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SYNTAX

1.1 In Mising, a morpheme is the lowest level of grammatical hierarchy. The occurrence of each and every morpheme in syntactic structure is determined by the form class to which it belongs and by the function which it performs. Thus, there is a correlation between form and function. Any complete utterance, when divided on functional basis, gives rise to, at successive levels, suffixes, words, phrase(s) and clause(s). It indicates a system of grammatical hierarchy which is arranged at systematic levels. These levels are-morphemes, works, phrase's, clause's and sentences. The study of the arrangement of morphemes into words, words into phrases, phrases into clauses and clauses into sentence is the subject matter of syntax.

Thus, the syntactic structure can be represented as follows :

A single word in Mising may constitute a sentence. Words enter into morphological process (es) to form a phrase. Phrases form clauses and clauses form sentences. A single clause can also be a full sentence. Some times a verb phrase alone acts as a clause or a sentence.

1.2. Phrase level construction *

Words combine into phrases, thus the constituents of phrase level constructions are words. Phrases do not have predicate tagmemes. A Mising phrase is a close-knit group of words. While analyzing it, realtors are to be separated from words, if any, and then head and modifying morph(emee)s are identified. Phrases serve nominal, adjectival, adverbial and verbal functions at clause level.

On formal basis, there are two types of phrases -

(1) Exocentric

(2) Endocentric

1.2.1 Exocentric

It is also known as a realtor axis phrase. In such constructions, none of the constituents of phrase is either head or sub-ordinate. Constituents have equal status. Function words known as realtors serve as the second constituent of the construction. In Missing, realtors are always post positions or free words which are adverbs. These realtors are of two types

(a) Adverbial relators

(b) Adjectival relators.

1.2.1.1 Adverbial realtor axis phrase :

Adverbial relators are either bound realtors or free realtors. Bound realtors are post positions.

Bound realtors -

pė - at

l - in