Relationship Between Syntax And Morphology

Syntax is a big branch of grammar that deals with the rules that govern word combination within phrases, clauses and sentences. That is, it studies the correct word arrangement of a sentence (Yule, 2010).

In order to obtain syntactically correct sentences we must comply with the “all and only” criterion, so that we can generate all the grammatical sentences and only the grammatical sentences (Yule, 2010).

Syntax is very relevant because it studies not only surface structure, but also its deep structure. The latter carries the meaning we want to convey, whereas the former is, in fact, the form that we choose to convey that meaning.

Therefore, as any speaker must comply with rules to produce correct sentences to express certain meaning, it is

Besides, there are many students, above all adults, who prefer this kind of explanations.

Source

What is a lexical category?. (2016). Www-01.sil.org. Retrieved 11 June 2016, from http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsALexicalCategory.htm

7. What is the relationship between syntax and morphology? Why is it important to study one accompanied by the other? As a language teacher, do you consider both studies equally important or is one more relevant than the other? This question is worth 15 points. (Relationship between syntax and morphology, 5 points; importance of both studies, 5 points; opinion as to their relevance to the teaching process, 5 points.)

Syntax analyzes the structure of phrases and sentences, whereas morphology analyzes the internal structure of words (Yule, 2010). Since phrases and sentences are formed by words, the relationship between them is inevitable, bear in mind that the last level of the constituent analysis ends precisely at a word level.

At first sight it seems that words are “bricks” to build phrases or sentences, yet, words interact within those strings, and so they can have effect on each other. Take, for example:

“She wants to be listening to Ann and

This way the morphology of the verb “wants” is determined by the subject “She”, otherwise, it could be “want”. As a well-formed sentence requires agreement between its components we can see how they relate. This syntactical requirement affects the morphology of the verb. This relationship also occurs with “listening” whose form is affected by the auxiliary “be”. If we had a modal instead of this auxiliary, the story would be different. That is why we must include the study of both aspects simultaneously, since they are