Linguistics, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics. Definitions And Terminology.

The Science: Definitions Linguistics: –The science which studies language as a system of human communication. Morphology: –The study of the internal structure of words. Syntax: –The study of the combination of words. Semantics: –The study of the meaning of linguistic expressions.

The Levels of Language and Linguistics

Grammatical Components A unit is a linguistic sequence of varying composition which itself carries a grammatical structure or which operates in the structure of other grammatical patterns. Five grammatical units: –Sentence, clause, group, word, morpheme. Units are related to each other hierarchically on the scale of rank. –All units, except the sentence, are characterized by their function in the patterns.

Grammatical Functions and Categories Kernel clause structure: –Subject and predicate. Group: –Subject,predicator, object,complement, adjunct, conjunct, disjunct. Words: –Determiner, modifier, head, complement, operator. Phrase: –NG (noun group), AdjG (adjective group), VG (verb group), AdvG (adverb group), PG (prepositional group), PossG (possessive group). Words: –Noun, adjective, verb, adverb,preposition, conjunction. Functions refer to what a linguistic item does whereas categories refer to form and word-class.

A sample of constituent analysis