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Morphology vs Pathology - What's the difference?

morphology | pathology |

As nouns the difference between morphology and pathology

is that morphology is a scientific study of form and structure, usually without regard to function. Especially while pathology is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences.

morphology

English

Noun

(wikipedia morphology)
  • (uncountable) A scientific study of form and structure, usually without regard to function. Especially:
  • # (linguistics) The study of the internal structure of morphemes (words and their semantic building blocks).
  • #* {{quote-web
    • , year = 2001 , author = Yehuda Falk , title = Lexical-Functional Grammar , site = CSLI Publications , url = http://www.stanford.edu/group/cslipublications/cslipublications/pdf/1575863405.pdf , accessdate = 2014-02-25 }}
  • There are many ways to show that word structure is different from phrase and sentence structure. We will mention two here. First, free constituent order in syntax is common cross-linguistically; many languages lack fixed order of the kind that one finds in English. In morphology', on the other hand, order is always fixed. There is no such thing as free morpheme order. Even languages with wildly free word order, such as the Pama-Nyungan (Australian) language Warlpiri (Simpson 1991), have a fixed order of morphemes within the word. Second, syntactic and morphological patterns can differ within the same language. For example, note the difference in English in the positioning of head and complement between syntax and ' morphology .
  • # (biology) The study of the form and structure of animals and plants.
  • # (geology) The study of the structure of rocks and landforms.
  • (countable) The form and structure of something.
  • (countable) A description of the form and structure of something.

    • Derived terms

    * macromorphology * micromorphology * morphological * morphologist * morphosyntax

    Related terms

    * morpheme * morphotactics

    See also

    * . * English words suffixed with -ology

    pathology

    English

    Noun

    (pathologies)
  • (medicine) The branch of medicine concerned with the study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences.
  • The medical specialty that provides microscopy and other laboratory services (e.g., cytology, histology) to clinicians.
    • The surgeon sent a specimen of the cyst to the pathology department for staining and analysis to determine its histologic subtype.
  • Pathosis: any deviation from a healthy or normal structure or function; abnormality; illness or malformation.

    • Derived terms

    * pathologist * anatomical pathology * chemical pathology * cytopathology * experimental pathology * forensic pathology * histopathology * plant pathology * psychopathology

    Related terms

    * pathologic * pathological * pathobiology * pathophysiology

    Usage notes

    * Some house style guides for medical publications avoid the "illness" sense of pathology'' (disease, state of ill health) and replace it with ''pathosis''. The rationale is that the ''-ology'' form should be reserved for the "study of disease" sense and for the medical specialty that provides microscopy and other laboratory services (e.g., cytology, histology) to clinicians. This rationale drives similar usage preferences about ''etiology'' ("cause" sense versus "study of causes" sense), ''methodology'' ("methods" sense versus "study of methods" sense), and other ''-ology'' words. Not all such , because most physicians don't do so in their own speech (and the context makes clear the sense intended). Another limitation is that ''pathology'' meaning "illness" has an adjectival form (''pathologic''), but the corresponding adjectival form of ''pathosis'' (''pathotic'') is idiomatically missing from English (defective declension), so ''pathologic'' is obligate for both senses ("diseased" and "related to the study of disease"); this likely helps keep the "illness" sense of ''pathology'' in natural use (as the readily retrieved noun counterpart to ''pathologic in the "diseased" sense).