Exploring Grammatical Units in English

Every language that exists has a structure. Some may have similar structures with other languages, others may have more distinct structures, but they all have structures. Now the structure of a language determines the permissible usage of words in such a language, as observed from the native speakers of the language in question. The rules that guide the structuring of words in a language is what is known as Grammar.

The structure of languages exist in different sizes and shapes, and that is what grammatical units is concerned with. So, gammatical units refer to the various structures that exist in a language from the smallest to the largest. That is, the different realizable structures in a language that can be used for expression and communication, irrespective of their size or rank on the grammatical rankscale. There are five elements under grammatical units:

1. Sentence
2. Clause
3. Phrase or Group
4. Word
5. Morpheme

Sentence

Sentence is the largest grammatical unit made up of one or more clauses. For example;
A. John is a boy.
B. Magda visited the office before she left for the meeting.

Example A, is a sentence with one clause, an independent clause. This sentence is known as a simple sentence, while example B, is a sentence with an independent clause and a subordinate clause—this sentence is known as a complex sentence.

Clause

Clause is the second largest grammatical unit after the sentence—equivalent to a simple sentence—and it is made up of one or more phrases or groups. For example;

A. She owns the lobby.

The example above contains three phrases:
a noun phrase: She; a verb phrase: Owns, and another noun phrase: The lobby.

Group

Group is a grammatical unit lower than a clause but higher than a word. It is made up of one or more words. Take for example;

A. The boy with amazing abilities

The sentence above is a phrase made up of five words: a determiner: "the", a noun: "boy", a preposition: "with", an adjective: "amazing"; and a noun: "abilities".

Depending on the school of thought concerned, we can refer to it as a phrase or a group. It is a phrase when dealing with traditional grammar or transformation generative grammar, while it is a group when dealing with systemic functional grammar. Some examples of groups include: nominal group, verbal group and adjectival group, while some examples of phrases include: noun phrase, verb phrase and adverb phrase.

Word

Word is a grammatical unit lower than group, but higher than a morpheme. Hence a word can be made up of one or more morphemes. Take for example;

A. Banks

The example above is a word made up of two morphemes: "Bank", and "-s". There exists a sub categorization of words into content and function words. Content words being used for words capable of meaning on their own e.g.,. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.,. while function words are incapable of meaning independently, e.g.,. Pronouns, Prepositions, Conjunctions, etc.,. Since the example above: "banks" is a noun, we can say it is a content word.

Morpheme

Morpheme is the smallest grammatical unit directly below words. It is the smallest indivisible unit below which meaning cannot be achieved. Every grammatical unit has a morpheme in it, since the units below make up the units directly above. For example: Morphemes make up words, words make up phrases or groups, phrases or groups make up clauses, and clauses make up sentences. Here are examples of morphemes:

A. Boy
B. -ant

Example A, is a type of morpheme called a free morpheme. This is because it can stand alone to express meaning; free morphemes are equivalent to words but not all words are free morphemes. Example B, is a type of morpheme known as bound morphemes. Bound morphemes are morphemes that are incapable of expressing meaning independently, and need to be appended or attached to free morphemes to be meaningful. They have grammatical consequences, however: they are grouped into Inflectional bound morphemes: which affect the grammaticality of words; and derivational bound morphemes: which change the class of words. The bound morpheme in example B, is a derivational morpheme because it can change the class of the word it gets added to. e.g.,. Account + -ant = Accountant. Bound morphemes take a dash before them to indicate their inability to express meaning or stand alone.

So grammatical units are the totality of structures that exist in a language ranging from the highest to the lowest. The highest being the sentence and the lowest being the morpheme with: words, phrases and clauses between them. Each grammatical unit is made up of the unit directly below it, which shows the inherent interrelationship that exists between them.

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