Linguistics and the Components of Language

Linguistic is defined as the study of language systems.  For the purpose of study, language is divided into level or components.

1. PHONOLOGY: The study of the speech sounds of a particular language.

Phonetics as a part of Phonology: The study of the speech sounds of human language in general, either from the PERSPECTIVE of their production “articulatory phonetics”, their PERCEPTION “auditory phonetics” or their PHYSICAL properties “acoustic phonetics”.

Since the writing system of English does not provide with a one-to-one correspondence between a sound and written symbol, we need a tool for representing human sounds in a regular way when studying phonology, the International Phonetic Alphabet (the IPA) has been invented for this purpose.  In it each written symbol represents one, speech sound, while each sound is represented by only one written symbol.

2. MORPHOLOGY: The study of the structure or form of words in a particular language, and of their classification.  It considers principles of word formation in a language:

- How sounds combine into meaningful units such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots (re-mind-er).

- Which of these units are distinctive and which are predictable variants (the different forms of the indefinite article a and an), and

- What process of word formation of language characteristically uses such a compounding (road-way) or suffixing (pave-ment).

Morphology then considers how words can be grouped into classes “parts of speech”.

3. SYNTAX: The study of the order and arrangement of words into larger units, as well as the relationship holding between elements in these hierarchical units.  It studies the structure and types of sentences (questions or commands), of clauses (relative or adverbial clauses), and of phrases (prepositional or verbal phrases). It is an extensive and complex area of language.

4. SEMANTICS: The study of how meaning is conveyed in words, phrases, or clauses.  

The study of semantics focuses either on meanings related to the outside world (lexical meaning) or meanings related to the grammar of the sentence (grammatical meaning).

 It is also considered the meaning of individual words (lexical semantics) and the meaning which results from the interaction of elements in a sentence (sentence semantics).

5. PRAGMATICS: The study of the functions of language and its use in context.

Language has a variety of functions, including the expressing of emotions, the maintenance of social ties, and even the performance of action.  Furthermore, in any context, a variety of factors, such as the age, sex and social class of the interlocutors and their relationships of intimacy and power, influence the form of language used.

Bibliography: Language_Forms_ and_ Functions_eBook_Chapter_1