In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure
of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. It is concerned about how we
put the words in a sentence. Tree diagrams are the notation that most syntacticians use to
describe how sentences are organized in the mental grammar. The syntactic categories are
illustrated in a tree diagram, called phrase structure tree, by supplying the name of the syntactic
category of each word grouping. These names are often referred to as syntactic labels (usually
written by the initials of the categories):
Sentence – S
Noun Phrase – NP
Verb Phrase – VP
Noun – N
Proper Noun – PN
Verb – V
Adverb – Adv
Adjective – Adj
Preposition – Prep
Article – Art
Pronoun – Pro
Prepositional Phrase – PP
Adverb Phrase – AdvP
Adjective Phrase – AdjP
Within each sentence, words are grouped into phrases. Phrases can be grouped together to form
other phrases, and to form sentences. They're called tree diagrams because they have lots of
branches: each of these little lines than join things in the diagram is a branch.
2
Examples:
3
2.MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words
in the same language. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and
cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes can
occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. When we talk about
words, there are two groups: lexical and grammatical words. Open class words include nouns,
verbs, adjectives and adverbs. New words can regularly be added to this group. Closed class
words, are conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns; and new words cannot be added
to this class. Free morpheme: a simple word, consisting of one morpheme eg house, work, high,
chair, wrap. They are words in themselves. Bound morpheme: morphemes that must be attached
to another morpheme to receive meaning. Morphemes are divided into derivational and
inflectional, Derivational morphemes carry lexical meaning and inflectional grammatical
meaning. In English there are only eight total inflectional affixes:
4
Examples:
cowardly – coward + ly
bars – bar + s
shouted – shout + ed