Grammar and morphology: word structure, inflection and derivation, phrases and clauses, sentence types and functions, and how syntactic choices shape meaning.

What this language level is asking

AQA wants you to analyse how words are built (morphology) and how they are arranged into phrases, clauses and sentences (grammar and syntax), and to link these structural choices to meaning, register and effect. This is one of the most technical levels, so precision of labelling matters, but the marks come from connecting structure to effect.

Morphology: building words

The key analytical distinction is between inflection and derivation. Inflection changes the grammatical form of a word without making a new word or changing its class: "walk" to "walked" (tense), "cat" to "cats" (number), "big" to "bigger" (comparison). English has a small, closed set of inflectional suffixes. Derivation uses affixes to create a new word, often of a different class: "nation" to "national" (noun to adjective) to "nationalise" (adjective to verb) to "nationalisation" (verb to noun). Derivational affixes can be prefixes or suffixes and are an open, productive set, which is why so many neologisms are derivational. When you segment a word, label each morpheme as free or bound and each affix as inflectional or derivational, and note any word-class change.

Grammar: phrases, clauses and sentences

A phrase is built around a head word, giving noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases and so on. A clause contains a verb and may be main (independent, able to stand alone) or subordinate (dependent, introduced by a subordinating conjunction such as "because", "although", "when").

A common subtlety is that structure and function are independent: a sentence can be complex by structure and interrogative by function at once, so comment on both where relevant. Beyond classification, analyse syntactic features and their effects: a string of short simple sentences creates pace, tension or emphasis; a long complex sentence packs in qualification and detail and can suit a formal, considered register; fronting a subordinate clause or adverbial foregrounds it; listing and parallelism build rhythm and accumulation; and the passive voice can foreground the affected thing or quietly remove the agent ("mistakes were made"). The analytical move that earns marks is always from the label to the effect.

Try this

• Segment "rewritten" and "nationalisation" into morphemes and label each affix as inflectional or derivational.
• Classify three sentences from a text by both structure and function.
• Find a passive construction and explain whether it foregrounds the affected thing or hides the agent.