View source for Language units large and small

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=On the smaller side=
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Note that the interrelation between similar concepts is often not simple/orthogonal.

For example, a morpheme may contain/span multiple syllables (e.g. la{{interpunct}}dy), but a single syllable may also consist of multiple morphemes (e.g. dog{{interpunct}}s). 

Morpheme combinations into lexemes may follow complex [[morphological]] rules.




==Graphemes vs. glyphs vs. characters==
In approximate use these are near-synonyms.

In more technical use (font makers, linguists, programmers who have to think about unicode) 
they are still regularly misunderstood, misapplied, and some not entirely unambiguous. 
So accept some fuzziness in the wording you find in practice, and double check before putting in serious work.


A '''glyph''' is a particular representation of a character, while a '''character''' is the abstract concept represented by it. 
In other words, the same character written in a different style (say, sans serif versus calligraphic) is considered a different glyph but the same character. 


A '''grapheme''' is a ''semantically'' indivisible written unit. That is, if you split it up, it would lose said meaning. 

Graphemes include [[punctuation]], [[diacritics]], [[letters]] in alphabet-based languages, syllables in syllabic ones. 

The description does not fit [[logographic]] and [[ideographic]] systems quite the same way. Consider you could say this about both [[radicals]] and logographs.


A '''character''' is usually one of: 
* basic grapheme (letter / symbol),
* main grapheme plus combining graphemes (often diacritics), or
* a (full{{verify}}) ideogram


Of course, judgement of style difference is fairly subjective. Style difference inclue systematic differences in placement and presence of curls and lines, like the different ways of writing a 4 or 7, but many other things face a lot of disagreement. {{comment|You could for example argue that mere line thickness doesn't matter, but calligraphic argues against that.}}



===Grapheme types===
====Letter====
Letters refer to phonetic elements of alphabet-type [[writing systems]].

====Symbol====
Technically ambiguous term, symbol in this context tends to refer to graphemes that aren't phonetic, diacritics or punctuation. Symbols often stand for ideas, and are used, relatively sparsely, in languages that aren't themselves logographic.

====Syllabograms====
Arguably, phonetic units in [[syllabaries]] could be called syllabograms.

====Diacritics====
Diacritics are graphemes ''added'' to phonetic characters, to alter pronunciation details. 

Diacritics are often known as things that appear above or below, but appear in pretty much any way you can think of: connected, not connected, around, through, even inside.


====Punctuation====
Punctuation are roughly the non-phonetic written details of a language.

Punctuation includes punctuation marks, capitalisation word spacing, and to some degree indentation.

==Phonemes==
The '''phoneme''' is the easiest to explain, being a uniquely useful sound. 

More exactly, a phoneme is a collection of [[phone|phones]] that has taken an (indivisible) identity in a specific language. 

See also [[articulation]].

==Syllables==

{{stub}}


School tends to explain syllables in terms of character boundaries for some reason, 
but in linguistics it's defined entirely in terms of sound - generally a sonorous sound with consonant sounds around it - and in alphabetic writing systems, you cannot necessarily describe the split as a collection of graphemes.


There tend to be clear patterns to the language's speaking rhythm.


---

A '''mora''' (plural '''moras''' or '''morae''') are a measure of length.
Syllables are quite often one or two moras long, sometimes three.


Syllable structure is
* '''Onset''' (optional, no morae) {{comment|typically a consonant}}
* '''Rhyme''' or '''Rime'''
** '''Nucleus''' (one/two(/three?) morae) {{comment|(vowel or approximant)}}
** '''Coda''' (optional, one/two morae) {{comment|(consonant or approximant)}}



For example, simple alphabet systems may have cases in which the phonemes from a grapheme belong to different syllables{{verify}}.


See also [[syllabization]].

US English [[hyphenation]] tends to follow syllables. 
UK English values etymology/morphemes more.

==Morphemes==

Morphemes are units of language that conveys meaning. 


A morpheme loses a particular meaning when divided further, so are indivisible for a given meaning - though not necessarily indivisible at all. (from [[Morphology#Some_terms]])

Also, think wider than nouns. It can be a root, a full word, an [[affix]] that inflects a word, and other things.

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Also closeby are language rules relating to meaning, e.g. vowel-change rules (consider how, for example, the German Vӓter is the plural of Vater).

[[syntactic markers]] may also be considered morphemes, though they are often more semantic.
-->

<!--
In alphabetic languages, we ''usually'' split this at a letter boundary.
-->


Morphemes are the units that [[morphology]] works with. 

For example, 
* in {{word|unbelievable|en}}, the morphemes are 'un', 'believe' and 'able'
* in 'dogs', the morphemes are 'dog' and 's' 
* in dog, the word is made of the single morpheme
Other examples of morphemes include 'aud' (as in hear) 'chrom' (for color), affixes such as 'ness', and many others.




A morpheme may be/act as a [[lexeme]]. Lexemes are often one, two, or generally very few morphemes.


While morphemes can be said to be (form,meaning) pairs, this does not often mean that all words are constructed in the same way; for example, plurality doesn't always come from the 's' morpheme. 


In written and/or spoken form of a particular language {{comment|(exceptions to one or both include languages with phonetic and [[ideographic]] scripts)}}, morphemes may appear in slightly altered forms, often because of interaction with phonology. think [[elision]], consonant doubling{{verify}}, and such. {{verify}}

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'inflectional morpheme' refers to morphemes used to inflect.

-->





===Morphemes and syllables/graphemes/phonemes===

Note that morphemes are distinct from (but usually closely related to related to) [[syllables]] and (sequences of) (alphabetic) [[graphemes]]. 

