Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Defining 'to'?

Define 'to' in the following sentence:

"I went to read Chris and Elizabeth's blog."

The assumption we make as English speakers is that each grouping of letters is a word that carries lexical meaning (i.e. can be defined in a dictionary).  But the truth is, there are some groupings of letters like 'to' above that defy definition. 

'To' above is actually a grammatical morpheme, meaning that it has a function in the grammar of the sentence rather than in the definitions of the words themselves!

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