Taxonomy of linguistic topics, based partially on Thomas Edward Payne's book Describing Morphosyntax (Payne, Thomas Edward, 1997).
- Clause combinations, coordination
Every language has a way of combining basic lexical items in order to form a more complex expression.
- Adverbial clauses
- Clause chaining, medial clauses and switch reference
- Complement clauses
- Coordination
- Main clause
- Relative clauses
- Serial verbs
- Conditioning type
- Morphological conditioning
- Phonological conditioning
- Semantic conditioning
- Syntactic conditioning
- Constituent order typology
The study of constituent order in various languages that structure their clauses in characteristic ways. It provides a conceptualization of the syntactic structures and investigates the function of various orders in a variaty of languages.
- Constituent order in main clauses
- Constituent order in noun phrases
- Constituent order in verb phrases
- Constituent order with adpositional phrases
- Constituent order with comparatives
- Constituent order with question particles and question words
- Discourse analysis
Discourse is the intentional communication among people that is considered to be an independent field of investigation. This section provides an account of the general properties of discourse that are reflected in language.
- Continuity (cohesion) and discontinuity
- Geneological and geographic information
Information pertaining to geneological and geographic properties of a language.
- area
- dialect
- family
- language
- latitude
- longitude
- Genres
- Grammatical categories
In traditional grammar these refer to 'Parts of Speech' that every language has and whose categorical membership varies according to how the forms are used in discourse.
- Adjectives
- Adverbs
- Modifiers
- Morphosyntactic unit
- Bound morpheme
- Affix
- Clitic
- Free morpheme
- Lexical word
- Nouns
- Pronouns
- Verbs
- Grammatical relations
Relations between arguments and predicates in a level of linguistic structure that is independent of semantic and pragmatic influences.
- Agreement
- Functional groupings for S, A, and P
- “Syntactic” ergativity
- Morphology
- Morphological typology
- Nominal morphology
- Reduplication
- Verbal morphology
- Noun and noun-phrase operations
A description of tasks, functions that tend to be associated with Noun Phrases namely, how morpho-syntactic operations are expressed in Noun Phrases.
- Articles, determiners, demonstratives
- Case
- Class
- Compounding
- Denominalizations
- Diminution/augmentation
- Number
- Possessors
- Parts-of-speech system
- Differentiated parts-of-speech system
- Flexible parts-of-speech system
- Rigid parts-of-speech system
- Phonological phenomena
Phenomena related to the sound structure of words, to their syllable structure, to the place of stressed syllable(s) in a word, etc.
- Metrical phonology and stress
Defining where primary and secondary stress go in a word.
- Primary stress (main stress) assignment
- Secondary stress assignment
- Stress rules description
- Segmental phonology
- Allophones and allophony rules
- Phoneme Inventory
- Segments, potential phonemes
- Suprasegmental phonology
(See stress under "metrical phonology".)
- Lexical tone, Intonation
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- Syllables
Syllable structures, templates, and syllable-related phonological processes.
- General syllable structure properties
- Syllable template
- Syllable-based phonological processes
- Word size (minimal, maximal)
- Pragmatically marked structures
Actual instances of language that always occur in a context and their interpretations always affect and are affected by the context.
- Negation
- Non-declarative speech acts
- Pragmatic statuses; focus, contrast, and “topicalization”
- Predicate nominals, existentials, possessives, etc.
A 'family' of constructions known as predicate nominals, where clauses exist in which the semantic content of the predication is embodied in a noun.
- Existentials
- Possessive clauses
- Predicate adjectives (attributive clauses)
- Predicate locatives
- Predicate nominals
- Verb and verb-phrase operations
A collection of operations that are likely to be expressed in Verbs or Verb Phrases.
- Compounding (including incorporation)
- Evidentiality, validationality, and mirativity
- Location/direction
- Nominalizations
- Participant reference
- Tense/aspect/mode
- Voice and valence adjusting operations
Operations that adjust the relationship between semantic roles and grammatical relations in clauses.
- Reflexives; valence decreasing operations
- Valence and predicate calculus
- Valence increasing operations