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The grammatical description of many, if not all, languages is conveniently divided into two complementary sections: morphology and syntax. The relationship between them, as generally stated, is as follows: morphology accounts for the internal structure of words, and syntax describes how words are combined to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.
There are many words in English that are fairly obviously analyzable into smaller grammatical units. For example, the word “unacceptability” can be divided into un-, accept, abil-, and -ity (abil- being a variant of -able). Of these, at least three are minimal grammatical units, in the sense that they cannot be analyzed into yet smaller grammatical units—un-, abil-, and ity. The status of accept, from this point of view, is somewhat uncertain. Given the existence of such forms as accede and accuse, on the one hand, and of except, exceed, and excuse, on the other, one might be inclined to analyze accept into ac- (which might subsequently be recognized as a variant of ad-) and -cept. The question is left open. Minimal grammatical units like un-, abil-, and -ity are what Bloomfield called morphemes; he defined them in terms of the “partial phonetic-semantic resemblance” holding within sets of words. For example, “unacceptable,” “untrue,” and “ungracious” are phonetically (or, phonologically) similar as far as the first syllable is concerned and are similar in meaning in that each of them is negative by contrast with a corresponding positive adjective (“acceptable,” “true,” “gracious”). This “partial phonetic-semantic resemblance” is accounted for by noting that the words in question contain the same morpheme (namely, un-) and that this morpheme has a certain phonological form and a certain meaning.
Bloomfield’s definition of the morpheme in terms of “partial phonetic-semantic resemblance” was considerably modified and, eventually, abandoned entirely by some of his followers. Whereas Bloomfield took the morpheme to be an actual segment of a word, others defined it as being a purely abstract unit, and the term morph was introduced to refer to the actual word segments. The distinction between morpheme and morph (which is, in certain respects, parallel to the distinction between phoneme and phone) may be explained by means of an example. If a morpheme in English is posited with the function of accounting for the grammatical difference between singular and plural nouns, it may be symbolized by enclosing the term plural within brace brackets. Now the morpheme [plural] is represented in a number of different ways. Most plural nouns in English differ from the corresponding singular forms in that they have an additional final segment. In the written forms of these words, it is either -s or -es (e.g., “cat” : “cats”; “dog” : “dogs”; “fish” : “fishes”). The word segments written -s or -es are morphs. So also is the word segment written -en in “oxen.” All these morphs represent the same morpheme. But there are other plural nouns in English that differ from the corresponding singular forms in other ways (e.g., “mouse” : “mice”; “criterion” : “criteria”; and so on) or not at all (e.g., “this sheep” : “these sheep”). Within the post-Bloomfieldian framework no very satisfactory account of the formation of these nouns could be given. But it was clear that they contained (in some sense) the same morpheme as the more regular plurals.
Morphs that are in complementary distribution and represent the same morpheme are said to be allomorphs of that morpheme. For example, the regular plurals of English nouns are formed by adding one of three morphs on to the form of the singular: /s/, /z/, or /iz/ (in the corresponding written forms both /s/ and /z/ are written -s and /iz/ is written -es). Their distribution is determined by the following principle: if the morph to which they are to be added ends in a “sibilant” sound (e.g., s, z, sh, ch), then the syllabic allomorph /iz/ is selected (e.g., fish-es /fiš-iz/, match-es /mač-iz/); otherwise the nonsyllabic allomorphs are selected, the voiceless allomorph /s/ with morphs ending in a voiceless consonant (e.g., cat-s /kat-s/) and the voiced allomorph /z/ with morphs ending in a vowel or voiced consonant (e.g., flea-s /fli-z/, dog-s /dog-z/). These three allomorphs, it will be evident, are in complementary distribution, and the alternation between them is determined by the phonological structure of the preceding morph. Thus the choice is phonologically conditioned.
Very similar is the alternation between the three principal allomorphs of the past participle ending, /id/, /t/, and /d/, all of which correspond to the -ed of the written forms. If the preceding morph ends with /t/ or /d/, then the syllabic allomorph /id/ is selected (e.g., wait-ed /weit-id/). Otherwise, if the preceding morph ends with a voiceless consonant, one of the nonsyllabic allomorphs is selected—the voiceless allomorph /t/ when the preceding morph ends with a voiceless consonant (e.g., pack-ed /pak-t/) and the voiced allomorph /d/ when the preceding morph ends with a vowel or voiced consonant (e.g., row-ed /rou-d/; tame-d /teim-d/). This is another instance of phonological conditioning. Phonological conditioning may be contrasted with the principle that determines the selection of yet another allomorph of the past participle morpheme. The final /n/ of show-n or see-n (which marks them as past participles) is not determined by the phonological structure of the morphs show and see. For each English word that is similar to “show” and “see” in this respect, it must be stated as a synchronically inexplicable fact that it selects the /n/ allomorph. This is called grammatical conditioning. There are various kinds of grammatical conditioning.
