(1) Levels of Language Representation and Their Basic Units
(Phonetics, Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Lexicology, Semantics)
(1.1) Language
(1.1.1) Language Definition
- language = a basic means of human communication, a system of conventional signals
used for communication by a whole community
- the conventions incl. a system of significant sound units (= phonemes), the inflection, the
arrangement of ‘words’, and the association of meaning with words
- an utterance = an act of speech, a single concrete manifestation of the system at work
- language as a code, i.e. a set of means obligatory for a particular community
- a product of society, cannot be developed outside society
- Edward Sapir: Language. An Introduction to the Study of Speech.
‘Language is a purely human and non-instinctive means of communication which serves
to express thoughts, feelings and desires by the means of a certain system of selfconsciously created symbols which are primarily acoustic and produced by speech
organs.’
(1.1.2) Language Study
- diachrony = a historical evolution of a system of language, linguistic change over a period
of time (classical philology)
- synchrony = the system as a functioning totality, a signifying structure, i.e. the state of a
language at any moment (modern linguistics)
- Ferdinand de Saussure: langue = the whole set of linguistic habits which allow an
individual to understand and to be understood x parole = the individual speech act itself
- Noam Chomsky: ‘competence’ (i.e. langue) = what the speaker of a language knows
implicitly x ‘performance’ (i.e. parole) = what the speaker does
- F. de Saussure: the linguistic sign = the union btw a signifié (i.e. a signifier, an acoustic
image) and a signifiant (i.e. the signified, a concept or meaning); ignores the referent
(extralinguistic object)
(1.2) Levels of Language Representation
(1.2.1) Primary Disciplines
- phonetics and phonology, conc. with the sound: the lowest level; phonology established as
a discipline in the 20th c. by the Prague Linguistic Circle
- morphology and syntax, or morpho-syntax, conc. with the grammar: syntax sometimes as
an upper form of morphology, in the analytical non-inflectional E very closely connected
- lexicology, conc. with the vocabulary
- + semantics, conc. with the meaning: present in all the levels, impossible to isolate it
(1.2.2) Secondary Disciplines
- pragmatics: the infl. of situation on the interpretation of utterances (i.e. the organisation of
a text according to the communicative intention of a speaker)
- stylistics: the variations in different situations and different styles of speech
- dialectology: the variations in the same language in different region; often as a branch of
sociolinguistics
- sociolinguistics: the interaction btw language and society
- psycholinguistics: the behaviour of human beings in their production and perception of
language; from the half of the 20th c.
- etymology
- + language acquisition: children’s acquisition of their 1st language
- + applied linguistics: the acquisition of a 2nd language
(1.3) Phonetics and Phonology
-
both describe the sounds + the combinatory possibilities of the sounds and the prosody of
the language (how pitch, loudness and length work to produce accent, rhythm, and
intonation)
(1.3.1) Phonetics
- describes the speech sounds that occur in the languages of the world
- conc. with the concrete characteristics of the sounds (articulatory, acoustic, auditory)
- determines the nature of the sounds, their patterns, and aspects of the sounds necessary for
conveying the meaning
- phone = the basic unit of phonetics, the smallest identifiable unit found in a stream of
speech that is able to be transcribed with an IPA symbol, a concrete realisation of a
phoneme
- allophone = a phonetic variant of a phoneme in a particular language, the basis for narrow
phonetic transcription []
(1.3.2) Phonology
- describes the systems and patterns of sounds in a language
- conc. with the function of the sounds in a systemic way in a particular language
- determines its distinctive sounds, establishes a set of rules to describe the changes in these
sounds in different relationships with other sounds
- the phonology of a language = the set of rules describing the changes in the underlying
sounds (or, phonemes) occurring in speech
