Essential English Grammar Concepts: Morphemes, Verbs, and Syntax

Morphemes: Derivational vs. Inflectional

The main difference between the two is that derivational affixes are added to morphemes to form new words that may or may not be the same part of speech, while inflectional affixes are added to the end of an existing word for purely grammatical reasons. Derivational morphemes are those added to existing words to create new words with different meanings.

Free and Bound Morphemes

Free morphemes can occur alone, whereas bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. In the word badly, the free morpheme is bad, and the bound morpheme is -ly. It is bound because, although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone; it must be attached to another morpheme to produce a word.

Sentence Components: Sentences, Clauses, and Phrases

• Sentence: A grammatical, self-contained speech unit that may express a multitude of things, shown in writing with a capital letter at the beginning and appropriate punctuation at the end.
• Clause: A constituent of a sentence consisting of a subject and predicate, sometimes constituting a whole sentence or functioning as a member of a compound or complex sentence.
• Phrase: A part of a sentence or clause that holds together as a meaningful unit on its own. It is not just any sequence of words, but a unified sequence composed according to the rules of language.

Noun Classifications

• Count Nouns: Designate realities that can be isolated and counted.
• Mass Nouns: Designate substances or materials that cannot be counted.

Word Formation and Adjectives

Conversion

The change of class that some words undergo, with no accompanying change in form, when used in a particular syntactic context. For example, the noun floor changes to the verb to floor.

Gradability

The modifying word locates the adjective on a scale of comparison, at a position higher or lower than the one indicated by the adjective alone. Most adjectives are gradable; however, if the adjective already denotes the highest position on a scale, it is non-gradable.

Verb Classifications

Lexical and Auxiliary Verbs

• Lexical: These give meaning to the sentence and can be regular or irregular (this group includes be, do, and have when used with lexical meaning).
• Auxiliary: These help to create aspect for the verb and can be primary or modal.

Finite vs. Nonfinite Verbs

Finite verb forms are those which express tense, mood, person, and number agreement. Verbs in any other form (infinitive, -ing, or -ed) are called nonfinite verbs. The distinction between finite and nonfinite verbs is a very important one in grammar, as it affects how verbs behave in sentences.