1. Língua Inglesa - Aspectos Morfossintáticos
Aula 1
Noélia Lobos

2. English morphosyntax
Linguistics as the scientific study of language has several branches such us phonetics, phonology, semantics, morphology and syntax;
We are going to study two branches: morphology and syntax;
And these branches combined into one unity called morphosyntax.

3. English morphosyntax
As an English Teacher, one of the most important competence you should acquire is knowing the language and all its functions, terms of use and usage intensely;
this competence allows teachers to answer students questions in a coherent way using a complete explanation and being able to explain why an expression is mistaken or not.

4. English morphosyntax
A morphosyntactic is a term in linguistics used to refer to grammatical categories or properties for whose definition criteria of morphology and syntax both apply, as in describing the characteristics of words.
Now, think about it: what is a “word”?

5. Word How do we identify words in speech?
A reliable definition of words is that they are the smallest independent units of language.
They are independent in that they do not depend on other words which means that they can be separated from other units and can change position.

6. Word
A word is a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning.

7. Word
The man looked at the horses.
The plural ending –s in horses is dependent on the noun horse to receive meaning and can therefore not be a word. Horses however, is a word, as it can occur in other positions in the sentence or stand on its own:
The horses looked at the man.
- What is the man looking at? - Horses.

8. Word
Words are thus both independent since they can be separated from other words and move around in sentences;
Words are composed of one or more morphemes.

9. Word and morpheme
Although words are the smallest independent units of language, they have an internal structure and are built up by even smaller pieces;
There are simple words that don’t have an internal structure and only consist of one piece, like work. There is no way we can divide work (wo-rk?) into smaller parts that carry meaning or function;
Complex words however, do have an internal structure and consist of two or more pieces.

10. Morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest recognized unit of grammar and syntax; so a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language;
Morphemes function as the foundation of language.

11. Morphemes
Consider worker, where the ending –er is added to the root work to make it into a noun meaning someone who works. These pieces are called morphemes and are the smallest meaning-bearing units of language.

12. Morphemes Dogs dog, and; -s, a plural marker on nouns.
The word dogs consists of two morphemes and one syllable:
dog, and;
-s, a plural marker on nouns.
Dog itself is not divisible into meaningful component pieces, therefore it is a morpheme: a minimal shape.

13. Morphemes
When we can take a morpheme independently and use it as a stand-alone word in a sentence, it is known as a base.
These can be nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, or determiners.
We also classify a morpheme that can function as a stand-alone word as free.

14. Morphemes
A bound morpheme is a morpheme that has to be attached to some other morpheme in order to be integrated naturally into discourse – the suffix –s, in dog.
The root – dog – is a free morpheme since it does not have to attach to some other form.

15. Morphemes
Articles a and the in English are clitics, because they cannot be integrated into standard discourse without being bound to some other form, and they function on the phrase level;
therefore their host can be any of several noun-phrase constituents:
The dog = cliticized to head
The big dog = cliticized to modifier
The two big dogs = cliticized to numeral

16. Morphemes
If we break the word unkindness into its three morphemes un-, kind and -ness, we get two examples of bound morphemes: un- and -ness, as they require the root kind to make up a word.
These are also called affixes as they are attached to the stem. The affix un- that go to the front of a word is a prefix and -ness that goes to the end is a suffix.

17. Importance of morphology?
Morphology is the scientific study of forms and structure of words in a language;
The internal structure of words and the segmentation into different kinds of morphemes is essential to the two basic purposes or morphology: 1. the creation of new words and 2. the modification of existing words.

18. Língua Inglesa - Aspectos Morfossintáticos
Atividade 1
Noélia Lobos

19. Counting morphemes
With what you know about free morphemes (free and bound morphemes), you should be able to look at English words and then break them up into their morphemes.
That is what you are going to try next.

20. How many morphemes can you count?
prefix
dogs
trusted
replacements
Crying
governmental
Grandmothers
bicycle

21. Explanation prefix 2 = pre + fix dogs 2 = dog + s
trusted 2 = trust + ed
replacements 4 = re + place + ment + s
crying 2 = cry + ing
governmental 3 = govern + ment + al
grandmothers 3 = grand + mother + s
bicycle 2 = bi + cycle