Consider that 
* a syllable can have multiple morphemes (as in 'dog{{interpunct}}s') 
* a morpheme can span multiple syllables (as in 'be{{interpunct}}lieve').
* a syllable may have different meaning when used as different types of morpheme (e.g. the word {{word|less}} versus the {{suffix|less}} suffix)

Morphemes rely on meaning, meaning they can be taken to be made of of phonemes (consider [[minimal pairs]]) as this is more exact that referring to them with a-chunk-of-letters-in-a-specific-sense.

Morphemes can often be fairly easily intuited from syllables and/or pronunciation, although neither is a very simple mapping. Complications include [[allomorphs]] ( morphemes that are realized with different phonemes, like the English 's' morpheme (plural marker) is often either {{IPA|s}} or {{IPA|z}}).


===Affixes===


REWRITE

==Words==
{{stub}}

Funnily, there isn't a good universal definition of a word.


Perhaps the most practical definition is "grammatical unit that can enter intro a (syntactical or morphological) construction with another at the phrase level".
{{comment|(which steams from the idea of a [[consitituent]], which is basically that definition but says ''any'' level rather than phrase level)}}.


This sounds formal though is really a more pragmatic "''acts'' like a word" definition -- it's sort of a fancy way of saying "something you write that you can do something with, can ''use''"


It's only a ''little'' circular ('phrase level' may need to define words), and a little fuzzy ('[[grammatical unit]]' is ''wide'').



The concept of a '''word''', as used by different people, is fuzzier than that, though.
When you count words, you usually don't analyse grammatical units, you count spaces, 
i.e. are looking at orthography, not meaning.

Except when we are - we can only really get specific when we restrict it to languages and language families.


Say, in the counting-the-spaces sense, German has three times more vocabulary than almost everyone else.
Not because they know a lot more words, but because they write them together, in part to clarify what modifies what in certain kinds of compounds. Most other languages are happy just writing them next to each other, or ''maybe'' hyphenating them.

<!--

Just for fun, let's try to do without that.
: Orthography helps: if there's spaces or punctuation, it splits words. Well, except apostrophes. Usually.
:: It does not apply to all scripts and languages, but for a lot of languages, this is certainly the layperson's concept of a word, and a good basis.

: Or you could focus on sounds and say it's where pauses would be (and rarely clearly are - we talk fast and guess separation because know the language).
:: Decent, but also not quite covering.
:: Phonological words also need a little more definition that ''that'', but let's keep things simpleish.

: You can use the fact that most words you already know, because you know their meaning already.
:: This is both a circular cheat, and sort of breaks anyway
::: 'Lexical item' doesn't solve much, and gets ''really'' messy around any idiomatic collocative things, function words / function morphemes, and more
::: 'Unit of meaning' also doesn't help, since (depending a little on your definitions) that's morphemes, and a level and too fine in [[synthetic languages]] (many of them) and particularly polysynthetic ones.
::: Also, does that make a compound a word?  When?  In what languages?
-->

<!--

I've seen definitions like 'constituent at the phrase level' which, well, it depends on whether you mean consitituent vaguely, or 
whether you use a definition like 'one of two or more grammatical units that enter syntactically or morphologically into a construction at any level'.

In the former case, it's a fancy way of saying 'clump of meaning' or even just 'stuff we write together' or 'would move around a sentence as a whole' which... fair enough.

In the latter, it would seem to mean "one of two or more grammatical units that enter syntactically or morphologically into a construction at the phrase level".





 is basically just that but fancier. It's also rather close to the definition of [[lexical unit]].

...though it still fails to make a good distinction to compounds and to phrases.


Grammatical word
-->
<!--
words


By that logic, german has three times the vocabulary of anyone else. Even if two hundred thousand of those come from compound that in other languages would be phrases.

This blurs the line between 'word' and 'purely compositional compound' and 'purely compositional phrase'.

In some languages, spaces may get inserted or removed; see also delexicalization,
but also some cases are just not very settled. 

multiword expression 
multi-word expression
multi word expression

They are the same expressed thing, but we cannot easily tell that ''purely''
orthographically. Even if we remove the problem if identifying that these are the words to lift out (this is hard for similar reasons),
we would probably say "multi word-expression" is


But if we 
And we can conclude they are the same thing ''not'' orthographically,
but 

In fact,  would probably be something else. 



-->

<!--
There is usually more agreement on the definitions on what written and spoken units/components are ([[morpheme]]s, [[phoneme]]s) 
than on what words themselves are.

Much of what 'word' reminds us of is covered by '''[[morphology]]''', which is a large part of many languages.

Morphology also seems to raise most of the questions related to the definition of a word.


For example, 
do you consider morphological inflections and derivations (such as plurals, verb conjugations, words with diminutive suffixes, and such) as different words?

Do you consider compounds words? ...if so, in which languages? 


Morphology may introduce further definitions, like [[simple word]] (consisting of a single morpheme), [[complex word]] (free+bound morphemes), but the details of which can vary per language, around [[compounds]], etc.



Some other definitions of words are somewhat circular. 


For example, 'things under regular linguistic evolution' is a practical check for analytical linguists (e.g. things like surnames generally don't qualify), but is too quirkily exclusive to be a univrsal definition.

An arguably better but still fuzzy description than that could be that a word is an unit of language identifiable by its speakers.

-->


See also 
* [[Compounds, phrases]]


[[Category:Linguistics]]
[[Category:Grammar]]
[[Category:Morphology]]

==Forms==

<!--

Some linguistic theory makes a hard distinction between '''words''' and '''word forms''' or '''lexical form''' (or forms more generaly), e.g. defining 
: words more as the abstract meanings (that happen to have a syntactical element), 
: forms more as the concrete things that interact with phonology/orthology (and happen to have meaning)

(and '''lexical form''' may be acknowledging that it doesn't always present as a single word)


-->

==See also==
* [[Wikipedia:Morpheme]]
* [[Wikipedia:Lexeme]]
* [[Wikipedia:Grapheme]]
* [[Wikipedia:Phomeme]]

[[Category:Linguistics]]
[[Category:Terms]]



==Lexeme, lemma, paradigm==


A '''lexeme''' is usualy taken to be the ''concept'' behind a word, shared by all the possible appearances of a single [[root]]{{verify}}.

