The maxim "today's morphology is yesterday's syntax," coined by linguist Thomas Givon, means that grammatical word endings and affixes (morphology) evolve over time from separate, independent words once used together in phrases and sentences (syntax).
Via Language Log.
Vaguely related: Some karaoke machines display words sung with almost no gap between them as a single word (German style), which indeed does help in getting the phrasing of the words in a song that you don't know very well right.
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