Alternation of the kind illustrated above for the allomorphs of the plural morpheme and the /id/, /d/, and /t/ allomorphs of the past participle is frequently referred to as morphophonemic. Some linguists have suggested that it should be accounted for not by setting up three allomorphs each with a distinct phonemic form but by setting up a single morph in an intermediate morphophonemic representation. Thus, the regular plural morph might be said to be composed of the morphophoneme /Z/ and the most common past-participle morph of the morphophoneme /D/. General rules of morphophonemic interpretation would then convert /Z/ and /D/ to their appropriate phonetic form according to context. This treatment of the question foreshadows, on the one hand, the stratificational treatment and, on the other, the generative approach, though they differ considerably in other respects.
An important concept in grammar and, more particularly, in morphology is that of free and bound forms. A bound form is one that cannot occur alone as a complete utterance (in some normal context of use). For example, -ing is bound in this sense, whereas wait is not, nor is waiting. Any form that is not bound is free. Bloomfield based his definition of the word on this distinction between bound and free forms. Any free form consisting entirely of two or more smaller free forms was said to be a phrase (e.g., “poor John” or “ran away”), and phrases were to be handled within syntax. Any free form that was not a phrase was defined to be a word and to fall within the scope of morphology. One of the consequences of Bloomfield’s definition of the word was that morphology became the study of constructions involving bound forms. The so-called isolating languages, which make no use of bound forms (e.g., Vietnamese), would have no morphology.
The principal division within morphology is between inflection and derivation (or word formation). Roughly speaking, inflectional constructions can be defined as yielding sets of forms that are all grammatically distinct forms of single vocabulary items, whereas derivational constructions yield distinct vocabulary items. For example, “sings,” “singing,” “sang,” and “sung” are all inflectional forms of the vocabulary item traditionally referred to as “the verb to sing”; but “singer,” which is formed from “sing” by the addition of the morph -er (just as “singing” is formed by the addition of -ing), is one of the forms of a different vocabulary item. When this rough distinction between derivation and inflection is made more precise, problems occur. The principal consideration, undoubtedly, is that inflection is more closely integrated with and determined by syntax. But the various formal criteria that have been proposed to give effect to this general principle are not uncommonly in conflict in particular instances, and it probably must be admitted that the distinction between derivation and inflection, though clear enough in most cases, is in the last resort somewhat arbitrary.
Bloomfield and most other linguists have discussed morphological constructions in terms of processes. Of these, the most widespread throughout the languages of the world is affixation; i.e., the attachment of an affix to a base. For example, the word “singing” can be described as resulting from the affixation of -ing to the base sing. (If the affix is put in front of the base, it is a prefix; if it is put after the base, it is a suffix; and if it is inserted within the base, splitting it into two discontinuous parts, it is an infix.) Other morphological processes recognized by linguists need not be mentioned here, but reference may be made to the fact that many of Bloomfield’s followers from the mid-1940s were dissatisfied with the whole notion of morphological processes. Instead of saying that -ing was affixed to sing they preferred to say that sing and -ing co-occurred in a particular pattern or arrangement, thereby avoiding the implication that sing is in some sense prior to or more basic than -ing. The distinction of morpheme and morph (and the notion of allomorphs) was developed in order to make possible the description of the morphology and syntax of a language in terms of “arrangements” of items rather than in terms of “processes” operating upon more basic items. Nowadays, the opposition to “processes” is, except among the stratificationalists, almost extinct. It has proved to be cumbersome, if not impossible, to describe the relationship between certain linguistic forms without deriving one from the other or both from some common underlying form, and most linguists no longer feel that this is in any way reprehensible.
Syntax
Syntax, for Bloomfield, was the study of free forms that were composed entirely of free forms. Central to his theory of syntax were the notions of form classes and constituent structure. (These notions were also relevant, though less central, in the theory of morphology.) Bloomfield defined form classes, rather imprecisely, in terms of some common “recognizable phonetic or grammatical feature” shared by all the members. He gave as examples the form class consisting of “personal substantive expressions” in English (defined as “the forms that, when spoken with exclamatory final pitch, are calls for a person’s presence or attention”—e.g., “John,” “Boy,” “Mr. Smith”); the form class consisting of “infinitive expressions” (defined as “forms which, when spoken with exclamatory final pitch, have the meaning of a command”—e.g., “run,” “jump,” “come here”); the form class of “nominative substantive expressions” (e.g., “John,” “the boys”); and so on. It should be clear from these examples that form classes are similar to, though not identical with, the traditional parts of speech and that one and the same form can belong to more than one form class.
What Bloomfield had in mind as the criterion for form class membership (and therefore of syntactic equivalence) may best be expressed in terms of substitutability. Form classes are sets of forms (whether simple or complex, free or bound), any one of which may be substituted for any other in a given construction or set of constructions throughout the sentences of the language.