For example, 'run', 'running' and 'ran' are lexical units that are considered part of the same lexeme. 


More formally {{comment|(particularly by those with a preference for [[optimality theory]])}} it is regularly considered the collection of lexical units - pairs of ''lexical form'' and ''meaning'' - that is, to the set of things which non-arguably have same basic meaning (and generally all look quite alike).



The '''lemma''' (or, in [[lexicography]], '''headword''') is a chosen ''canonical'' form of a lexeme.

It is a usually the least [[marked]] of all the inflected variants, and in many cases is a complete usable form.  

For any one language, there there is typically consistency in terms of tense and plurality and such.

This is often also the simplest [[morphological]] form {{comment|(e.g. in many languages, if the [[root]] is a free morpheme, it's that, if not it usually takes a fairly neutral [[bound morphemes]] or two {{verify}}, though there are exceptions to all of that)}}.

For example the lemma for 'run', 'running' and 'ran' is 'run'.

Dictionaries in most languages list things under the lemma, not any inflected forms.
: So the lemma is the form you'ld look up in there
: which form that is varies (a little) per language


The '''[[root]]''' is similar but may suggest a more linguistic, morphological take - e.g for for produce, produced, the ''lemma'' is produce, while the root may be mentioned as produc-.




A '''paradigm''' (see also [[:Category:Morphosyntactics|morphosyntactics]]) refers to the the collection of all [[inflection|inflected]] forms that share a common root / stem. 


In many languages more specifically meaning 'all forms of a lexeme'.

...though in more [[fusional]] and [[agglutinative]] languages this is a fuzzier concept)
In [[inflectional]] languages, paradigms can be said to summarize the most common forms of [[word formation]].

<!-- I have seen one or two variant and rather more technical definitions -->



Notes: 
* There is sometimes no obvious choice of a lemma in a set of words for a lexeme.

* Lemmas are also sometimes understood as the whole group (instead of the abstract concept behind it) - 'all variants of a word around a specific root' (largely inflection/derivations).

* Details are noticably different (mostly simpler) in systems primarily using [[logographic]] writing, as there is often only one symbol (and/or pronunciation) for a concept, and where variations are handled by compounds of symbols (as e.g. in [[Japanese]]).

* Lexemes are often morphologically determined, and can be used to refer to a set of direct morphological variations


* Translation is often interested in lexical units, because they tend to show up as the things constant on both ends of the translation -- assuming it wasn't part of a [[MWE]]

<!--
You can't base the concept of a word purely on lemmas, though, because the lexicalisation and word choices in word forms isn't entirely regular. There is almost per definition enough idiosyncratic usage in a live language, which for example means that non-lemma forms are used to [[lexicalization|lexicalize]] something different under.
-->


See also 
* [[lemmatizer]]

* http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/enc/morphology.htm
* http://www.indiana.edu/~hlw/PhonUnits/intro.html
* http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/enc/intro.htm

==Lexical unit==

A '''lexical unit''', most broadly, is any part of a sentence acting as a meaningful unit and up for interacting with other parts of the sentence.

In this sense it can include:
* function words
* content words - tend to be lone lexical units, when not part of [[compounds]]
* [[phrasal verbs]] (but not ''all'' sorts of phrases - some are purely compositional parts of lexical units)
* compounds. (non-compositional compounds are more easily recognized as such by us)
* many things that fall under the header [[collocations]] or [[multi-word expressions]] can be lexical units, particularly institutionalized phrases, idioms (and some of those them may be quite long)


Longer things can act as lexical units too, including clauses, sentence/text frames, though this can be more of a push.
some prefer terms like '''lexical chunk''' for longer things that behave as units.

=On the larger side=

{{stub}}


Broadly and approximately...
* '''compounds''' are single words that contain multiple [[lexical units]]

* '''phrases''' are separate [[words]] that (inter)act as a single unit within a larger structure (...usually, definitions vary somewhat)

* '''clauses''' are a combination that have a [[predicate]] and a [[subject]], but not always a complete expression of meaning (yet a good part of the way)

* '''sentences''' are typically considered one or more clauses, and are often complete expressions of meanings




==Constituents==

<!--
https://glossary.sil.org/term/constituent
-->

==Grammatical units==

<!--
'Grammatical unit' is a useful abstraction while trying to nail down what we mean with specific terms within linguistics.


It's things that interact in a grammar. 

Which tends to mean words, sentences, morphemes, phrases and clauses


Compare with [[constituent]], [[lexical unit]]


-->

==Compounds; phrases==
{{stub}}


The [[morphosyntactic]] reasons behind compounds seem to vary between languages.

This ends up meaning that compounds may be much like phrases in one language, but not in another.


And that's a problem to a clear universal definition, because in the widest sense they are ''almost'' the same thing: 
[[lexical units]] / [[constituents]] / [[grammatical units]] made from smaller parts.


In some contexts, linguists see little to no difference. 

In others, they may disagree on a ''deep'' level.



For any one language, the details are a lot more settled and you can get a ''lot'' more specific in descriptions of what a compound is and isn't, and what it does and doesn't do.

Yet almost none of those details hold across all languages.
so there exists no good ''general'' definition of either that is true for all languages, 
even if you stop very soon after 'multiple roots' and 'non-clausal' and 'probably sticks together in a sentence'.


This doesn't mean the terms are bad, it just means that we're trying to catch too much interesting variation, too many languages's distinct gradations, into ''just two words'', and we just need to acknowledge this with better qualifiers, and/or pointing out our terminology is specific to the language(s) we're currently talking about...



----


There are many properties we can ascribe more to one than the other, but these are often soft, tend to vary between languages, and tend to have exceptions even within a language.


