Editing Language (section)

===Grammar===
{{main|Grammar}}
Grammar is the study of how meaningful elements called ''[[morpheme]]s'' within a language can be combined into utterances. Morphemes can either be ''free'' or ''bound''. If they are free to be moved around within an utterance, they are usually called ''[[word]]s'', and if they are bound to other words or morphemes, they are called [[affix]]es. The way in which meaningful elements can be combined within a language is governed by rules. The study of the rules for the internal structure of words are called [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]]. The rules of the internal structure of phrases and sentences are called ''syntax''.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Lyons|1981|p=103}}</ref>

====Grammatical categories====
{{main|Grammatical category}}
Grammar can be described as a system of categories and a set of rules that determine how categories combine to form different aspects of meaning.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Allerton|1989}}</ref> Languages differ widely in whether they are encoded through the use of categories or lexical units. However, several categories are so common as to be nearly universal. Such universal categories include the encoding of the grammatical relations of participants and predicates by grammatically [[morphosyntactic alignment|distinguishing between their relations]] to a predicate, the encoding of [[Grammatical tense|temporal]] and [[Preposition and postposition|spatial]] relations on predicates, and a system of [[grammatical person]] governing reference to and distinction between speakers and addressees and those about whom they are speaking.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Payne|1997}}</ref>

====Word classes====
Languages organize their [[parts of speech]] into classes according to their functions and positions relative to other parts. All languages, for instance, make a basic distinction between a group of words that prototypically denotes things and concepts and a group of words that prototypically denotes actions and events. The first group, which includes English words such as "dog" and "song", are usually called [[noun]]s. The second, which includes "think" and "sing", are called [[verb]]s. Another common category is the [[adjective]]: words that describe properties or qualities of nouns, such as "red" or "big". Word classes can be "open" if new words can continuously be added to the class, or relatively "closed" if there is a fixed number of words in a class. In English, the class of pronouns is closed, whereas the class of adjectives is open, since an infinite number of adjectives can be constructed from verbs (e.g. "saddened") or nouns (e.g. with the -like suffix, as in "noun-like"). In other languages such as [[Korean language|Korean]], the situation is the opposite, and new pronouns can be constructed, whereas the number of adjectives is fixed.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=208}}</ref>

Word classes also carry out differing functions in grammar. Prototypically, verbs are used to construct [[predicate (grammar)|predicates]], while nouns are used as [[argument (linguistics)|argument]]s of predicates. In a sentence such as "Sally runs", the predicate is "runs", because it is the word that predicates a specific state about its argument "Sally". Some verbs such as "curse" can take two arguments, e.g. "Sally cursed John". A predicate that can only take a single argument is called [[transitivity (grammar)|''intransitive'']], while a predicate that can take two arguments is called [[transitive verb|''transitive'']].<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=305}}</ref>

Many other word classes exist in different languages, such as [[conjunction (grammar)|conjunctions]] like "and" that serve to join two sentences, [[article (grammar)|articles]] that introduce a noun, [[interjections]] such as "wow!", or [[ideophones]] like "splash" that mimic the sound of some event. Some languages have positionals that describe the spatial position of an event or entity. Many languages have [[Classifier (linguistics)|classifiers]] that identify countable nouns as belonging to a particular type or having a particular shape. For instance, in [[Japanese language|Japanese]], the general noun classifier for humans is ''nin'' (人), and it is used for counting humans, whatever they are called:<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Senft|2008}}</ref>

:''san-nin no gakusei'' (三人の学生) lit. "3 human-classifier of student"&nbsp;– three students
For trees, it would be:
:''san-bon no ki'' (三本の木) lit. "3 classifier-for-long-objects of tree"&nbsp;– three trees

====Morphology====
In linguistics, the study of the internal structure of complex words and the processes by which words are formed is called [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]]. In most languages, it is possible to construct complex words that are built of several [[morpheme]]s. For instance, the English word "unexpected" can be analyzed as being composed of the three morphemes "un-", "expect" and "-ed".<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Aronoff|Fudeman|2011|pp=1–2}}</ref>

