ABSTRACT
All cultures which have a written language recognize the word as a unit. Many English words obviously have internal structure. This chapter is concerned with ‘inflectional morphology’ that forms a bridge between syntax and phonology. It introduces some of the terminologies that are used in discussing inflectional morphology. Inflectional morphology relates to syntax in so far as it is concerned with the distribution of grammatical elements. And it relates to phonology in that it involves the study of the phonological shapes of words. The ‘item and arrangement’ model of morphology divides word formation between syntax and phonology. Syntax involves the identification, labelling and bracketing of constituents from the largest to the smallest. The ‘morphemes’ are items in a particular syntactic arrangement. The ‘morphemes’ are classified as lexical morphemes and grammatical morphemes. Derivational morphology relates to the lexicon in so far as it is concerned with the analysis of existing words, and to phonology in that it involves phonological processes.
