Morphosyntactic Structure

The word morphosyntactic is the adjective of morphosyntax. Morphosyntax is derived from morphology which is the study of word formation and syntax which is the study of how words are combined into larger unit such as phrase and sentence. Morphosyntax is the combination of morphology and syntax. They are combined because they have very close relationship. According to Crystal (1980: 234) 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. Crystal (1980: 234) gives illustration that the distinctions under the heading of number in nouns constitute a morphosyntactic category: on the one hand, number contrasts affect syntax (e.g. singular subject requiring a singular verb); on the other hand, they require morphological definition (e.g. add –s for plural).
Based on the explanation above, we know that word formation which is the concern of morphology has relationship with the syntactic structure. The word cooks for example is formed from the morpheme cook and the morpheme –s. This discussion occurs in the science called morphology. However, The word cooks is influenced by another word which, together with the word cooks itself, forms a bigger structure which is called syntactic structure. In English, cooks occurs in the syntactic structure called sentence whose subject is the third person singular and whose tense is simple present such as the following sentences: My mother cooks every morning. ; She cooks every morning.; and He cooks every morning.

REFERENCES

Crystal, Davis. 1980. A First Dictionary of linguistics and Phonetics. Colorado:
Westview Press Boulder