Syntax and Semantics
Syntax and Semantics
Disusun Oleh :
Morphology is the branch of linguistics that deals with word structure. Matthews
(1991:3) states that, “Morphology, therefore, is the simply a term for that branch of
linguistics which is concerned with the ‘form of words’ in different uses and
contraction”. The object of morphology is term that has correlation with formation of
words. Word formation is creation of a new word, sometimes it changes the word’s
meaning and class. While, Lehmann (1976) in Srijono (2001:49) stated that
“Morphology is the study of morphemes, their variation, and their combination in
words”. Morphology is the arrangement and relationships of the smallest meaningful
units in a language. So what does this really mean? Every human language depends on
sounds. When specific sounds are put together in a specific way, words, phrases, and
finally sentences can be created. This is how messages are sent and received. In order to
understand morphology, you need to know the term morpheme, which is the smallest
unit of a word with meaning. That meaning is how language conveys messages.
Morphemes are more than just letters. When a number of letters are put together into a
word part that now has meaning, then you have a morpheme. Morphology studies how
these units of meaning, or word parts, can be arranged in a language.
Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are
constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as
its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for
producing the sentences of the language under analysis. "(Noam Chomsky, 2002: 11)
Chomsky said that the syntax is the lesson / lecture on the principles and processes in
which the sentences are arranged in a specific language. Syntax is one of the major
components of grammar. It's the concept that enables people to know how to start a
question with a question word ("What is that?"), or that adjectives generally come
before the nouns they describe ("green chair"), subjects often come before verbs in non-
question sentences ("She jogged"), prepositional phrases start with prepositions ("to the
store"), helping verbs come before main verbs ("can go" or "will do"), and so on.
Morphology and syntax are an integral part of linguistics. They are subdivisions
of the study of languages and together with phonetics, semantics and phonology
contribute to the understanding of how a language is formed. Morphology deals with
the understanding of how words are formed while syntax is focused on the way
sentences are developed. Basically morphology is the study of the structure of words,
while Syntax studies the structure of sentences. Together these disciplines help
linguists understand how language works.
CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION
1. MORPHOLOGY
1.1. Definition of Morphology
Morphology is the part of linguistic which analyzes or investigates the basic
elements or grammatical function of words. It is the part of linguistics that deals with
the study of words, their internal structure and partially their meanings. It is also
interested in how the users of the given language, understand complex words and
invent new lexical items.
Morphology is the part of linguistics that deals with the study of words, their internal
structure and partially their meanings.
• Derivational morphology; is concerned with the relationships of different
words, and with the ways in which vocabulary items can be built from some
elements, as in un-speak-able.
• Inflectional morphology; it deals with the forms of one word that it takes up
depending on its grammatical functions in a sentence.
1.2. Morphemes
Morphemes in morphology are the smallest units that carry meaning or fulfill
some grammatical function.
• Free morpheme; a single morpheme that constitutes a word and can stand
alone.
• Bound morpheme; a morpheme that must be attached to another
morpheme. It cannot stand by itself as it would have no meaning.
For examples, in the word houses there are two morphemes house, which is free,
and s whish is a bound morpheme.
1. Free Morphemes
• Lexical morphemes; words that have some meaning – verbs, adjectives,
nouns, like for example print, house, pretty, fire, go, girl, sad, song,
yellow, break.
• Functional morphemes; a closed class of words, articles, prepositions,
pronouns which do not carry any meaning on their own, but only fulfill a
grammatical function. Ex: and, but, when, because, on, near, above, in,
the, that, it.
2. Bound Morphemes
• Derivational morphemes; those morphemes which produce new words,
or change the function of a word. It is achieved by means of prefixes or
suffixes in case of English and infixes in other languages, like Arabic.
o -ic : Noun > Adj ; alcohol > alcoholic
o -ance : Verb > Noun ; clear > clearance
o -ly : Adj > Adv ; exact > exactly
o -ity : Adj > Noun ; active > activity
o -able : Verb > Adj ; read > readable
o -ship : Noun > Noun ; friend > friendship
o re- : Verb > Verb ; cover > recover
o in- : Adj > Adj ; definite > indefinite
• Inflectional morphemes; do not create new words, but only show
grammatical functions of a word.
Nouns
–s plural
–’s possessive
Verbs
–s third person singular present
–ed past tense
–en past participle
–ing progressive
Adjectives
–er comparative
–est superlative
1.3. Morphological Description
Ex: The girl’s wildness shocked the teachers.
The girl -‘s wild -ness shock
-ed
(functional) (lexical) (inflectional) (lexical) (derivational) (lexical) (inflectional)
the teach er s
(functional) (lexical) (derivational) (inflectional)
f. Acronym is a word formed from initial parts of a few words, and read as a
phrase or a name.
AIDS
ABRI
RADAR
SUTET
UNICEF
UNESCO
Abbreviation is like an acronym, but the word is read by metioning the
alpabeths.
PBB
WHO
SMP
1. Morphology is the part of linguistics that deals with the study of words, their
internal structure and partially their meanings. There are two kind of morphology,
Derivational morphology and Inflectional morphology. The function of
morphology is to identify individual morphemes, which may be words or may be
parts of words, and analyze their meaning and lexical function.
2. Syntax is the study of internal structure of sentences. In this case, it explains how
words are arranged become phrases and clauses for constructing sentence. It is
commonly we call structure. Structure manages how words can be combined with
another for creating good sentence.
REFERENCES
https://books.google.co.id/books?hl=en&lr=&id=aC6DI2nv-
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e&sig=3zcV1LPWn37_xQmBbg6Ey581mww&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=ling
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http://intro2gl.pbworks.com/w/page/20119905/MORPHOLOGY#:~:text=MORPHOLO
GY,structure%20and%20partially%20their%20meanings.
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/aims-functions-morphology-361059
Tserdanelis,G. and Wai Yi Peggy Wong. (Eds.). (2004). Language File: Material for an
Introduction to Language & Linguistics (9th ed.). Columbus: Department of
Linguistics, The Ohio State University Press.