Back to: Language Competence and Communication Skills
Linguistic Principles of Language B.ed Notes
Language can be linguistically analyzed at three levels which are:
- Phonological (sound and sound patterns)
- Morphological (words and their parts)
- Syntactic (utterances: arrangement of words)
Phonological level of language
With the aid of their vocal organs—lips, teeth, tongue, vocal cords in the neck, etc.—humans are able to produce an endless variety of sounds, but not all of them are appropriate for their mother tongue.
Only a few of the many sounds that make up the language are required to speak it. A certain combination is acceptable in a given language whereas many others are not. For instance, there are several words in English that begin with br_, such as brain, brilliant, bridge, break, short, and so on, but there are none that begin with bn. Words like snake, snow, snoring, sniff, and snag are available, but you will never come across any words that start with sa, pn, dg, etc.
All languages typically contain two categories of sounds: vowels and consonants. Unlike the later, where the air is partially or totally blocked before leaving the mouth or nose. In the former, air from the lungs moved freely out of the oral cavity. The phonology of a language refers to how individual sounds (also known as segments) combine to form patterns; each pattern is termed a phoneme and is unique from the others. For instance, “b” is distinct from “K,” and both are distinct from “g,” since they combine to make distinct words such as “bin/kin,” “kill/bill,” “bun/gun,” and “gap/cap.”
Morphological Level of language
mathematical operation For instance, the suffixes -s, -ed, and -ing have been added for grammatical purposes, and the words walks, walked, and walking all share one semantic unit called walk. The term “morpheme” refers to both the grammatical and semantic components of words.
A free morpheme is the relevant portion that cannot be further split, whereas a bound morpheme is the portion that is appended as a suffix or prefix. Il-, ir-, un-, and mis are bound morphemes in terms like illegal, irrelevant, unrest, and misinform, whereas legal, relevant, rest, and inform are free morphemes. There are two categories of bound morphemes: inflectional and derivative. Word ends (suffixes) that do not alter the word’s category are included in the former: walks, walked, and walking are all verb forms of the same word. As a result, morphemes ending in -s, -ed, and -ing are inflectional bound morphemes (plural markers). However, from amuse, love, computer, and function, respectively, came amusement, loving, computerise, and functional. As a result, the derivative bound morphemes -ment, -able, -rise, and -al exist.
The content words known as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are referred to as lexical morphemes because they are open-ended and may be combined with other words or have suffixes added to them to create new words. Contrarily, functional morphemes are referred to as a close-class since no new words have been introduced to them and they cannot be joined to generate any new words. These words include articles, auxiliary and modal verbs, conjunctions like when, that, if, and, and, but, and unless.
When examining the morphology of the English language, we must use caution. For instance, the prefixes re- and anti-, which stand for “again” and “against,” respectively, in terms like re-enter and anti-corruption, are not bound morphemes but rather free morphemes. Although feasible and possible may resemble mable and washable, there is no such combination as feasible or possible, thus we must think of feasible and possible as separate distinct morphemes while in the former two words, -ible is an integral component of the word.
What was once considered a “word” is now measured by the number of free and bound morphemes that it comprises. One such word is antidisestablishmentarianism, which has both meaningful and nonsensical variations (bound)
parts- anti+dis+establish+-ment+-arian+ism.
We also need to consider the spelling and pronunciation of a few of the bound morphemes. For instance, we add’s’ or ‘es’ to words to make them plural in writing, but these ends are pronounced differently in spoken English.
It is clear that there are three distinct pronunciations for the plural marker based on the last sound in the singular form. The suffix “-ED” that is added to verbs in the past tense also has a distinct pronunciation.
“ED’ is pronounced * -t, ‘-d’ and ‘Id’, depending on the last sound in the infinitive form of the verb. The different pronunciations of such endings are called allomorphs.
Syntactic Level of language
The arrangement of words to form sentences is referred to as syntax. Language, according to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, is a system of signals, each of which adds to the sentence’s total meaning. We examine how these indicators are joined to create coherent sentences at the syntactic level. Rahim killed a rat, for example, might be expressed as a linear combination of the signs ‘Rahim’, ‘kill’, ‘-ed’ (past tense marker), and ‘rat’ from left to right. Simply defined, syntax informs us about the grammar of the language, including the categories of words that exist in the language as well as how words are ordered into sentences.
As you can see, “Rahim” is a noun, “kill” is a verb, and “rat” is also a noun in the line above, but RAHIM and RAT are proper and common nouns, respectively.
Similar to the verbs “eat,” “speak,” “walk,” “drink,” and others in the group known as lexical or major verbs, “kill” belongs to this category. As opposed to auxiliary and modal verbs, these verbs are distinct. The amount of various word categories that make up the English language, and with the assistance of which humans may speak or comprehend an endless number of phrases, are what are commonly referred to as “parts of speech.” The following are the categories of words in English historically:
- NOUN
- VERB
- ADJECTIVE
- ADVERB
- PRONOUN
- PREPOSITION
- CONJUCTION
- INTERJECTION
There are several varieties within each of these groups, extending the list considerably. Nouns, for instance, are words that name people, places, things, sentiments, emotions, and other concepts;
There are several sorts of verbs, including auxiliary, modal, transitive, and intransitive. The grammatical structure of a language is how humans may create and comprehend an endless number of utterances or sentences using this limited collection of words (signs). It is actually possible to arrange words and morphemes in many ways to create simple, compound, and complicated sentences.
Grammar also explains sentences that have distinct structures but convey the same ideas. Rahim killed a snake, for example, is the same as Rahim killed a snake, but the latter has a distinct grammar structure and is referred to as a passive sentence. If you look at this statement, the words “was” and “by” are what make it feasible. Similar to how “Rashid doesn’t lie about coffee” is created from “Rashid likes coffee” by adding “n’t” (not) to the auxiliary verb DO, the question form of this phrase is “Does Rashid enjoy coffee?” The word for this is transformation.
Chomsky refers to this process as transformative generative grammar, in which multiple sentence forms are produced by using various grammatical rules. Additionally, grammar is responsible for “all and only” right or well-constructed sentences that must have meaning. What does the phrase “Colourless green idea sleep frantically” mean, even if it is grammatically correct and complies with English morphological rules? As a result, sentences must MEAN something; this is known as language semantics.
The three levels of analysis covered above help us understand how spoken and written language function.
As we all know, phonological units play a similar role in spoken English as letters do in written language. Although English is neither spoken or written exactly as it is, certain messages are sent to the listener or reader, depending on the situation, in both of these mediums. Effective language use include not just proper grammar usage but also suitable behaviour in a culture where language is a primary means of communication. It is crucial to understand both grammatical principles and this as it is the true purpose of language.