- phonemics = the traditional approach to phonology, analyses the stream of speech into a
sequence of contrastive segments (‘contrastive’ = ‘contrasting with other segments which
might change the meaning’)
- phoneme = the basic unit of phonology, an abstract unit, not a single sound but a group of
sounds used to differentiate words
- the smallest contrastive unit in the sound system of a language, defined according to its
allophones and environments (American structuralist tradition) or as a set of distinctive
features (generative tradition)
- the basis for writing down a language to record the variations btw sounds used to
differentiate meaning = broad phonemic transcription //
- a word can be realised by a single phoneme (e.g. I, oh, ah)
Phone versus Phoneme
phone
one of many possible sounds in the languages
of the world
the smallest identifiable unit found in a stream
of speech
pronounced in a defined way
represented btw brackets by convention
Example: [b], [j], [o]
phoneme
a contrastive unit in the sound system of a
particular language
a minimal unit that serves to distinguish btw
meaning of words
pronounced in one or more ways, depending
on the number of allophones
represented btw slashes by convention
Example: /b/, /j/, /o/
(1.4) Morphology
-
a part of grammar
morphology = conc. with the word form, inner structure of the word and word formation
syntax = conc. with the sentence
-
x a close connection btw morphology and syntax: morphological forms one of the means
of expressing syntactic relations
(1.4.1) Units of Morphology
- word = a unit of the morphological level
- word as a means of naming: a unit of the lexical level
- word as a part of a sentence: a unit of the syntactic level
- x a word form = a specifically morphological unit
- morpheme (a part of langue) = the basic unit of morphology
- morph (a part of parole) = a concrete realisation of a morpheme in case of an only one
possibility of realisation
- allomorph (a part of parole) = a concrete realisation of a morpheme in case of more
possibilities of realisation
- monomorphematic words = realised by a single morpheme (‘door, look, fault’)
- x polymorphematic words
(1.4.2) Morphemes
- free morphemes
(a) functional: synsemantic words = their grammatical meaning realised only within the
context (AUX ‘do’, proform ‘you’)
(b) lexical: autosemantic words (‘look’)
- bound morphemes: cannot exist alone, bound with free lexical morphemes, realised by
affixes, i.e. prefixes and suffixes
(a) derivational: create a new word fitting into a new word category, contribute to the
modification of meaning (‘happy’ > ‘happi|ness’)
(b) inflectional: create a new form within the same paradigm (‘dog’ > ‘dog|s’)
- morphological homonymy = the same morpheme used in different functions (‘-s’ >
possessive, plural, 3rd person sg simple present tense)
- morphological synonymy = the same function expressed by different allomorphs (plural >
‘-s, -es, -en, 0’, alternation of a stem vowel)
English Bound Inflectional Morphemes
category
morpheme
nouns
-s
’s
pronouns
-s
’m
verbs
s
-ed
-en
-ing
adjectives
-er
-est
example
books
Mary’s
his
him
does
worked
written
writing
nicer
the nicest
function
plural
possessive
genitive case
object case
3rd person sg
past participle
passive participle
gerund
grading
grading
(1.5) Syntax
-
a part of grammar
conc. with the word categories and the set of rules governing the structure of phrases,
clauses and sentences in terms of order and constituency
units of syntax: sentence, phrase, syntagma, sentence member
(1.5.1) Sentence
- sentence = a formation ordered according to the particular language specific rules, an
abstract language unit (a part of langue)
-
-
utterance = a communicative discourse unit, a concrete realisation of a particular sentence
type (a part of parole)
sentence structure
(a) simple: with a single predication
(b) non-simple = composite: with more predications
- compound sentence (souv. souřadné): paratactic relation, i.e. relation of coordination
- complex sentence (souv. podřadné): hypotactic relation, i.e. relation of subordination
- multiple sentence (souv. složené)
clause = a part of a composite sentence
main, superordinate, clause
dependent, subordinate, clause
(1.5.2) Phrase
- a couple with a relation based on domination x but: one member does not need to govern
the other
- phrasal grammar founded by N. Chomsky