The smaller forms into which a larger form may be analyzed are its constituents, and the larger form is a construction. For example, the phrase “poor John” is a construction analyzable into, or composed of, the constituents “poor” and “John.” Because there is no intermediate unit of which “poor” and “John” are constituents that is itself a constituent of the construction “poor John,” the forms “poor” and “John” may be described not only as constituents but also as immediate constituents of “poor John.” Similarly, the phrase “lost his watch” is composed of three word forms—“lost,” “his,” and “watch”—all of which may be described as constituents of the construction. Not all of them, however, are its immediate constituents. The forms “his” and “watch” combine to make the intermediate construction “his watch”; it is this intermediate unit that combines with “lost” to form the larger phrase “lost his watch.” The immediate constituents of “lost his watch” are “lost” and “his watch”; the immediate constituents of “his watch” are the forms “his” and “watch.” By the constituent structure of a phrase or sentence is meant the hierarchical organization of the smallest forms of which it is composed (its ultimate constituents) into layers of successively more inclusive units. Viewed in this way, the sentence “Poor John lost his watch” is more than simply a sequence of five word forms associated with a particular intonation pattern. It is analyzable into the immediate constituents “poor John” and “lost his watch,” and each of these phrases is analyzable into its own immediate constituents and so on, until, at the last stage of the analysis, the ultimate constituents of the sentence are reached. The constituent structure of the whole sentence is represented by means of a tree diagram in .
Each form, whether it is simple or composite, belongs to a certain form class. Using arbitrarily selected letters to denote the form classes of English, “poor” may be a member of the form class A, “John” of the class B, “lost” of the class C, “his” of the class D, and “watch” of the class E. Because “poor John” is syntactically equivalent to (i.e., substitutable for) “John,” it is to be classified as a member of A. So too, it can be assumed, is “his watch.” In the case of “lost his watch” there is a problem. There are very many forms—including “lost,” “ate,” and “stole”—that can occur, as here, in constructions with a member of B and can also occur alone; for example, “lost” is substitutable for “stole the money,” as “stole” is substitutable for either or for “lost his watch.” This being so, one might decide to classify constructions like “lost his watch” as members of C. On the other hand, there are forms that—though they are substitutable for “lost,” “ate,” “stole,” and so on when these forms occur alone—cannot be used in combination with a following member of B (compare “died,” “existed”); and there are forms that, though they may be used in combination with a following member of B, cannot occur alone (compare “enjoyed”). The question is whether one respects the traditional distinction between transitive and intransitive verb forms. It may be decided, then, that “lost,” “stole,” “ate” and so forth belong to one class, C (the class to which “enjoyed” belongs), when they occur “transitively” (i.e., with a following member of B as their object) but to a different class, F (the class to which “died” belongs), when they occur “intransitively.” Finally, it can be said that the whole sentence “Poor John lost his watch” is a member of the form class G. Thus, the constituent structure not only of “Poor John lost his watch” but of a whole set of English sentences can be represented by means of the tree diagram given in . New sentences of the same type can be constructed by substituting actual forms for the class labels.
Any construction that belongs to the same form class as at least one of its immediate constituents is described as endocentric; the only endocentric construction in the model sentence above is “poor John.” All the other constructions, according to the analysis, are exocentric. This is clear from the fact that in the letters at the nodes above every phrase other than the phrase A + B (i.e., “poor John,” “old Harry,” and so on) are different from any of the letters at the ends of the lower branches connected directly to these nodes. For example, the phrase D + E (i.e., “his watch,” “the money,” and so forth) has immediately above it a node labelled B, rather than either D or E. Endocentric constructions fall into two types: subordinating and coordinating. If attention is confined, for simplicity, to constructions composed of no more than two immediate constituents, it can be said that subordinating constructions are those in which only one immediate constituent is of the same form class as the whole construction, whereas coordinating constructions are those in which both constituents are of the same form class as the whole construction. In a subordinating construction (e.g., “poor John”), the constituent that is syntactically equivalent to the whole construction is described as the head, and its partner is described as the modifier: thus, in “poor John,” the form “John” is the head, and “poor” is its modifier. An example of a coordinating construction is “men and women,” in which, it may be assumed, the immediate constituents are the word “men” and the word “women,” each of which is syntactically equivalent to “men and women.” (It is here implied that the conjunction “and” is not a constituent, properly so called, but an element that, like the relative order of the constituents, indicates the nature of the construction involved. Not all linguists have held this view.)
One reason for giving theoretical recognition to the notion of constituent is that it helps to account for the ambiguity of certain constructions. A classic example is the phrase “old men and women,” which may be interpreted in two different ways according to whether one associates “old” with “men and women” or just with “men.” Under the first of the two interpretations, the immediate constituents are “old” and “men and women”; under the second, they are “old men” and “women.” The difference in meaning cannot be attributed to any one of the ultimate constituents but results from a difference in the way in which they are associated with one another. Ambiguity of this kind is referred to as syntactic ambiguity. Not all syntactic ambiguity is satisfactorily accounted for in terms of constituent structure.
