English Morphemes

1. Free

   1. Open Class

   2. Closed Class

2. Bound

   1. Affix

      1. Derivational

      2. Inflectional

   2. Root

There are six ways to form new words. Compounds are a combination of words, acronyms are derived from the initials of words, back-formations are created from removing what is mistakenly considered to be an affix, abbreviations or clippings are shortening longer words, eponyms are created from proper nouns (names), and blending is combining parts of words into one.

Compound: doghouse Acronym: NBA (National Basketball Association) or scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) Back-formation: edit from editor Abbreviation: phone from telephone Eponym: sandwich from Earl of Sandwich Blending: smog from smoke and fog

Grammar is learned unconsciously at a young age. Ask any five year old, and he will tell you that "I eat" and "you eat," but his "dog eats." But a human's syntactical knowledge goes farther than what is grammatical and what is not. It also accounts for ambiguity, in which a sentence could have two meanings, and enables us to determine grammatical relationships such as subject and direct object. Although we may not consciously be able to define the terms, we unconsciously know how to use them in sentences.

Syntax, of course, depends on lexical categories (parts of speech.) You probably learned that there are 8 main parts of speech in grammar school. Linguistics takes a different approach to these categories and separates words into morphological and syntactic groups. Linguistics analyzes words according to their affixes and the words that follow or precede them. Hopefully, the following definitions of the parts of speech will make more sense and be of more use than the old definitions of grammar school books.

Open Class Words

Nouns	_____ + plural endings "dogs"	Det. Adj. _____ (this is called a Noun Phrase) "the big dog"
Verbs	____ + tense endings "speaks"	Aux. ____ (this is called a Verb Phrase) "have spoken"
Adjectives	____ + er / est "small"	Det. ____ Noun "the smaller child"
Adverbs	Adj. + ly "quickly"	____ Adj. or Verb or Adv. "quickly ran"

Closed Class Words

Determiners	a, an, the, this, that, these, those, pronouns, quantities	____ Adj. Noun "this blue book"
Auxiliary Verbs	forms of be, have, may, can, shall	NP ____ VP "the girl is swimming"
Prepositions	at, in, on, under, over, of	____ NP (this is called a Prepositional Phrase) "in the room"
Conjunctions	and, but, or	N or V or Adj. ____ N or V or Adj. "apples and oranges"

Subcategorization defines the restrictions on which syntactic categories (parts of speech) can or cannot occur within a lexical item. These additional specifications of words are included in our mental lexicon. Verbs are the most common categories that are subcategorized. Verbs can either be transitive or intransitive. Transitive verbs take a direct object, while intransitive verbs take an indirect object (usually they need a preposition before the noun).

Transitive verb: to eat			I ate an apple. (direct object)
Intransitive: to sleep			I was sleeping in the bed. (indirect object)

Individual nouns can also be subcategorized. For example, the noun idea can be followed by a Prepositional Phrase or that and a sentence. But the noun compassion can only be followed by a Prepositional Phrase and not a sentence.  (Ungrammatical sentences are marked with asterisks.)

the idea of stricter laws			his compassion for the animals
the idea that stricter laws are necessary			*his compassion that the animals are hurt

Phrase structure rules describe how phrases are formed and in what order. These rules define the following:

Noun Phrase (NP)			(Det.) (Adj.) Noun (PP)
Verb Phrase (VP)			Verb (NP) (PP)
Prepositional Phrase (PP)			Prep. NP
Sentence (S)			NP VP

The parentheses indicate the categories are optional. Verbs don't always have to be followed by prepositional phrases and nouns don't always have to be preceded by adjectives.

Passive Sentences The difference between the two sentences "Mary hired Bill" and "Bill was hired by Mary" is that the first is active and the second is passive. In order to change an active sentence into a passive one, the object of the active must become the subject of the passive. The verb in the passive sentence becomes a form of "be" plus the participle form of the main verb. And the subject of the active becomes the object of the passive preceded by the word "by."

Active			Passive
Mary hired Bill.			Bill was hired by Mary.
Subject + Verb + Object			Object + "be" + Verb + by + Subject