Morphemes can be classified according to whether they are independent morphemes, so-called [[Root (linguistics)|roots]], or whether they can only co-occur attached to other morphemes. These bound morphemes or [[affix]]es can be classified according to their position in relation to the root: ''[[prefix]]es'' precede the root, [[suffix]]es follow the root, and [[infix]]es are inserted in the middle of a root. Affixes serve to modify or elaborate the meaning of the root. Some languages change the meaning of words by changing the phonological structure of a word, for example, the English word "run", which in the past tense is "ran". This process is called ''[[ablaut]]''. Furthermore, morphology distinguishes between the process of [[inflection]], which modifies or elaborates on a word, and the process of [[Morphological derivation|derivation]], which creates a new word from an existing one. In English, the verb "sing" has the inflectional forms "singing" and "sung", which are both verbs, and the derivational form "singer", which is a noun derived from the verb with the agentive suffix "-er".<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Bauer|2003}}; {{harvcoltxt|Haspelmath|2002}}</ref>

Languages differ widely in how much they rely on morphological processes of word formation. In some languages, for example, Chinese, there are no morphological processes, and all grammatical information is encoded syntactically by forming strings of single words. This type of morpho-syntax is often called [[Isolating language|isolating]], or analytic, because there is almost a full correspondence between a single word and a single aspect of meaning. Most languages have words consisting of several morphemes, but they vary in the degree to which morphemes are discrete units. In many languages, notably in most Indo-European languages, single morphemes may have several distinct meanings that cannot be analyzed into smaller segments. For example, in Latin, the word {{lang|la|bonus}}, or "good", consists of the root {{lang|la|bon-}}, meaning "good", and the suffix -{{lang|la|us}}, which indicates masculine gender, singular number, and [[nominative]] case. These languages are called ''[[fusional languages]]'', because several meanings may be fused into a single morpheme. The opposite of fusional languages are [[agglutinative languages]] which construct words by stringing morphemes together in chains, but with each morpheme as a discrete semantic unit. An example of such a language is [[Turkish language|Turkish]], where for example, the word {{lang|tr|evlerinizden}}, or "from your houses", consists of the morphemes, {{lang|tr|ev-ler-iniz-den}} with the meanings ''house-plural-your-from''. The languages that rely on morphology to the greatest extent are traditionally called [[polysynthetic languages]]. They may express the equivalent of an entire English sentence in a single word. For example, in [[Persian language|Persian]] the single word {{langx|fa|نفهمیدمش|nafahmidamesh|label=none}} means ''I didn't understand it'' consisting of morphemes {{lang|fa-latn|na-fahm-id-am-esh}} with the meanings, "negation.understand.past.I.it". As another example with more complexity, in the [[Yupik language|Yupik]] word {{lang|ypk|tuntussuqatarniksatengqiggtuq}}, which means "He had not yet said again that he was going to hunt reindeer", the word consists of the morphemes {{lang|ypk|tuntu-ssur-qatar-ni-ksaite-ngqiggte-uq}} with the meanings, "reindeer-hunt-future-say-negation-again-third.person.singular.indicative", and except for the morpheme {{lang|ypk|tuntu}} ("reindeer") none of the other morphemes can appear in isolation.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Payne|1997|pp=28–29}}</ref>

Many languages use morphology to cross-reference words within a sentence. This is sometimes called ''[[Agreement (linguistics)|agreement]]''. For example, in many Indo-European languages, adjectives must cross-reference the noun they modify in terms of number, case, and gender, so that the Latin adjective {{lang|la|bonus}}, or "good", is inflected to agree with a noun that is masculine gender, singular number, and nominative case. In many polysynthetic languages, verbs cross-reference their subjects and objects. In these types of languages, a single verb may include information that would require an entire sentence in English. For example, in the [[Basque language|Basque]] phrase {{lang|eu|ikusi nauzu}}, or "you saw me", the past tense auxiliary verb {{lang|eu|n-au-zu}} (similar to English "do") agrees with both the subject (you) expressed by the {{lang|eu|n}}- prefix, and with the object (me) expressed by the – {{lang|eu|zu}} suffix. The sentence could be directly transliterated as "see you-did-me"<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=11}}</ref>

====Syntax====
{{main|Syntax}}
[[File:Constituent structure analysis English sentence.svg|upright=1.5|thumb|In addition to word classes, a sentence can be analyzed in terms of grammatical functions: "The cat" is the [[subject (grammar)|subject]] of the phrase, "on the mat" is a [[locative (case)|locative]] phrase, and "sat" is the core of the [[Predicate (grammar)|predicate]].]]

