Morphosyntax

Morphosyntax

1. study of the grammatical categories or linguistic units that have both morpholical and syntatic properties

   • Morphology: How words are form and their form
   • Syntax:grammatical structure of words and phrases to create coherent sentences.

2. Morphemes: Is the smallest unit of language

   • Free morphemes: morphemes that can be stand alone with a meaning or grammatical function
     • lexical morphemes: have semantic content or meaning
       • noun
         • person, rock yard
       • verbs
         • eat, cut, fly
       • adj
         • beautiful, happy, gross
       • adv
         • Slowly, sadly,deeply
     • functional morphemes: have a little meaning or no meaning
       • Articles
         • the
       • Prepostions
         • in, on, under
       • conjunctions
         • with, and, so
   • Bound morphemes: never occur alone as word but as a part of a word
     • only can change lexical morphemes
       • derivational
         • -s/es(third person, does)
         • -er (comparative, smaller)
         • -'s (posessive, Cesar's keys
         • -ed (sp, exploded)
         • -en (pp, forgotten)
         • -ing (continous, flying)
         • -s (plural plants)
         • -est (superlative, largest)
     • Affixes
       • prefixes
         • Added to the beginning of the word
           • un-, mis-, dis-, di-, over-, ex-, im-, re-
             • unlike, misunderstand, dislike, overwhelm, ex-girl-friend, impossible, redo
       • suffixes
         • Are attached at the end of the words
           • -ment, -ly, -ful-, -ness, -able, -y, --ible, -al
             • goverment, handful, carelessness, comfortable, comical, victory, endlessly, clearly
   • monomorphemic
     • a word that contains just one morpheme
       • girl, dog, you
   • polimorphemic
     • consisting in two or more morphemes
       • careless, unlike, unbelievable

3. Word formation

   • Abbreviation
     • a word or phrase shortened
       • mister-.MR, doctor-DR
   • Back formation
     • formed by the deletion of a supposed affix from an already existint word
       • television - televise
   • Acronyms
     • formed from the initial letter of constituent words of a phrase or sentence
       • BTW, BRB, UNO
   • Coinage
     • new words created accidentally to fit something in purpose
       • klinex, kodak, google
   • Compunding
     • closed
       • lifetime
     • open
       • sun glasses
     • hyphenated
       • six-year-old
     • combination of two or more morphemes
       • Endocentric
         • can be guessed from the individual meaning of each element
           • Bookstore
       • Exocentric
         • meaning can't be guessed from the individual elements of the compunds
           • Hot dog
   • Clipping
     • new words formed by shortening other words
       • (tele)phone, (air)plane
   • Blending
     • new words are former by combining parts of two words
       • Brunch(Break fast+ Lunch)
   • Borrowing
     • adopting words from other languages
       • Tortilla, taco, chocolate
   • Conversion
     • process of changing or converting the class of a word without changing its form.
     • Noun to verb
       • bottle (The wine was brewed in France but bottled in Hong Kong.)
     • Verb to noun
       • cheat (He used some cheats in the computer game to make him win easier.)
     • Adjective to noun:
       • regular (I am one of the regulars at the pubs in Tsim Sha Tsui.)
     • Adjective to verb
       • empty (Can you empty the bin for me, please?)