Editing Morphology (linguistics) (section)

===Paradigms and morphosyntax===
{{Linguistic typology topics}}
A linguistic [[inflection|paradigm]] is the complete set of related word forms associated with a given lexeme. The familiar examples of paradigms are the [[grammatical conjugation|conjugations]] of verbs and the [[declensions]] of nouns. Also, arranging the word forms of a lexeme into tables, by classifying them according to shared inflectional categories such as [[Grammatical tense|tense]], [[Grammatical aspect|aspect]], [[Grammatical mood|mood]], [[Grammatical number|number]], [[Grammatical gender|gender]] or [[Grammatical case|case]], organizes such. For example, the [[English personal pronouns|personal pronouns in English]] can be organized into tables by using the categories of [[Grammatical person|person]] (first, second, third); number (singular vs. plural); gender (masculine, feminine, neuter); and case (nominative, oblique, genitive).

The inflectional categories used to group word forms into paradigms cannot be chosen arbitrarily but must be categories that are relevant to stating the [[syntax|syntactic rules]] of the language. Person and number are categories that can be used to define paradigms in English because the language has [[agreement (linguistics)|grammatical agreement]] rules, which require the verb in a sentence to appear in an inflectional form that matches the person and number of the subject. Therefore, the syntactic rules of English care about the difference between ''dog'' and ''dogs'' because the choice between both forms determines the form of the verb that is used. However, no syntactic rule shows the difference between ''dog'' and ''dog catcher'', or ''dependent'' and ''independent''. The first two are nouns, and the other two are adjectives.

An important difference between inflection and word formation is that inflected word forms of lexemes are organized into paradigms that are defined by the requirements of syntactic rules, and there are no corresponding syntactic rules for word formation.

The relationship between syntax and morphology, as well as how they interact, is called "morphosyntax";<ref name="Dufter2017">
Dufter and Stark (2017) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_VBKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT29 Introduction – 2 Syntax and morphosyntax: some basic notions]'' in Dufter, Andreas, and Stark, Elisabeth (eds., 2017) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=_VBKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT29 Manual of Romance Morphosyntax and Syntax]'', Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG</ref><ref>Emily M. Bender (2013) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=XaheAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA35 Linguistic Fundamentals for Natural Language Processing: 100 Essentials from Morphology and Syntax]'', ch.4 ''Morphosyntax'', p.35, Morgan & Claypool Publishers</ref> the term is also used to underline the fact that syntax and morphology are interrelated.<ref name="VanValin1997">Van Valin, R. D., van Valin Jr, R. D., van Valin Jr, R. D., LaPolla, R. J., & LaPolla, R. J. (1997) ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=DxcrbgT1_oMC Syntax: Structure, meaning, and function]'', p.2, Cambridge University Press.</ref> The study of morphosyntax concerns itself with inflection and paradigms, and some approaches to morphosyntax exclude from its domain the phenomena of word formation, compounding, and derivation.<ref name="Dufter2017"/> Within morphosyntax fall the study of [[agreement (linguistics)|agreement]] and [[government (linguistics)|government]].<ref name="Dufter2017"/>