Syntax & Morphology

Syntax:

• The study of word order patterns 
• Language functions based on systematic patterns 
• French word order generally follows the Subject/Verb/Object pattern
• This is known as its canonical word order, the order which underlies every language and is known by all speakers of a language
• Question forms reverse the canonical pattern, i.e. VSO instead of SVO
• 'Sentences' are used to describe written language, while spoken language has 'utterances' 

Phrase level: 

• Beyond the SVO, sentence level there exists an order within phrases as well
• e.g. Adjective after noun - 'un livre intéressant,' or adverb before adjective - 'peu évident'
• Surface structure, the numerous patterns we can pick out by examining sentences, makes language seem incredibly complex
• However these are determined by rules, known as deep structure - the rule that governs the pattern

4 Phrase Types:

• NP - noun phrase - where the noun is the 'head' (defining linguistic element) of the phrase
•  e.g. 'les enfants' - made up of a specifier (les) and a noun (enfants)

• Specifier to the left of the head is a rule which applies to all phrase types
• VP - Verb phrase - where the verb is the 'head' of the phrase
• E.g. 'Michel lisait'
• Michel is the specifier, and lisait is the head, ergo the rule has been followed 
• AP - Adjectival phrases - where the adjective is the 'head' of the phrase
• e.g. 'très intéressant' 
• très = specifier, intéressant = head, therefore the rule has been followed
• PP - Prepositional Phrase - where the preposition is the 'head' of the phrase
• e.g. presque dans
• presque = specifier, dans = head, therefore the rule has been followed
• The same basic rule is at work for all the examples - therefore the deep structure pattern is the same for all phrase types

 More complex phrases: 

• NP - Mes amis en France 
• The complement adds supplementary information to the NP 
• Specifier = mes, head = amis, en France = complement
• The full rule = specifier to the left of the head, complement to the right
• The same pattern can be observed in other phrase types
• VP - Je parle à mes amis 
• Je = specifier, parle = head, à mes amis = complement
• AP - sûr de la décision
• sûr = head, de la décison = complement
• PP - vers la fenêtre 
• vers = head, la fenêtre = complement

Sentence level: 

• Sentences can contain multiple types of phrases and can be broken down into 'syntactic trees' 
• e.g. "Mes amis à l'étranger sont partis en vacances" 

 Noam Chomsky:

• According to Chomskian theory - native speakers have the innate ability to generate words in the proper speech pattern
• This is known as the generative paradigm - which means that we can generate a limitless number of correct sentences
• X rule - the X bar rule 
• the idea that we have basic syntactic rules that we follow all the time 
• according to this theory language is not as creative as we might think and does not allow for much variation - in the sense that all speakers have the same basic rule in their heads 

Morphology: 

• the study of the shape of a word
• the unit of morphology is the morpheme - the smallest unit of language that a word can be broken down into and still make sense 
• morphology is a grammatical entity  
• Verb morphology e.g. the verb donner
• donn-e/donn-ais/donn-é/donn-erai
• donn has meaning and the endings have meaning, however neither can exist by themselves 
• Nominal morphology 
• much more limited choice of morphemes
• e.g. livre-s, porte-s
• Adjectival morphology 
• e.g. ancien-s, vert-e
• Articles are morphemes
• the don't exist independently as they must go before a noun
• In English, we have no adjectival morphology or different articles and the imperfect tense doesn't have morphological changes the way French does (i.e. we use the same endings in the present and the perfect unlike French)
• Some languages have no morphology at all 

Uses of morphology:

• Grammatical morphology - allows for greater clarity/specificity
• Lexical morphology - creation of words 
• Prefixes, e.g. re + faire = refaire & suffixes e.g. gouverner + ment = gouvernement, can be used to create new words aka neologisms
• Infixes - the insertion of a morpheme into the middle of a word - also exist but not in French or English