* compounds tend to be more compact, phrases can be longer (basically as long as they don't qualify for a [[clause]])

* compounds are fairly fixed sequences, arguably a type of [[multiword expressions]], (longer) phrases can have alterable structure

* a (noun) compound is more likely to name, a (noun) phrase more likely to describe
: e.g. floppy disk is a name, not a description (or rather, grew quickly from a description into a name)
: with exceptions; what is written apart so looks like phrases in German and Dutch may well act like naming compounds, 

* dictionaries will generally list compounds, and rarely list phrases
: probably largely because (and when) phrases are considered [[compositional]]


* compounds are somewhat more likely to become lexicalized and less-compositional. Arguably to have become considered compounds for that reason
: "ice cream" (originally "iced cream") has its own meaning that is not purely "cream that has been iced."

* lexicalization also makes things more complex, though
: Consider that high school is a compound, small school is a phrase

* some things may exist as compounds as well as phrases 
: e.g. grown-up as a compound (naming an adult), grown-up as an adjective phrase
: a number of compound nouns (often with a hyphen) look a lot like a verb phrase.


* compounds may resist e.g. inflection of its parts (probably because it touches on a specific lexicalized meaning), phrases will more easily allow it
:: e.g. deep sleep could be modifier to be deeper sleep, overproduction or footpath not so much
:: this could be explained as a "that would change its meaning, which you may not want" (or which may be your hobby), and not so much a "morphosyntactics forbid it", though {{verify}}



Complexified by language change
* the above examples exist in part because English (more than some other languages) allows open compounds, closed compounds, and hyphentated compounds, and which is the correct writing for a given compound can 
** change over time
** differ with use (e.g. {{example|day to day}} and {{example|day-to-day}} may or may not differ depending on how they are used in a sentence)

* more generally, compounds may become phrases, phrases may become compounds



Complexified by other things that come from real use, not analysis.
* In langauges that compound heavily (e.g. German, Dutch), there may be a thinner boundary between the two concepts to start with
: with compounds being mostly compositional and mostly working as an interpretation aid

* In langauges that agglutinate/synthesize/inflect heavily (e.g. Turkish), there may be a thinner boundary between the two concepts to start with

* in languages that ''don't'' like agglutination, but still do it sometimes, the reasons for whehter it's smushed together or not can seem more arbitrary
: Consider how in English, compounds may change between spaced, hyphenated and solid (written as a single word) over time. 

* Some compounds exist because of a sort of slightly misled lexicalization from repeated use, bastardization, or such. 




And then there's things like [[polysynthetic]] languages, which can blur the lines between compound and phrase and even ''clause''.

And then you run into concepts like [[phrasal compounds]] which seem, by their definition, to be somewhere between 
regular, arguably-lexicalized things like [[phrasal verbs]] and [[phrasal adjectives]],
and any [[multi-word expression]] / collocation (any pattern we can describe).



<!--

A compound is more about squishing together more than one roots, and a phrase can be more complex than that as long as it's not a clause.



A '''compound''' (through the process of '''compounding''', sometimes '''composition''') creates a new [[lexical unit]] that has more than one [[root]].

This is probably be most generic and more universal meaning -- but also unsatisfying to many, because that places it very near phrases.


A '''phrase''' could be defined as a syntactic structure that is larger than a single lexeme/word, but ''functions'' as a single [[Morpheme, Syllable, Lexeme, Grapheme, Phoneme, Character, Glyph|(lexical) unit]] in the syntax of the sentence, and does not yet meet the requirements of a [[clause]] (or [[sentence]]).



Are those two things roughly saying the same thing? 
: Yes. 

Can we be more specific?
: Not without being wrong for some languages.


And that's the problem.  




Notes:
* it varies whether what compounding makes is considered a word 
: you can call compounding [[word formation]], and phrasing not that, but that depends a little on the language's take on what a [[word]] is
: And English is actually ''less'' consistent about this than many others.
: it may be more sensible to have more precise terms. Say, "compound word" might indicate ""

: One issue is that in various languages, compounds may be written 
:: as a single word ('''closed compound''', meaning no space), e.g. football, underworld
:: separately ('''open compound'''), e.g. bus stop, swimming pool, exam paper
:: hypthenated (?), e.g. tea-set, check-out
:: In fact English is one of the less-consistent languages 

* similarly, we'll say [[root]] and shy away from definitions using '[[stem]]' - stem is a messy term

* a lot of definitions even in linguistics get more specific than this, but that may be because of an unspoken bias towards English




The last points makes it not only hard to define, but also hard to look up. 

Your typical web search yields statements will be for English, and even then are not ''necessarily'' agreed upon by everyone.

And, like the [[Morphology#Root.2C_base.2C_stem|root/base/stem distinction]], it may be genuinely useful to use more specific definitions when teaching any one specific language -- so that's the typical sort of description you will find.



That may be similarly unsatisfying, as it does not give a clear distinction to either a compound ''or'' a [[collocation]].


----


Computationally, the difference between compounds with spaces and phrases is hard to identify, although it can be guessed from collocational information. 
The difference can matter in places where you wish to extract or search for semantics, subjects, or such, as you generally want to treat different parts of a phrase separately, and compounds as a single thing, or if you want to ignore/discard sentence-functional parts of phrases, but not from compounds.



----

As far as I can tell, this lack of satisfaction comes from trying to slap two words onto various properties (that involve some gradations to boot).


Doing so differently per language (because we ''do'') may be ''more'' helpful within that language, 
but does nothing for the terms in general, or the concepts we are trying to describe.



In English, we much more easily call it compounding when the two roots are [[content morphemes]]/words and probably usable as [[free morphemes]]/words.
Because in English and a bunch of other languages, if that's not true of one, then you're probably doing something else, like affixing for inflections. 

That is, of course, if you agree on affixes, which not all linguists do.




