no sense to a speaker of the language. This is possible because syntax only governs the order of a sentence and not what the words in it mean. On the other hand, a combination of words may make sense when used together, but lose their meaning when rearranged in a way that violates the rules of syntax. Syntax and morphology are different but are dependent on each other.
What is Relationship between morphology and syntax ?
Morphology and syntax
are independent of each other in their basis. Morphology researches
forms, syntax researches the relationship between constituents.
Therefore, we should use different concepts for them. That is, we can
say that English is nominative-accusative language even though it does
not have accusative. In this case, we reserve accusative to the
syntactic usage, whereas in most languages it is a morphological term.
This indicates the distinctness of these fields.
However,
in the reality of language, nothing is independent. Syntax requires
words to have certain forms, and the usage of certain forms can require
certain syntax. This is morphosyntax — where word forms and clausal
level collide.
