Philippine Christian University

Emilio Aguinaldo Highway, Dasmariñas, Cavite

Morphology & Syntax

Chapter 1
Summary
Master of Arts in Education Major in English

Submitted to: Dr. Priscilla R. Moriones

Submitted by: Ma. Mickaela Mirasol M. Dimaano
December 13, 2021

MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

 The term morphology is Greek and is a makeup of morph- meaning ‘shape, form’, and -ology
which means ‘the study of something’. Morphology as a sub-discipline of linguistics was named for the
first time in 1859 by the German linguist August Schleicher who used the term for the study of the form
of words.  Morphology is the study of the internal structure of words and forms a core part of linguistic
study today. It is divided into two branches- LEXICAL MOROHOLOGY (or derivational) and INFLECTIONAL
MORPHOLOGY. Inflectional morphology deals with the way words are adapted in different grammatical
contexts (such as making a noun plural). Lexical morphology refers to how words are constructed and by
which new words-neologisms- might be constructed. If phonology has a phoneme, Morphology has
morpheme which is the smallest unit of meaning in a word. A word can be classified into two simple
words or complex words. Simple words are those which cannot be analyzed into smaller units of
meaning (cat, paper, fear). Complex words on the other hand can be subdivided into smaller units of
meaning (printer= print + er) With that information, Morpheme can be divided into two types: Free
Morpheme and Bound Morpheme. A free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand alone as a word.
While bound morpheme cannot stand alone. Free morpheme is a simple word consisting of a one
morpheme (house, work, high, chair). Meanwhile, a bound morpheme is a morpheme that must be
attach to another morpheme to have a meaning or what we called the affixes which could be subdivided
into two: prefixes and suffixes.

Syntax is the study of sentence structure. From the etymology of syntax, it comes from “sun”
which means syn or together. Every sentence has a structure. For example, these two sentences (1) John
saw Mary (2) Maty saw John. They both have the same words but different meaning. It is because it is
the syntax that helps us figure out the two different meanings. Syntax is also the prder of words in a
sentence. Some ways, syntax is more important than vocabulary or pronunciation. English syntax has
four important parts: subject, helping verb, verb, and information. There are 3 main syntax form in
English. Namely, declative that tells what is happening, Negative that tells what is not happening and
interrogative that asks what is happening.

Morphology and syntax are both integral part of linguistics. Morphology is dealing with words
and how the words is constructed while syntax is dealing with the relationship of these words to
construct to phrases, sentences and clauses. Morphology may affect the syntax in a way of adding the
affixes which would change the its syntactic category.