DEDEN SYEFRUDIN

WHAT IS MORPHOLOGY?

The study of the structure of words; the
component of the grammar that includes the
rules of word formation (F&R 2003; 588)
GRAMAR
SEMANTIC
SYNTACTIC
MORPHOLOGY
Semantic =
Meaning
Syntactic =
Sentence structure
Morphology = word
Structure
Phonology = Sound System
As regard the interaction with phonology, the
selection of the form that manifests a given
morpheme may be influenced by the sound that
realize neighboring morphemes. Take the
indefinite article in English.
It has two manifestations. It is a before a word
that begins with a consonant (e.g., a pear) and
an before a word that begins with a vowel (e.g.,
an orange). We cannot describe the phonological
shape of the indefinite article without referring
to the sound at the beginning of the word that
follows it.

Normally, sentences are constructed in such a
way that some constituents identify
particular individuals or things and other
constituents say things about those
individuals or entities.
Constituent which indicate individuals or
entities are called referring expression, while
those which attribute to them properties,
processes, action, relation or states are called
predicates.

Syntactic Categories like noun phrase (NP) and verb
phrase (VP) specify the syntactic type of particular
constituents. The syntactic type of a constituent is
determined by the category of the head of that
constituent.
Grammatical Relation indicate the grammatical
relationship that holds between two syntactic
constituents in a sentence. They are determined, not
by semantic consideration, but by the syntactic
position of a particular constituent. The grammatical
relation that we shall use are verb, phrase, subject,
object, second object and oblique.

Grammatical Function Change refers to
alternations in the grammatical encoding of
referential expressions, to use the definition
presented by Baker ( 1988: 1).
Passive,
causative, and
other phenomena
are grammatical-function-changing
phenomena because they can be seen as
triggering the encoding change.
The active-passive distinction is traditionally
considered one of voice. The passive is
marked by a special morpheme, but the
active requires no such marker. The terms
marked and unmarked are frequently
encountered in linguistics, and they are by no
means limited to describing grammatical-
function-changing phenomenon.
The antisipassive occurs less frequently than
the passive in the worlds languages. In the
antisipassive, an object of the verb is
expressed instead in an oblique case or it
becomes null.
The causative typically expresses the
meaning cause to do something or
sometimes allow, persuade, help to do
something.
The term applicative describes a number of
different grammatical-function-changing
phenomena cross-linguistically. They involve
the addition of an applicative affix along with
a change in function of an oblique object,
indirect object,or null object. These come to
expressed as a main object of the verb, often
called the applied object.
Morphological derivations must directly
reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa)
(Baker,1985)

Baker claims that Grammatical Category
changing processes have in common is the
movement of a lexical category (i.e word)
from one position in a sentence to a new
position, which happens to be inside another
word. The process whereby one semantically
independent word is moved by syntactic rules
to a new position and comes to be found
inside another word is called Incorporation.

Noun incorporation
Verb incorporation
Preposition incorporation
Gerdts (1998: 84) defines incorporation as the
compounding of a word (typically a verb or
preposition) with another element (typically a
noun, pronoun, or adverb). The compound
serves the combined syntactic function of both
elements.
Noun incorporation is the most common type. It
involves the combination of a noun stem and a
verb or adjective into a complex form that serves
as a predicate.
Chung (1978) observes that an object Noun-
Phrase in a single clause is berefit of all
articles and becomes incorporated in the verb
itself under certain covered ircumstances.

In many Austronesian language and Bantu languages
there are applicative sentences with direct object
which can be paraphrased by other sentences in
which the same Noun-Phrase occurs as an ablique
Noun-Phrase governed by a preposition.
Baker (1988) contend that no special Grammatical-
Function Change rule is required to account for these
facts. They can be adequately dealt with if we assume
that such languages have a movement rule that take a
preposition out of a prepositional phrase and plants it
inside a verb.
The lexicon contains a list of lexical items (e.g. nouns,
adjectives, verbs, adverbs). Di Sciullo and Williams (1987)
refer to the items listed in the lexicon as listemes. Most
listemes are single vocabulary items such as mediatrix. The
idiosyncratic properties of listemes typically include:
Morphological properties: mediatrix is borrowed from Old
French; it takes the suffix ices for plural;
Semantic properties: mediatrix means a go-between;
mediatrix is human and female and the male equivalent is
mediator;
Phonological properties: indicating pronunciation
9e.g./mi:ditriks/);
Syntactic properties: mediatrix is a noun, countable, feminine,
etc.

A number of linguist, notably William
91981a,1981b). Di Sciullo and Williams (1987)
and Selkirk (1982), have argue that word-
formation rules are phrase-structure rules akin
to the phrase-structure rules found in syntax,
The Syntax of Words, implies morphological
rules are not regarded by Selkirk as essentially
different from syntactic rules. She explicit argues
in that book that morphology is the study of
the syntax of words while what is traditionally
called syntax is the study of the syntax of
sentences.

Selkirk proposed for English word-level
context-free phrase structure rules like the
following:
Phrase-Structure rule Example
Stem -> affix stem expel
Stem -> stem affix fraternal
Word -> word affix book-ing
Word -> affix word re-wind
Word -> word word footpath