By desmond bett; B. A- criminology m. A – public administration & policy

2.2.3
Grammatical words

Finally, let us consider the word from a grammatical perspective. Words play a key role in syntax. So, some of their properties are assigned taking into account syntactic factors. Often words are required to have certain properties if they serve certain syntactic purposes. Thus, although in [2.16a] we have the same sense of the same lexeme (play) realize by the same word-form (played). We know that this word has at least two quite different grammatical jobs in the sentence of which it is a part:

[2.16]
a. She played the flute. b. She took the flute.
She has played the flute. She has taken the flute.

If you compare the sentences in [2.16] above, you will see that in [2.16a] the verb play is realized by the word-form played regardless of whether it simply indicates the action happened in the past as in the first example or that an action was (recently) completed as in the second example. Contrast this with the situation in [2.16b] where this two grammatical meanings are signaled by two different forms. Took indicates that the action happened in the past while taken (after has/had) indicates that the action is complete. In she played the flute and she took the flute the words played and took are described grammatically as the ‘past tense forms of the verb play and take’. By contrast, in she has played the flute and she has taken the flute we describe played and taken as the ‘past participle’ of play and take.

Linguists use the term SYNCRETISM to describe situations such as that exemplified by played where the same word-form of lexeme is use to realize two (or more) distinct grammatical words that are lexemes. The phenomenon of syncretism is one good reason for distinguishing between word-forms and grammatical words. It enables us to show that words belonging to the same lexeme and having the same form in speech and writing can still differ.
A further example should make the ideas of grammatical words and syncretism even clearer. Consider the verb in the following sentences:
[2.17]
a. You hit me. (=you hit me some time in the past)
Or
(=you hit me habitually)
b. You cut it. (=you cut it sometime in the past)
Or
(=you cut it habitually)

As the paragraph show, the word-form hit belonging to the lexeme hit can represent either the present tense or past tense form of verb. In other words, there is syncretism. We have two different grammatical words hit [+verb, +present] and hit [+verb, +past] but a single word-form. The same analysis also applies to cut. It can represent either the present or past tense of the verb cut.

Syncretism is not limited to verbs. It can apply to other words classes (e.g. nouns) as well:
[2.18]
a. The wolf killed a sheep and one deer.
b. The wolf killed two sheep and one deer.
In these two sentences, although the word-form sheep belong to the same lexeme and is unchanged in form, we know that its grammatical value is not the same. In [2.18a] it realizes the word with the word-form deer represents a singular, but in [2.18b] it represent a plural form in [2.18b].
What we can say about the word as an entity that functions as a grammatical unit in the syntax of a language? As mentioned already, the (grammatical) word is normally defined as the MINIMAL FREE FORM that is use in the grammar of a language. Let us now put some flesh on this tense and somewhat cryptic statement.
By fee form we mean an entity that can stand on its own and act as a free agent: it is an element whose position in a sentence is not totally dictated by other items. In order to explain what ‘freedom’ means in this context. We need to take on board two ancillary ideas: POSITIONAL MOBILITY and STABILITY. Although words are not the smallest grammatical units used to construct sentences (see the discussion of morpheme in the next chapter), at the level of sentence organization the rules of sentence formation treat words as unanalyzable units. Often it is possible to change the order in which words appear in a sentence and still produce a well-formed sentence. Words enjoy considerable positional mobility. However, the elements inside a word do not enjoy such mobility. While syntactic rules can transport words to new places in a sentence, they cannot shift in the same way elements are found inside words. Moving words around in the following produces grammatical sentences with basically the same meaning, but with somewhat different emphasis.
[2.19]
a. This old industrialist revisited Lancaster, fortunately.
b. Fortunately, this old industrialist revisited Lancaster.
c. Lancaster, this old industrialist revisited, fortunately.
d. Fortunately, Lancaster was revisited by this old industrialist.
Evidently, the position of words in a sentence is not rigidly fixed. They can, and often do, get moved around if communicative needs of the speaker or writer require it. However, the interior of a word is a no-go area for syntactic rules. They are strictly barred from manipulating elements found inside a word. As inaccessible (cf. Bauer 1988, Matthews 19191, Lyons 1968, Di Sciullo and Williams 1987}.
The word as a grammatical unit shows stability (or INTERNAL COHESION). The order of elements inside a word is rigidly fixed. If the elements of a sentence are shifted, certain meaningful units (in this case re-visit-ed and foftun-ate-ly) all move en bloc, and their order always remains unchanged. The internal structure of the word cannot be tampered with. We are not allowed to perform operations that would yield words like*ed-visit-re, *ate-fortune-ly etc. We will return to this point on p. 33 below.
The definition of the word includes the term ‘minimal’ for a good reason. This is intended to separate words from phrases like this old industrialist. Like words, phrases can occur in isolation and they can be moved from one position to another (as we have seen in [2.19]). But the expression this old industrialist is not a minimal form since it contains smaller forms capable of occurring independently namely, this, old and industrialist. Furthermore, the sequence this old industrialist does not have the kind of internal cohesion found in words. It can be interrupted by other words e.g. this wealthy old industrialist; this very wealthy, old, benevolent industrialist.
The assumption that the grammatical word is ‘a minimum free form’ works well as a rule of thumb. But it encounters difficulties when confronted by a COMPOUND WORD like wheelbarrow which contains the words wheel and barrow which can stand alone. In such cases it is clear that the word is not the smallest meaningful unit that can be used on its own. It is for this reason that the definition of the word as the unit on which purely syntactic operations can be performed is preferable. In the case of compounds this definition works. The interior of a compound is a syntactic no-go area. Syntactic rules are not allowed to apply separately to words that make up a compound. Thus, for example although the nouns wheel and barrow can be modified by the adjective big ([big barrow], [big wheel]), and although we can talk of [big wheelbarrow], in which case big modifies the entire compound, there is no possibility of saying wheel [big barrow], with the adjective only modifying the second element of the compound word.