'''Compounding'''  refers to creating words from more than one unit of meaning, often things that are/can be [[free morphemes]]. {{comment|(it is in some ways similar to what morphology usually does with function morphemes, but with content units instead)}}


A compound's meaning may act broadly as its [[head]] being specialized by what then is considered a modifier doing some sort of specializing/limiting (e.g. pickaxe).

Compounds often have a meaning that is mostly [[compositional]].

In most languages, there are major patterns of how compounds form a meaning, which means that unseen compounds tend to have fairly clear meaning.


Note that compounding has a somewhat different nature in different languages -- and particularly in languages like Japanese and Chinese.




In most languages, solid compounds are short, with long compound hyphenated, though styles differ per languages (and sometimes style guide). Some languages are a fan of very long compounds (see also [[agglutination]]).

When people mention just compound and indicate something concrete, they often refer specifically to the concept of noun compounds (a noun-noun compound), and would refer to other types of compounds (see below) with more specific terms.


Depending on the language, compounds may appear in various forms, e.g. 
* with a space (e.g. fish tank), which is very much like a phrase
* without a space (e.g. policeman) or 
* with a dash (e.g. take-off)
...or two or three of these, depending on the specific case (specifically the degree of [[lexicalization]]{{verify}}) or possibly type of compound, and a particular language's preference.


Note that this may conflict with your (and software's) idea of what a [[word]] is - and not everyone agrees, with some people trying to define their way out of it






I see some people trying to define open compounds as non-compounds "syntactic constructions" rat
syntactic construction consisting of head+modifier

...and yes, this can make open compounds hard to distinguish from phrases.







But if compounds exist with spaces, what then is it that makes black bird a phrase and ''not possibly'' a compound? 
It isn't exactly that blackbird exists as a compound already. That ''does'' block the possibility (in a way that requires reasonable vocabulary before you can do syntax right, which isn't great for learners), but there are other reasons that would have applied without it. 

And these reasons are in part specific to English.




'''Morphosyntactics'''



Which it is for any compound can vary both with location (e.g. British versus American english) and is considered lexicalized preference or style,
and not of syntactical importance.

Also, modification, like marking plurals, may work slightly differently. It typically works on the head





In other languages, meaning ''is'' tied to morphosyntactics. 

For example, in e.g. in German and a lesser degree Dutch, compounding (in particular noun compounding) is quite [[productive]].

Such languages will have specific patterns that make unseen compounds clear in meaning. 

In Dutch 
* the head is at the right, and will be the thing that is being modified.
: For example, you can combine 'leiding' (pipe or conduit) and 'water' two ways:
:: leidingwater means tap water
:: waterleiding is a water pipe.

* separating compounds is considered incorrect, and/or leads to different interpretations as it must be a phrase instead
: For example, long distance runner would be 'langeafstandsloper', while 'lange afstandsloper' leaves it more ambiguous whether it is the distance or the runner which is long
: The difference between naakt portretschilderen and naaktportretschilderen is the difference between painting people nude and paining nude people.
: Such cases are usually resolvable via pragmatics well enough, but writing it less ambiguously is considered more correct.

* Hyphenation is allowed where it helps readability. 
: For example, where vowels would clash 'macro-economie'
milieuinspecteur




Compounds will tend to resist e.g. inflection of its parts, phrases will typically allow it.
: e.g. deep sleep could be modifier to be deeper sleep, overproduction or footpath not so much
: this could be explained more as a "that would change its meaning" than a "morphosyntactics forbid it", though {{verify}}

A compound is more likely to name (becayse), a phrase more likely to describe (because they are compositional)
: with exceptions; what is written apart so looks like phrases in german and dutch may well act like naming compounds, 


In languages that use both compounds and phrases,
: compound can be more specific, more [[lexicalized]], and less [[compositional]], and more likely to name something 
: phrase is more generic and compositional, and more likely to describe something. The interaction with context i



That said, German and Dutch also have plenty of lexicalized compounds

Say, german altpapier (recycled paper) versus altes papier ('old paper')







'''Exocentric compounds''' are those where the intepretation, semantic category, and/or morphosyntactic features (its interaction via agreement, government) do not come from a clear head / are not purely that of its constituents, and/or the semantic headedness isn't the morphosyntactic headedness. 
 
They also tend to be metaphorical / not strictly compositional.  
: Example: 


'''Endocentric compounds''' are those that have a head that the other parts effectively modify.
For example, Dutch is fond of many-word compounds, but also does so quite composititionally and with what acts as its head (that determines the semantic class) last. 
: Example: 

Endocentric compounds act more like phrases than exocentric ones. 


'''Coordinative compounds''' are compounds where the parts more clearly contribute equally to meaning. It's typically compositional, and more about contributiing equally
It is not only compositional, 





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Noun compounds

Nominal compounds (), verbal compounds (), adjectival compounds (),  elative compounds. Last but not least, Dutch has phrase-based compounds. 





e.g. German and to a lesser degree Dutch are fond of making long compounds, and doing so follows a few simple rules of what modifies what within a compound. 

Also, writing the same words apart will have a different meaning - basically due to different. 


(Such compounding by affixing together words/morphemes/stems is restricted primarily by what lexical semantics pragmatically allows - which to other languages can look somewhat arbitrary.)


English typically does not have this difference, just a preference for whether to write a compound with or without space or hyphen (in a way that seems more lexicalized, and current habit), and


----


Say, blackboard is made of two content morphemes, but interacts and inflects as a single word, and 
from the outside it doesn't necessarily matter which is the more important (the '[[head]]').

It also doesn't carry the same meaning as the same things if it were separated into a phrase, 'black board'.


But then, compounds are ''allowed'' to contain spaces, so how do you tell the difference?

More pressingly, ''when'' are they allowed to contain words?
Say, watchmaker is watchmaker, sometimes watch-maker, but not watch maker.



