morphology (n.)

The branch of GRAMMAR which studies the STRUCTURE or FORMS of WORDS, primarily through the use of the MORPHEME construct. It is traditionally distinguished from SYNTAX, which deals with the RULES governing the combination of words in SENTENCES. It is generally divided into two fields: the study of INFLECTIONS (inflectional morphology) and of WORD-FORMATION (lexical or derivational morphology) – a distinction which is sometimes accorded theoretical status (split morphology). When emphasis is on the technique of analyzing words into morphemes, particularly as practiced by American STRUCTURALIST linguists in the 1940s and 1950s, the term morphemics is used. Morphemic analysis in this sense is part of a SYNCHRONIC linguistic study; morphological analysis is the more general term, being applied to DIACHRONIC studies as well.

Morphological analysis may take various forms. One approach is to make a DISTRIBUTIONAL study of the morphemes and morphemic variants occurring in words (the analysis of morphotactic arrangements), as in ITEM-AND ARRANGEMENT MODELS of description. Another approach sets up morphological processes or operations, which see the relationships between word forms as one of replacement (e.g. replace the /eI/ of take with the  of took), as in ITEM-AND PROCESS models.

In early GENERATIVE linguistics, morphology and syntax are not seen as two separate LEVELS; the syntactic RULES of grammar apply to the structure of words, as they do to PHRASES and sentences, and morphological notions emerge only at the point where the output of the syntactic component has to be given a PHONOLOGICAL REPRESENTATION (via the MORPHOPHONOLOGICAL rules). Natural morphology (NM) is an approach which aims to describe and explain UNIVERSAL tendencies in word-formation (such as the preference for deriving NOUNS from VERBS, rather than the reverse). Prosodic morphology is a theory of how morphological and phonological determinants of linguistic form interact. In affixal (as opposed to non-affixal) morphology, the only permissible morphological operation is the combining of affixes and stems. Morphologically driven processes have become increasingly recognized within generative linguistics in recent years; for example, morphological features play a central role in the MINIMALIST PROGRAMME. Examples such as refer and deceive have also fuelled a debate between morpheme-based and word-based views of morphology: because -fer and -ceive are not independent morphemes, it is unclear how such words can best be handled, whether through the use of regular affixing processes (as in morpheme-based approaches) or not.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

قسم شؤون المعارف يطلق دورة (صفات الشيعة) لعدد من ملاكات العتبة العباسية المقدسة

الهيأة العليا لإحياء التراث تبحث تعزيز التعاون المشترك مع مركز الإمام الباقر (عليه السلام) في إيران

جامعة الكفيل تكرِّم طلبتها المتميزين من ذوي الاحتياجات الخاصة

فريق طبي في مستشفى الكفيل يجري عملية ناجحة لطفل يعاني من تشوّه ولاديّ بالنخاع الشوكي

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

خصوصا مع تقدم السن.. 6 سلوكيات يومية قد تدمّر صحتك

فاكهة خضراء.. علاج طبيعي فعّال للإمساك واضطرابات الهضم

روسيا تبدأ أولى التجارب السريرية للقاح واعد ضد السرطان

كنز غذائي على طبقك.. ماذا تفعل السبانخ بجسمك؟

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

رصد نوع نادر من القطط في تايلاند للمرة الأولى منذ عقود

روسيا تخطط لإقامة محطة نووية في القمر خلال العقد المقبل

كيف قاد إيلون ماسك حملة "غروك" لاختراق عرش الذكاء الاصطناعي

ألتمان: الذكاء الاصطناعي سيتجاوز البشر في 2026 !

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Zero-anaphora (“pro-drop”)

Annotated Phrase Structure trees

Word-level (lexical) categories

Syntax and speech

Word Order- Classifiers and phrasal dependents in DP

Word order- Suffixal Pl and Art

Syntax Word order and restrictive vs. nonrestrictive modification

Syntax

Language Mixture—Grammar

Change in grammar and pronunciation

Word order

Grammaticalization.