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MORPHOSYNTAX

2022.10.13

This 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.

1. Morphology: the forms of words
2. 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?

1. How are words formed?
2. How are phrases and clauses structured?
3. How are clauses structured semantically? transitive, case forms, semantic roles, tense, aspect, mood
4. And Syntactically? alignment, valence, clause combining

How do we analyze?

1. muck around in the data
2. form a hypothesis finding a pattern is a hypothesis!
3. test that hypothesis make sure pattern holds
4. revise that hypothesis make a change
5. develop a beautiful analysis tell a story of the pattern