- immediate constituent analysis (Structuralism): sentence made up by NP – MOD/AUX
(NEG) – VP, other phrases of lower rank AJP, AdvP, PP
(1.5.3) Syntagma
- a couple within a sentence with a relation based on domination, one clausal constituent
governs the other
(1.5.4) Sentence Member (= Sentence Element)
- sentence function
(a) obligatory sentence members: subject => no subjectless clauses in E (unlike in CZ)
(b) non-obligatory (= facultative) sentence elements: all the others
Sentence Members/Functions
NOUN + attribute
Subject + VERB
VERB + object
VERB + adverbial
NOUN + VERB + complement
the big boy
his brother went
read the book
sleep well/at home/yesterday
Bill remained tired
(1.6) Lexicology
-
conc. with the vocabulary (= lexis)
describes the vocabulary and establ. a system
lexicology: an open system with a number of subsystems
grammar and pronunciation: closed systems
(1.6.1) Concepts of Lexicology
- vocabulary always refers to sth existing
- the extralinguistic reality = things, people or ideas, its main feature is vagueness
- reality processed in its essential features by human consciousness as a concept
- concept (= denotation) = a unit of thinking, an abstraction forming the nucleus of the
lexical meaning (= the cognitive meaning)
- concept (pojem): a term from psychology x meaning (význam): a linguistic term
- notion (představa): a term from psychology, more subjective than concept (a child’s
notion of water is different from a scientist’s notion x their concept basically the same)
-
-
NO direct relationship btw the word and the item of extralinguistic reality, btw the form
and its content (= meaning): words do not name (nepojmenovávají) or signify
(neznamenají) objects, they only refer to them
the naming of an object based on convention = arbitrary naming
(1.6.2) Units of Lexicology
- lexeme = a lexical unit or lexical item
(a) the word realised by several morphological words (‘do, does, did, done, doing’ as five
‘versions’ of the one verb ‘do’)
(b) the word composite in structure (‘throw out, stamp collector, take part’), wordformation clusters and phrasal clusters as ‘know a thing or two’, ‘be in the know’, etc.
- word: as an element of speech language-specific (Latin ‘amaverunt’ = two or three words
in E ‘they loved’, ‘they have loved’)
(a) phonological words
(b) orthographic words (before the rules of spelling became stabilised, ‘merry’ was also
spelled ‘myry’, ‘myrie’, ‘murie’, ‘mery’)
- full word = content word
- grammatical (= function, structure, form) word: AUX, COP, CONJ, DET, PRON, particle
(1.7) Semantics
-
conc. with the meaning of words, the relationship btw their meanings and the way such
meanings are combined to give the meaning of sentences
(1.7.1) Disciplines Analysing the Meaning
- semantics: more or less synonymous with semasiology
- semasiology: proceeds from word to concept (dictionaries)
- onomasiology: proceeds from concept to word (thesauruses)
- semiotics: studies and analyses signs (= sth that stand for sth else) and symbols (= partly
arbitrary signs accepted by society; ‘cross’ = suffering and Christianity) as part of
communication
(1.7.2) Components of Meaning
- denotation (= cognitive meaning): a finite set of discrete features of meaning
- connotation
(a) expressivity: an affective element
(b) stylistic value: neutral, poetic, formal, informal, slang, taboo, technical
(c) associations: reminders of other meaning
- collocability: semantic and syntactic cohesiveness, the way the words are linked
- inner form: the word-structure
- integration in the lexical subsystem
(1.7.3) Analysis into Semantic Elements
(a) encyclopaedic approach: distinguishes btw the centre and the periphery only (E – E
dictionary)
(b) semantic analysis: decomposition into semantic elements > s. components > semantic
features > classification semes etc. (concrete or abstract? if concrete, individual or mass?
if individual, animate or inanimate? etc.)
- structural semantics: conc. with the language as a structure to be analysed => conc. with
the semantic analysis
- sememe: a semantic unit; a set of meanings of a polysemantic word or a single meaning
with a monosemantic word
- seme: the smallest basic semantic unit; an abstraction of semantic components
constituting the meaning
A Subsystem Analysis According to the Sememes
relative
male
child
parent
+/0
father
+
0
sibling
+/0
sister
0
etc.
sibling
0
0
+
+
parent
+
+
0
0