Republic of the Philippines

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN PHILIPPINES

Tamag, Vigan City
2700 Ilocos Sur

COLLEGE OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Website: www.unp.edu.ph Mail:[email protected]
Tel. #: (077) 674-0789

LINGUISTIC COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE

Linguists have identified five (5) basic components of language. The
five main components of language are phonemes, morphemes, lexemes,
syntax, and context. Along with grammar, semantics, and pragmatics,
these components work together to create
meaningful communication among individuals.

Major levels of linguistics: This diagram outlines the various subfields of linguistics, the study of
language. These include phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

Phonetics and Phonology

Phonetics is the study of individual speech sounds; phonology is the
study of phonemes, which are the speech sounds of an individual language.
These two heavily overlapping subfields cover all the sounds that humans
can make, as well as which sounds make up different languages. A
phonologist could answer the question, “Why do BAT and TAB have different
meanings even though they are made of the
same three sounds, A, B and T?”

Notes in Language, Culture, and Society/j. taan

Morphology
Morphology is the study of words and other meaningful units of
language like suffixes and prefixes. A morphologist would be interested in
the relationship between words like “dog” and “dogs” or “walk” and
“walking,” and how people figure out the differences between those words.
Syntax
Syntax is the study of sentences and phrases, or how people put
words into the right order so that they can communicate meaningfully. All
languages have underlying rules of syntax, which, along with morphological
rules, make up every language’s grammar. An example of syntax coming into
play in language is “Eugene walked the dog” versus “The dog walked
Eugene.” The order of words is not arbitrary—in order for the sentence to
convey the intended meaning, the words must be in a certain order.
Semantics and Pragmatics
Semantics, most generally, is about the meaning of sentences.
Someone who studies semantics is interested in words and what real-world
object or concept those words denote, or point to. Pragmatics is an even
broader field that studies how the context of a sentence contributes to
meaning—for example, someone shouting “Fire!” has a very different
meaning if they are in charge of a seven-gun salute than it does if they are
sitting in a crowded movie theater.
The Structure of Language
All languages have underlying structural rules that make meaningful
communication possible.
Every language is different. In English, an adjective comes before a
noun (“red house”), whereas in Spanish, the adjective comes after (“casa
[house] roja [red].”) In German, you can put noun after noun together to
form giant compound words; in Chinese, the pitch of your voice determines
the meaning of your words; in American Sign Language, you can convey full,
grammatical sentences with tense and aspect by moving your hands and
face. But all languages have structural underpinnings that make them
logical for the people who speak and understand them.
Open the following link for your reference.
https://youtu.be/KoVDZJqTmRo

Notes in Language, Culture, and Society/j. taan

Rapping in American Sign Language: Shelby Mitchusson performs an ASL
translation of “Lose Yourself” by Eminem. ASL and other sign languages
have all the same structural underpinnings that spoken languages do.
Phonemes
A phoneme is the basic unit of phonology. It is the smallest unit of
sound that may cause a change of meaning within a language, but that
doesn’t have meaning by itself. For example, in the words “bake” and
“brake,” only one phoneme has been altered, but a change in meaning has
been triggered. The phoneme /r/ has no meaning on its own, but by
appearing in the word it can completely changed the word’s meaning.
Phonemes correspond to the sounds of the alphabet, although there is
not always a one-to-one relationship between a letter and a phoneme (the
sound made when you say the word). For example, the word “dog” has three
phonemes: /d/, /o/, and / g /. However, the word “shape,” despite having
five letters, has only three phonemes: /sh/, /long-a/, and /p/.
The English language has approximately 45 different phonemes,
which correspond to letters or combinations of letters. Through the process
of segmentation, a phoneme can have a particular pronunciation in one
word and a slightly different pronunciation in another.
Morphemes
Morphemes, the basic unit of morphology, are the smallest meaningful
unit of language. Thus, a morpheme is a series of phonemes that has a
special meaning. If a morpheme is altered in any way, the entire meaning of
the word can be changed.
Some morphemes are individual words (such as “eat” or “water”).
These are known as free morphemes because they can exist on their own.
Other morphemes are prefixes, suffixes, or other linguistic pieces that aren’t
full words on their own but do affect meaning (such as  the “-s” at the end of
“cats” or the “re-” at the beginning of “redo.”) Because these morphemes
must be attached to another word to have meaning, they are called bound
morphemes.
Within the category of bound morphemes, there are two additional
subtypes: derivational and inflectional.
● Derivational morphemes change the meaning or part of speech of
a word when they are used together. For example, the word
“sad” changes from an adjective to a noun when “-ness”
(sadness) is added to it. “Action” changes in meaning when the
morpheme “re-” is added to it, creating the word “reaction.”

Notes in Language, Culture, and Society/j. taan

 ● Inflectional morphemes modify either the tense of a verb or the
number value of a noun; for example, when you add an “-s” to
“cat,” the number of cats changes from one to more than one.
Lexemes
Lexemes are the set of inflected forms taken by a single word. For
example, members of the lexeme RUN include “run” (the uninflected form),
“running” (inflected form), and “ran.” This lexeme excludes “runner (a
derived term—it has a derivational morpheme attached).
Another way to think about lexemes is that they are the set of words
that would be included under one entry in the dictionary—”running” and
“ran” would be found under “run,” but “runner” would not.
Syntax
Syntax is a set of rules for constructing full sentences out of words
and phrases. Every language has a different set of syntactic rules, but all
languages have some form of syntax. In English, the smallest form of a
sentence is a noun phrase (which might just be a noun or a pronoun) and a
verb phrase (which may be a single verb). Adjectives and adverbs can be
added to the sentence to provide further meaning. Word order matters in
English, although in some languages, order is of less importance. For
example, the English sentences “The baby ate the carrot” and “The carrot
ate the baby” do not mean the same thing, even though they contain the
exact same words. In languages like Finnish, word order doesn’t matter for
general meaning—different word orders are used to emphasize different
parts of the sentence.
Context
Context is how everything within language works together to convey a
particular meaning. Context includes tone of voice, body language, and the
words being used. Depending on how a person says something, holds his or
her body, or emphasizes certain points of a sentence, a variety of different
messages can be conveyed. For example, the word “awesome,” when said
with a big smile, means the person is excited about a situation. “Awesome,”
said with crossed arms, rolled eyes, and a sarcastic tone, means the person
is not thrilled with the situation.

Notes in Language, Culture, and Society/j. taan

Key Points
● The five main components of language are phonemes,
morphemes, lexemes, syntax, and context. Along with grammar,
semantics, and pragmatics, these components work together to
create meaningful communication among individuals.
● A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that may cause a
change of meaning within a language but that doesn’t have
meaning by itself.
● A morpheme is the smallest unit of a word that provides a
specific meaning to a string of letters (which is called a
phoneme). There are two main types of morpheme: free
morphemes and bound morphemes.
● A lexeme is the set of all the inflected forms of a single word.
● Syntax is the set of rules by which a person constructs full
sentences.
● Context is how everything within language works together to
convey a particular meaning.

The components of language can also be illustrated as follows:

Reference:
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/int
roduction-to-language/

Notes in Language, Culture, and Society/j. taan