----


(note that outside of linguistic jargon, 'phrase' usually refers to [[idioms]] and the like)


<!--
Phrases could perhaps be described as being dependent (compare to [[dependent clause]]).
This isn't about whether they could be independent enough to be complete thoughts or be sentence, 
but more about whether they can(not) contain a sentence's subject.{{verify}}
For example, adpositional phrases can never contain the subject of the sentence it is used in.





B Schlücker, M Hüning (2009) "Compounds and phrases - A functional comparison between German A + N compounds and corresponding phrases"


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===More on compounds===
====English compounds====
{{stub}}

(much of this applies to more languages, but some of it is mor specific; TODO: separate out better)

There are various combinations of lexical categories that are possible. This is perhaps not directly interesting in terms of functionality, but certain details may apply to certain types of compounds (and you may be able to do some probablistic guessing by basing compound predictions on the observation that the types appear in different amounts)



'''Noun-noun compounds'''

Also known as '''noun compounds''', '''nominal compounds''', '''compound nominals''' and other terms,
and usually clearly the most common type of compound (partly because most of a vocabulary is nouns, partly because as content lexemes, they combine easily to make specific and articulated concepts)

One of the two nouns is often [[substantive]]ly used as an adjective, in English usually the first noun.

Some languages allow relatively free combinations, which challenges the concept of what a word, and the nature of their relations with concepts. See also compounds.
This is one of the reasons behind linguists considering [[lexemes]] to be more useful than than 'word'.


Some languages are particular fans of [[agglutination|agglutinating]] its [[compounds]] - noticably German, but also (to somewhat lesser extents) other [[Germanic]] languages such as Dutch, Finnish (Finno-Ugric group), Hungarian, Swedish, and others. Other languages only do it for specific functional markers, which often (largely) considered [[affixes]].

Native speakers of such languages often have a sense of incorrectness when such compounds are separated into the [[stems]] they are made of. That sense is often based on increased ambiguity, as agglutination is syntactic and separation could be said to be falling back on [[unmarked]] form, so provides additional/alternative interpretations and relations between the same stems.
In some cases this is about ambiguity, in some it's about [[lexicalization]], and occasionally personal preference also plays a significant role.



The incorrectness and its sense has names, like ''deppenleerzeichen'' in German, and ''losschrijfziekte'' or ''Engelse ziekte'' {{comment|(literally something like 'separate writing sickness' and 'English sickness' respectively)}} in Dutch, the last referring to the apparent English preference for using phrases over (long) compounds (though English may still have such phrases be unsplittable, and occasionally hyphenate them to mark that - though hyphens in words usually get removed over time).



'''Verb-verb compounds'''
* a.k.a. Compound verb{{verify}}


'''Verb-noun compounds'''


'''Compound adpositions'''


'''Noun-adverb compounds'''
* e.g. passer-by


'''Noun-adjective'''
* e.g. month-long


'''Adverb-noun compounds'''
e.g. bystander 


'''Adverb-verb compounds'''
e.g. overthrow, output


'''Verb-adverb compounds'''
e.g. drawback


'''Adjective-noun compounds'''
e.g. redhead


'''Adjective-verb compounds'''
e.g. public speaker, dry cleaning

===More on phrases===
{{stub}}

====Phrases aren't always called phrases====
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Phrases tend to be defined more from an analytical viewpoint, and as such, we may not call things phrases until it is practical for analysis. 

It's generally quite useful to point out that noun phrases act as a whole, so we usually do that.

Say, 'the sofa' would be an noun phrase, 'on the sofa' a prepositional phrase, but we tend not to mark all possible functions and nestings.

And doing so doesn't mean you have more structure, can lead to overlapping marking, and ambiguity, so doesn't necessarily help you represent or parse anything.


It also reveals that we have a fairly narrow view of which things are phrases and which things just... sit together. 
With no clear line between phrase and collocation until we say it's a phrase.


    Adpositional Phrase
    Noun Phrase
    Pronominal
    Verb Phrase


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====Phrases - function and (semi-formal) type====
Analytically, phrases derive their main function from their head, which the phrase type is named for, and which may not be first element (as 'head' may suggest). 
The best known phrase types are the verb phrase (VP) and noun phrase (NP) but by the above 'from its head' definition, many other types of phrases can be said to exist, some of which are not as useful or analytically natural/neutral as others. 

Note also that many are ignored to shorten blackboard/whiteboard examples. 


The very basics are are usually:
* NP: [[Noun]] Phrase, e.g. "the cat" or "the cat in the hat"
* VP: [[Verb]] Phrase, e.g. "eat food"


It is also fairly common to see reference to:
* PP: [[Preposition]]al phrase, e.g. "through the looking glass"
* AP: [[Adjective|Adjectival]] phrase, e.g. "full of toys"
* [[Adverb]]ial phrase, e.g. "very carefully"  (modifies a verb phrase, adjectival phrase, or clause)
* [[Adposition]]al phrase

* CP: [[Complementizer]] Phrase
* IP: [[Inflectional Phrase]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflectional_phrase]


Notes:
* In XP, the X is meant as a 'fill this in' letter. It is a reference to the [[X-bar theory]].
* Phrases often contain other types of phrases. There are various common patterns, which you can often see as grammars in parsers (often the simpler ones).

* In sentence parse trees, you also see similar elements that are more [[clause]] than [[phrase]] based, such as:
** RC: Relative Clause, e.g. "through the looking glass" (also an adjectival phrase)

* Note that the above are not always exclusive, particularly if they look for different types of functions.



A sentence is usually seen as a tree, so that phrases can contain phrases. For example, verb phrases may easily have noun phrases for their subject and object.


=====Phrasal verbs, multi-word verbs, and related concepts=====
{{stub}}
'''Phrasal verbs''' are semantic units that act as a verb, but are more than one word/lexeme long. 

