MORPHOLOGY & SYNTAX

Morphology

the system of categories and rules involved in words formation & interpretation / the study of the internal structure of words & the rules of word-formation

Words

the smallest free form found in language

Free forms

elements that can occur in isolation or whose position with respect to neighbouring categories is not completely fixed (e.g., "the" is still a free-form)

Morpheme

the smallest unit of language that carries meaning or a grammatical function

Simple words

1 morpheme

Complex words

2≤ morphemes

Free morphemes

can stand alone as independent word: Cat, happy, run, the

Bound morpheme

cannot stand alone, must be attached to another morpheme: -s, -un, -ed, -ify

Allomorphs

variant forms of a morpheme

Clitics

unstressed forms pronounced together with another element as if they were single unit

Enclitics

a clitic that attaches to the END of its host word (e.g., I’m)

Proclitics

a clitic that attaches to the BEGINNING of its host word (e.g., Gliel’ho detto)

Internal change

a process that changes a word’s meaning / gr. function by altering the internal vowel/consonant structure of the root, rather than adding affixes

Umlaut

a vowel in a syllable is influenced by a vowel in a following syllable (e.g., Goose → Geese)

Ablaut

a vowel alteration that is fundamental to the grammar, not triggered by a following sound (e.g., Сбор → собрал → соберу → собирать, Sing → sang)

Suppletion

the phenomenon where a word’s inflectional/comparative form is filled by 2≤ historically unrelated forms (e.g., Good - Better)

Compounding

the process of combining 2≤ independent lexemes to form a new words with new meaning (e.g., StreetCar, OutHouse)

Reduplication

a morphological process where all/parts of a root is repeated to indicate a gr. function (e.g., Curo - Cucurri)

Derivational morphemes

create a new word, can change word class (e.g., teach - teachER, -ment, -ly, un-, -ify)

Inflectional morphemes

express gr. information without changing core word class, mark gr. properties (e.g., tense, number, case, comparison: -s, -ed, -ing, -s (pl))

Polysynthetic (Incorporated) languages

languages where several semantic morphemes are combined into a single complex word

Inflectional languages

languages where a single inflection carries multiple gr. meanings

Agglutinative languages

languages where each morpheme has its own single gr. function

Isolated [Analytic] languages

languages where there are almost no paradigms, meaning isn’t expressed by word forms

Syntax

a system of rules & categories that underlies phrase/sentence formation

Lexical [Word-level syntactic categories]

open-class content words (N., V., Adj., Adv.)

Functional [Word-level syntactic categories]

close-class grammar words (Det., Prep., Conj., Aux., Pron.)

Phrases

syntactic units built around Ns, Vs, As, Ps

Constituent

a group of words that form a unit within a hierarchical construction

Grammatical roles

the function that constituents perform in a sentence

Subject

the topic/doer of an action

Predicate

the part of a sentence that contains the verb and tells what the subject does/is/like

Object

direct: the entity acted upon; indirect: the recipient/beneficiary