INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY, Apuntes de Morfología y Sintaxis

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10 Inflectional Morphology 10,1 INTRODUCTION The maín aim of this portion of the book is to examine the interaction between morphology and syntax. A question that will recur at several Points is whether there is a clear difference between the structure oí words, which is the domain of morphology, and the structure of sentences, which is the domain of syntax. Are the rules that regulate sentence structure different in kind from the rules that govern the internal structure of words? In answering this question we will see that, although morphology interacts with other components of the grammar (in particular syntax) and shares some of their rules, it nevertheless has a degree of internal coherence which makes it merit separate treatment as a distinct component of the linguistic model. The investigations begin in this chapter with an exploration of the nature of inflectional morphology. First, the theoretical basis of the inflection- derivation dichotomy is scrutinised. This is followed in the second half of the chapter by a survey of phenomena markcd using inflection in the languages of the world. In the next chapter we examine in detail the role of syntactic structure, at the core of which is thc verb, in determining the form of words when they appear in sentences. That chapter is essentially an elaboration of the theory of how case is assigned and how it is mapped ou words. The book concludes with an analysis of idioms and compounds which highlights the similarities, as well as differences, between lexical items and syntactic phrases. 10.2 INFLECTION AND DERIVATION What is inflection? The standard intuition among linguists is thar inflectio- nal morphology is concerned with syntactically driven word-formation. Inflectional morphology deals with syntactically determined aftixation pro cesses while drivational morphology is used to create new lexical items (cf. section (3.2) ). In practice, however, there is not always unanimily in the classification of processes as inflectional or derivarional. Grammarians working on the same language may not agree as to which processes are to be treated as inflectional and which ones are to be regarded as derivational. Across languages there can be even greater confusion. As we shall see shortly, a process classified as inflectional in one language may be analogous to a 205