An element of language, such as a word or an affix (e.g., case ending, plural marker, past tense marker, prefix such as un- or re-). The term is also extended to word order patterns (e.g., English subject-verb-object), and to other consistent construction patterns within a language (e.g., the English ditransitive pattern as in “John gave Mary a book”, in which a distransitive verb is one that takes a subject and two objects).
See Cognitive functionalist approach, Form-meaning mapping, Iconic mapping