There are a number of commonly used criteria to describe behaviour of variations, but not everyone uses all the related terms in the same way. Phrasal verbs and closely related concepts are also known under names. {{comment|(...such as '''multi-word verb''' (MWV) '''compound verb''', '''verb-adverb combination''', '''verb-particle construction''' (VPC), and others. '''Multi-word verbs''' often refer to phrasal verbs in general, or sometimes specifically verb-adverb combinations; in such a context, phrasal verb would likely refer to verb-preposition combinations.)}}


In English, phrasal verbs are often '''verb-[[particle]]''' combinations (fairly common), which can be subdivided into:
* prepositional phrasal verbs: verb plus [[preposition]], e.g. ''ran into'', ''look at''
* adverbial phrasal verbs: verb plus [[adverb]], e.g. ''drop off'', ''work out''
* verb with both an adverb and preposition, e.g. ''look forward to'' {{verify}}

Related terms include '''particle verbs''', referring to phrasal verbs that contain an adverb, and '''prepositional verb''', referring to those that contain a preposition.


Further notes: 
* Phrasal verbs are responsible for many [[figurative]]/[[idiomatic]]/non-[[compositional]] constructions, for example {{example|"I hope you will ''get over'' your operation quickly."}}, {{example|"I ''ran into'' him when he ''ran away'' from home."}}.

* separability and transitivity is usually phrase-specific; they must often be memorized to be used correctly (and may be a problem for [[L2]] learners)

* in many cases, the word combination in a phrasal verb can also appear in free composition - where the words have separate grammatical/semantic meaning

* Phrasal verbs are different from verbs with helpers (as this is semi-implicitly defined to be non-idiomatic)

* Many phrasal verbs have more than one possible meaning. Consider {{comment|"I ''dropped off'' while ''dropping off'' a friend, just where the hill ''drops off''."}}

* Phrasal verbs are regularly intransitive, but can also be transitive. ({{example|"They quickly ''made up'' a story and ''showed up''."}}).

* phrasal verbs may be separable or inseparable expressions. Consider for example that "''Switch off'' the light" is equivalent to "''Switch'' the light ''off''". When separable, it's mostly for inserting nouns/pronouns via re-ordering, e.g. {{example|"We quickly ''summed'' it ''up''}}.

* There are various exceptions, preferences and rules specific to subtypes of phrasal verbs.



See also:
* [[delexicalization]] (specifically delexicalized verbs)
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb
* http://www.churchillhouse.com/english/exercises/phrasals/
* http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/phrasal-verbs/

====Phrase structure====
{{stub}}

Sentence structures tends to have patterns that, 
''if'' we declare phrases and types of them to be Very Real Things,
would probably fall on us to then describe as behaviour of that phrase type.


=====General phrase types=====

You could say there are '''dependent phrases''', that can only work when attached to something else. 

For example, [[adpositional phrases]] and other things that ''act'' like adverbs/adpositions/adjectives,
exclude a subject themselves.

<!--
Not to be confused with 'the dependent of a phrase', which can describe an element of a phrase that is not the same thing as the whole phrase points to (the head of the phrase). 

For example, in "John's book", "John" is the dependent.

https://glossary.sil.org/term/dependent-phrase


-->
 

=====Noun Phrase=====

For example, a Noun Phrase can be ''non-recursive'' (also: '' 'base noun phrase' '', '' 'noun chunk' '') or ''recursive'', the latter indicating that the NP is itself complex, and both its contents and structure (think tree with head) may be of semantic value. A non-recursive NP, on the other hand, is usually at most a [[determiner]], a list of [[adjective]]s and a (possibly compound) [[noun]]. {{verify}} (For this reason, non-recursives are often used for simple cases in e.g. data extraction)


<!-- http://www.specgram.com/CXLVIII.3/04.polarczik.typology.html -->

=====Verb Phrase=====



====Compound phrases====
{{stub}}
<!--
Compound phrases refer to phrases being combined into largeer phrases.

Generally/always the same type of phrase, that become another instance of the same phrase type.


Examples:
* Doctor Smith and Mrs. Towers (two noun phrases, ''Doctor Smith'' and ''Mrs. Towers'', acting as a single noun phrase)

* Lists in general (A, B, and C) also act as compound phrases
: (semantics get more detailed, see. e.g. oxford comma arguments)

* A very pink and quite healthy pig. 
:: combines two adjective phrases: ''very pink'', ''quite healthy'' into a single new adjective phrase. 
:: note there is no possible meaning for 'very pink' until you do this.

-->

===Phrase versus clause===

You could call a phrase a syntactic structure (in the sense of being a structure at smaller syntactic scale), and a clause a more grammatical unit.


"A monkey," "to a monkey," and "gave to a monkey" could be said to be [[phrases]], 

"I gave a notebook to a monkey" is a clause - an independent clause that is also a full sentence. 


The difference between an independent clause and phrase may be clear enough, 
yet you might might point out that [[dependent phrases]] are incomplete, like phrases, 
but dependent clauses still tend to act as distinct and moderately complete thoughts,
phrases often do not.

The difference between [[phrases]] and dependent clauses perhaps lies in that phrases do not require subjects or a finite verb,
and dependent clauses basically do (with the clause's predicate needing a verb).

==Clauses==
A [[clauses|clause]] contains a [[predicate]] and a subject (subject can be implied rather than explicit).

A clause can be a complete sentence, or part of one.



===Dependence===
A fairly semantic judgement based on whether the clause expresses a full thought.

====Independent clause====
'''Independent clauses''', a.k.a. '''main clauses,''' express a complete thought. A single clause is generally a simple sentence.

Compound clauses contain at least one independent clause as the main clause.


====Dependent clause====
'''Dependent clauses''', a.k.a. '''subordinate clauses''' or '''embedded clauses,''' are clauses that ''do'' contain a subject and predicate, but cannot be used as a sentence, as(/when) it does not express a complete thought (which may be a criterion you can cannot necessarily judge in grammatical terms{{verify}}).

