Grammatical Relationship

A Grammatical Relationship is a functional relationship between a word and a grammar.

• Context:
  • It can typically signal Grammatical Relationships through functional words in sentence structures.
  • It can typically establish Syntactic Connections through grammatical markers between syntactic elements.
  • It can typically organize Sentence Structure through word order and grammatical rules.
  • It can typically indicate Structural Function through grammatical morphemes and function words.
  • It can typically encode Relational Information through grammatical categories and syntactic patterns.
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  • It can often convey Temporal Relations through tense markers and aspect indicators.
  • It can often express Logical Relations through conjunctions and connective elements.
  • It can often mark Syntactic Dependency through agreement features and government relations.
  • It can often determine Grammatical Category through inflectional morphology and word class indicators.
  • It can often specify Reference Tracking through anaphoric elements and deictic markers.
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  • It can range from being a Simple Grammatical Meaning to being a Complex Grammatical Meaning, depending on its structural complexity.
  • It can range from being an Explicit Grammatical Meaning to being an Implicit Grammatical Meaning, depending on its expression directness.
  • It can range from being a Core Grammatical Meaning to being a Peripheral Grammatical Meaning, depending on its grammatical centrality.
  • It can range from being a Morphological Grammatical Meaning to being a Syntactic Grammatical Meaning, depending on its expression level.
  • It can range from being a Universal Grammatical Meaning to being a Language-Specific Grammatical Meaning, depending on its cross-linguistic distribution.
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  • It can facilitate Sentence Comprehension through structural parsing of grammatical relations.
  • It can enable Linguistic Cohesion through grammatical connections between sentence elements.
  • It can support Reference Resolution through grammatical agreement and anaphoric binding.
  • It can coordinate Information Structure through grammatical devices for topic-focus articulation.
  • It can organize Discourse Flow through grammatical connectors between utterance sequences.
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• Examples:
  • Grammatical Word Meanings, such as:
    • Function Words, such as:
      • Determiner for nominal determination and reference specification.
      • Preposition for spatial relation and semantic role assignment.
      • Conjunction for clause connection and logical relation.
      • Auxiliary Verb for tense marking and aspect indication.
    • Grammatical Particles, such as:
      • Case Marker for grammatical relation identification.
      • Modal Particle for speaker attitude expression.
      • Question Particle for interrogative force marking.
  • Grammatical Morpheme Meanings, such as:
    • Inflectional Morphemes, such as:
      • Plural Marker for number indication.
      • Tense Suffix for temporal reference.
      • Person Agreement for referent tracking.
      • Case Ending for syntactic function marking.
    • Derivational Morphemes with Grammatical Functions, such as:
      • Nominalizer for category conversion.
      • Voice Marker for argument structure alteration.
  • Syntactic Construction Meanings, such as:
    • Word Order Patterns, such as:
      • Subject-Verb-Object Order for argument relation encoding.
      • Topic-Comment Structure for information packaging.
    • Grammatical Constructions, such as:
      • Passive Construction for perspective shift.
      • Relative Clause for noun modification.
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• Counter-Examples:
  • Lexical Meaning, which concerns conceptual content rather than grammatical function.
  • Pragmatic Meaning, which emerges from usage context rather than grammatical structure.
  • Phonological Form, which relates to sound patterns independent of grammatical function.
  • Referential Meaning, which connects linguistic signs to external entities rather than grammatical relations.
  • Semantic Content, which involves conceptual information rather than structural relations.
• See: Content Word, Lexical Word, Meaning, Grammar, Syntax, Morphology, Function Word, Grammatical Category, Grammatical Relation, Inflection.

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References

2008

• (Crystal, 2008) ⇒ David Crystal. (2008). “A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th edition." Blackwell Publishing.
  • QUOTE: lexis (n.) A term used in LINGUISTIC to refer to the vocabulary of a LANGUAGE … A UNIT of vocabulary is generally referred to as a lexical item, or LEXEME. A complete inventory of the lexical items of a language constitutes that language's dictionary, or LEXICON … 'in the lexicon' as a set of lexical entries. … … Lexis may be seen in contrast with GRAMMAR, as in the distinction between grammatical WORDS and lexical words: the former refers to words whose sole function is to signal grammatical relationships (a role which is claimed for such words as of, to and the in English); the latter refers to words which have lexical meaning, i.e. they have semantic CONTENT. Examples include lexical verbs (versus auxiliary verbs) and lexical noun phrases (versus non-lexical NPs, such as PRO). A similar contrast distinguishes lexical morphology from derivational MORPHOLOGY.

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