Another way in which languages convey meaning is through the order of words within a sentence. The grammatical rules for how to produce new sentences from words that are already known is called syntax. The syntactical rules of a language determine why a sentence in English such as "I love you" is meaningful, but "*love you I" is not.{{refn|group=note|The prefixed asterisk * conventionally indicates that the sentence is ungrammatical, i.e. syntactically incorrect.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Denham|first1=Kristin|author1-link=Kristin Denham |last2=Lobeck|first2=Anne|author2-link=Anne Lobeck |title=Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n0KVSvqvZKYC&pg=PA9|year=2009|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-1-4130-1589-8|page=9|quote=An ''ungrammatical'' sentence is one that is impossible in a given language, one that a native speaker of that variety would never utter naturally. (Remember that ungrammatical sentences are marked with an asterisk, *.|access-date=16 April 2020|archive-date=22 May 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200522101450/https://books.google.com/books?id=n0KVSvqvZKYC&pg=PA9|url-status=live}}</ref> }} Syntactical rules determine how word order and sentence structure is constrained, and how those constraints contribute to meaning.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Baker|2001|p=265}}</ref> For example, in English, the two sentences "the slaves were cursing the master" and "the master was cursing the slaves" mean different things, because the role of the grammatical subject is encoded by the noun being in front of the verb, and the role of object is encoded by the noun appearing after the verb. Conversely, in [[Latin language|Latin]], both ''Dominus servos vituperabat'' and ''Servos vituperabat dominus'' mean "the master was reprimanding the slaves", because ''servos'', or "slaves", is in the [[accusative case]], showing that they are the [[Object (grammar)|grammatical object]] of the sentence, and ''dominus'', or "master", is in the [[nominative case]], showing that he is the subject.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|p=179}}</ref>

Latin uses morphology to express the distinction between subject and object, whereas English uses word order. Another example of how syntactic rules contribute to meaning is the rule of [[Wh-movement|inverse word order in questions]], which exists in many languages. This rule explains why when in English, the phrase "John is talking to Lucy" is turned into a question, it becomes "Who is John talking to?", and not "John is talking to who?". The latter example may be used as a way of placing [[focus (linguistics)|special emphasis]] on "who", thereby slightly altering the meaning of the question. Syntax also includes the rules for how complex sentences are structured by grouping words together in units, called [[phrase]]s, that can occupy different places in a larger syntactic structure. Sentences can be described as consisting of phrases connected in a tree structure, connecting the phrases to each other at different levels.{{sfn|Baker|2001|pp=269–270}} To the right is a graphic representation of the syntactic analysis of the English sentence "the cat sat on the mat". The sentence is analyzed as being constituted by a noun phrase, a verb, and a prepositional phrase; the prepositional phrase is further divided into a preposition and a noun phrase, and the noun phrases consist of an article and a noun.<ref name="Trask 2007 218–19">{{harvcoltxt|Trask|2007|pp=218–219}}</ref>

The reason sentences can be seen as being composed of phrases is because each phrase would be moved around as a single element if syntactic operations were carried out. For example, "the cat" is one phrase, and "on the mat" is another, because they would be treated as single units if a decision was made to emphasize the location by moving forward the prepositional phrase: "[And] on the mat, the cat sat".<ref name="Trask 2007 218–19"/> There are many different formalist and functionalist frameworks that propose theories for describing syntactic structures, based on different assumptions about what language is and how it should be described. Each of them would analyze a sentence such as this in a different manner.<ref name="NewmeyerForm"/>