Morphosyntax

The morpho is the area of grammar , the morphology (shapes or Flexionslehre ) and the syntax considered (syntax) in their interactions.

Demarcation

While morphology is concerned with the internal structure of words and the investigation of the smallest meaningful and / or functional elements of a language , the morphemes , morphosyntactics investigates the relationships between the morphemes and the sentence structure. According to Wandruszka (1997), the area of morphosyntactics is described with the reproduction of syntactic functions and relations by word parts or linked morphemes. For him, morphosyntactics is actually word form formation and relates to the syntactic-functional content of morphemes.

An example of the morphosyntax perspective is the rendering of syntactic functions by morphological means. In languages that mark case morphologically, these are the flexive endings, e.g. B. the ending -AM in Latin ROSAM marks the accusative and can thus indicate that ROSAM is an object; or the ending -ami in Polish psami the instrumental ('with the dogs', to the nominative: psy , dogs'), which can be used to indicate that it is an adverbial.

On the other hand, the ending -o in a Spanish hablo , I speak ', refers directly to the subject and turns a verb stem into a predicate. Depending on how you define the morphological means may like to dt in addition to pure Flexiven. -E, -st, -t in I do, you do, he makes even clitics (z. B. Some manifestations of articles or pronouns) counted become like in French je fais , I do 'or Portuguese comprá-lo-ia , I would buy it', where the object pronoun has to be inserted between the stem (comprá-) and the conditional ending (-ia) , while the pronoun is in front when it is negative : Não o compraria ('I wouldn't buy it').

A distinction must be made between the following functions:

Syntactic functions: these are z. B. predicate , adverbial , subject , object
Syntactic categories: these include B. Adjective phrase, noun phrase, sentence
Terms for structural relationships: such as head , attribute , complement
Morphosyntactic terms: these relate to a form-function correlation: case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental, ablative, locative), tense, aspect, mode, diathesis, number, gender, person, comparative. One speaks of morphosyntactic terms primarily when the syntactic functions in a language are expressed by morphological means, for example in German there is a morphosyntactic category "case" because with the endings -0, -es, -e, -0 in Mann, Mannes, Manne, Mann the case nominative, genitive, dative, accusative are expressed. In French, there is a morphosyntactic case category for nouns in a broader sense, because the syntactic functions are expressed by position or functional words (prepositions): Albert voit le professeur , Albert sees the teacher ': here it is only through the position that it becomes clear that Albert Subject and the teacher is object. Function words that are clitics can also be included in the morpho syntax (see above).
Lexical categories: These are the parts of speech such as verb , noun , adjective , the syntactic categories (e.g. noun phrase ) are derived from them, a noun phrase is an expression that is built around a noun (i.e. has the noun as a head).

literature

Ulrich Wandruszka: Syntax and Morphosyntax. Narr Francke Attempto, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-8233-5095-1 .
Ulrich Wandruszka: Morphosyntax. In: Lexicon of Romance Linguistics. Volume 1, 2007.

Web links

Wiktionary: Morphosyntax - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

^ Eduardo Blasco Ferrer: Linguistics for Romanists. Basic terms in context. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-503-03715-2 , p. 50.
↑ Ulrich Wandruszka: Syntax and Morphosyntax: a categorical-grammatical representation based on Romance and German facts. (= Tübingen Contributions to Linguistics. Volume 430). Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-8233-5095-1 , p. 172.
^ Sebastian Kempgen: The Slavic languages: an international handbook on their structure, their history and their research. (= Handbooks of linguistics and communication science. Volume 32). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-015660-7 , p. 130.

[1] Eduardo Blasco Ferrer: Linguistics for Romanists. Basic terms in context. Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-503-03715-2 , p. 50.

[2] Ulrich Wandruszka: Syntax and Morphosyntax: a categorical-grammatical representation based on Romance and German facts. (= Tübingen Contributions to Linguistics. Volume 430). Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-8233-5095-1 , p. 172.

[3] Sebastian Kempgen: The Slavic languages: an international handbook on their structure, their history and their research. (= Handbooks of linguistics and communication science. Volume 32). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-015660-7 , p. 130.