{{comment|(see also [[dependent phrase]])}}


One reason a clause may be dependent is that it refers to a subject instead of explicitly containing one. 

Another is that a dependent clauses has been made from independent clauses by having started a compound construction for some sort of elaboration, by  adding a [[dependent word]]/[[connective]], often a coordinating [[conjunction]] such as 'but,' or a relative pronoun such as 'which'.


Dependent clauses act like a particular [[lexical category]] in compound or complex [[sentence]]s, and are used describe or modify the [[referent]] of the clause they are attached to{{verify}}. 
Most common are:


<!--
=====Noun clause=====
For example "''That I think I'm a teapot'' bothers me"

=====Adverb clause, Adverbial clause=====
For example "I tend to ramble ''when I'm insane''"

=====Adjectival clause=====
'''adjectival clauses''', often '''adjectivals''', are [[#Dependent_clause|dependent clauses]] that are used to modify some [[referent]], usually a [[noun]], [[noun phrase]] or a [[pronoun]], often simply by elaborating on its context, details for clarity. 
{{comment|(for examples, see punctuation examples)}}


In English, adjectival clauses appear only in the form of '''[[relative clauses]]''' {{comment|(making the terms are effectively synonymous in the context of English)}}, always being introduced by something, often a relative pronoun (often ''who, whose, whom, which,'' or ''that''), or possibly a relative adverb (''where, when, why'') or a two-word construction
(''in which, by which, by whom, for whom, from whom'').



'''Punctuation in adjectivals'''

Whether to put this clause in commas depends on whether it is relatively parenthetical to the sentence. Would it make no sense without, or is it merely more detailed?


An adjectival clause may be central to the semantical meaning of the sentence, such as in "''I met a man ''who was not there''." 

And adjectival clause may also be rather parentetical, as in 
"That was Anna, ''who is a little odd'''", 
"The couple, ''whose affair was short-lived in the end,'' slalomed down the street", or
"I think it was the drugs ''that made me think it''" 
In such cases, various languages will require punctuation to set it apart.


See also [http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/adjectiveclause.htm the examples here].
-->

<!--

===Punctuation===
{{stub}}

Where:
* IC: Independent clause
* CC, SC: Coordinating conjuction, Subordinating conjuction
* IM, DM: Independent and dependent [[marker words]]

Common constructions include:
* IC. IC.      "I am a fish. I breathe oxygen."
* IC; IC.      "I am a fish; I breathe oxygen." (suggesting closely related sentences, such as explanations. See [[semicolon]])
* IC, CC IC.   "I am a fish, but I breathe oxygen."
* DM IC, IC    "Since I am a fish, I swim in water."
* IC; IM, IC.  "I am a fish. However, I can fly."
* IC DC        "I swim in water as I am a fish."


Avoided styles: 
* IC, IC.  If the two are not related, they should be separate sentences. If they are, it calls for some way of connecting that is more meaningful, be it a semicolon, (coordinating) conjunction, 
* DM IC.  "Because I'm a fish."

Ungrammatical:
* IC IC.

-->

===Relative clause===
{{stub}}

A '''relative clause''' is a dependent clause that modifies a noun phrase (e.g. noun, pronoun).

For example, in the phrase "the man ''who wasn't there''", the noun ''man'' is modified by relative clause ''who wasn't there''.

The purpose of a relative clause is often to be:
* [[restrictive]]
* [[descriptive]]
* [[Apposition|appositive]]


In terms of syntax, relative clauses can...
* be introduced by [[relative pronouns]], such as 'who' in the last example, used in various (indo-?)European languages
* be introduced by [[Connectives:_Copulae,_Conjunctions#Relativizer|relativizers]] (a type of conjunction), as in many Semitic languages
* rely purely on positioning, such as in Japanese(, Chinese?)

==Sentences==


A sentence is typically considered a clause, combination, and/or structural nesting of clauses.

For example: "I said ''I gave a notebook to a monkey.''" both is a clause, and contains one.



Note that whether a clause is a [[dependent clause]] or or [[independent clause]] is related, but not the same issue.

For example, there are two indepedendent clauses in "I think I'm a teapot, but I don't care", since both have their own subject and predicate, with the [[connective]] 'but' inbetween.

==Utterances==

Utterances often mean a unit of ''spoken'' language - the kind of things probably split bounded by pauses/silence.

The term is often used to 
focus only on spoken language,
contrasting with written language or language in a more general sense.

Written language is often much more planned than utterances.
 

Even if utterances are transcribed, the written form of these utterances are ''representations'' that are not one-to-one.
Difference lie in 
* [[prosody]] like stress, intonation, and tone of voice, ellipsis, etc.

* [[paralinguistic]] things such as facial expression, gesture, and posture.

* we use [[deictic]] expressions (pointing at things) in speech but avoid it in writing

* utterances often being more fragmented, with more pauses and umms ('[[voiced pauses]]'), [[fillers]], false starts, incomplete sentences, and grammar that may be less correct than the same person would use in writing.
:: Ask anyone who has had to do accurate transcription of speech audio


Notes:
* This leaves it slightly open whether that's a mechanical thing (e.g. taking a breath) or an intent thing.
: As such, an utterance could be multiple words or sentences, a sentence may be multiple utterances.

* '''Dialogue in writing''' are a ''simulation'' of utterances in any sense, often much more planned.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utterance

==Speech act==

==Discourse units==

Discourse units are mostly relevant when two or more people are talking,
we tend to have units that construct the turns we take.


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You can, as always, go deeper and more complex
"{{search|Deciding on Units of Analysis within Centering Theory}}"


https://samtalegrammatik.dk/en/the-grammar/forms/discourse-units
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[[Category:Linguistics]]
[[Category:Grammar]]