MORPHOSYNTAX
2022.10.13This is a working draft. I am taking a linguistics course. Here are a handful of class notes I am compiling. We are partaking in the analysis of grammar.
- Morphology: the forms of words
- Syntax: ordering of words into larger groupings like phrases and clauses
“cats” is constructed from cat and -s plural. The meaning units of going to get smooshed together: gonna. orthography demands we write them separately.
What kinds of questions do we ask in linguistics?
- How are words formed?
- How are phrases and clauses structured?
- How are clauses structured semantically? transitive, case forms, semantic roles, tense, aspect, mood
- And Syntactically? alignment, valence, clause combining
How do we analyze?
- muck around in the data
- form a hypothesis finding a pattern is a hypothesis!
- test that hypothesis make sure pattern holds
- revise that hypothesis make a change
- develop a beautiful analysis tell a story of the pattern