Morphology, Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Languages are by nature extremely complex and describing a language, any language, is not an easy talk. To help with description and analysis it is considered easier to divide a language into a separate components or different areas of analysis. Some of them are morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

Morphology looks at the way words are formed. It is the analysis of word structure. (O’grady & Guzman, 1997).
Syntax seeks to describe the way words fit together to form sentences or utterances. It is the analysis of sentence structure (O’grady,1997), while semantics and Pragmatics study meaning.

Syntax or sentence structure (Thomas, 1993). Syntax looks at the way words combine together in a language to form sentences.
One way to study Syntax is to look at sentences which we already know to be considered syntactically ‘well formed’ sentences to the speakers of that language.

Syntax is the notion of constituency: the idea that syntactic units are not simply arbitrarily grouped and ordered but form indentifiable units. Syntacticians have identified four different levels of structure at which constituents can occur :

1. sentence (the largest),
2. clauses,
3. phrases, and
4. words (smallest)

Constituents consist of immediate constituents and ultimate constituents (lowest level of structure). Constituents can be described in terms of their form and function. In the clause, The child is healthy, healthy is form of an adjective phrase and the function as subject complement.
Constituents have forms at four levels of stucture;

1. word clasess,
2. phrases,
3. clauses, and
4. sentences.

The clause functions are subject, predicator, complement, object and adverbial.

Morphology
The system of categories and rules involved in word formation and interpretation is called morphology. Words have an internal structure consisting of smaller units organized with respect to each other in a particular way. The most important component of word structure is the morpheme. It is the smallest unit of language that carries information about meaning or function.

The word builder, for example, consists of two morphemes: build ( with the meaning of ‘construct’) and –er (which indicates that the entire word function as a noun with the meaning ‘one who builds’).

The variant forms of morpheme are called allomorphs. For example the plural morpheme –s in the following words have allomorphic variation in pronunciation.

1. Cats,
2. dogs, and
3. judges

The plural -s

1. is pronounced as /s/,
2. as /z/ , and
3. as /iz/ or /әz/

Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning (precisely, in human language). By virtue of their meaning, words and phrases are able to enter into a variety of semantic relations with other words and phrases in the language. These relationships help identify those aspects of meaning relevant to linguistic analysis.

Synonyms are words or expressions that have the same meanings in some or all context.
For example:

• big-large
• begin-start
• remember-recall
• purchase-buy

While antonyms are words or phrases that are opposites with respect to some component of their meaning.
For example:

• dark-light
• boy-girl
• up-down
• come-go
• in-out

Pragmatics
Syntactic structure provides only part of the information needed to determine the meaning of a sentence. Other necessary information comes from pragmatics, which includes the speaker’s and addresee’s background attitudes and beliefs, their understanding of the context in which a sentence is uttered, and their knowledge of how language can be used to inform, to persuade, to mislead, and so forth.

Pragmatics investigates how the meaning that the speaker intends to communicate by using a particular utterance in a particular context is understood by the addresses.

The pragmatic factors relevant to sentence interpretation can include knowledge of the context in which a sentence is uttered. Two types of contextual information are involved here, the first having to do with the physical environment in which a sentence is uttered (the setting) and the second having to do with the other utterances in speech event (the discourse).

Further reading :
Meyer, Charles F. (2009). Introducing English Linguistics. Cambridge University Press: New York
O’grady, et. all. (Editor). Contemporary Linguistics, An Introduction. 1997. Longman:London&New York
Thomas, Linda.(1993). Beginning Syntax. Blackwell Publishing