Grammar = Morphology + Part of Speech + Syntax (Rules) - the rules of morphology and syntax produces grammar. it is a set of linguistic habits that is constantly being negotiated and reinvented

• morphology
  • the study of morphemes and word inflexions/forms
  • a morphologist would be interested in the relationship between words like “dog” and “dogs” or “walk” and “walking,” and how people figure out the differences between those words
• lexical grammar describes the structure of the lexicon, that is, every token (word) used in the language
• syntactical grammar describes how phrases and documents are formed from those tokens
• part of speech
  • is a category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its syntactic functions
• syntax
  • is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences/phrases
  • is a set of rules for constructing full sentences/phrases out of lexemes
  • is the study of sentences/phrases structure, or how people put words into the right order so that they can communicate meaningfully
  • all languages have underlying rules of syntax, which, along with morphological rules, make up every language’s grammar. An example of syntax coming into play in language is “Eugene walked the dog” versus “The dog walked Eugene.” The order of words is not arbitrary—in order for the sentence to convey the intended meaning, the words must be in a certain order

Link to original

Morphology

Morpheme

• the basic unit of morphology
• morphemes are the smallest meaningful unit of language
• a morpheme is a series of phonemes that has a special meaning

Morpheme Types

• free morphemes - stems - root words - are the main morphemes of words
  • open class - verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs
  • closed class - have a relatively fixed membership (conjunctions, prepositions, determiners, etc)
• bound morphemes - affixes - adds additional meaning to the stems to modify their meanings and grammatical functions
  • affix types (syntax placement)
    • prefix - placed in front of word
    • suffix - placed at end of word (e.g. -fer, -late)
    • infix - placed within a word
    • circumfix - placed in front and end of word
  • affix types (semantics)
    • inflectional affixes - changes the tense of a verb or the number value of the noun
      • -s, -ed, -ing
    • derivational affixes - changes the meaning or part-of-speech of the word
      • -ness, un-, -ify, -er, -able, -ation

Ways to Combine Morphemes to Create Words

• concatenative morphology - concatenation of 2 or more morphemes ordered one after to form a new word (e.g. “door” and “doors”; “run” and “running”)
  • inflectional morphology - combination of word stem and inflectional affixes, resulting in SAME word class (e.g. -s for pluralizing nouns and -ed for past tensing verbs)
  • derivational morphology - combination of word stem and derivational affixes, resulting in DIFFERENT word class (e.g. -ation for turning verb to noun, computerize to computerization)
  • compounding morphology - combination of multiple word stems (portmanteau - contraction?)
  • cliticizational morphology - combination of word stem and a clitic. a clitic is a morpheme that acts syntactically like a word but is reduced in form and attached to another word. (e.g. ‘ve in word I’ve is a clitic)
• non-concatenative morphology - morphemes are combined in more complex ways (e.g. “foot” and “feet”; “freeze” and “frozen”)
  • templatic morphology or root-and-pattern morphology - Semitic Languages