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Relevance for studying language in its natural or primary medium: oral sounds rather than written symbols.
Phonic medium: the range of sounds produced by the speech organs insofar as the play a role in language
Speech sounds: Individual sounds within that range
Phonology is the study of the phonic medium not in itself but in relation with language.
e.g. application of voice to the explanation of differences within the system of language:
housen vs housev
usen vs usev
2.1.1. Phonetics
It is usually divided into three branches which study the phonic medium from three points of view:
Articulatory phonetics: speech sounds according to the way in which they are produced by the
speech organs.
Acoustic phonetics: speech sounds according to the physical properties of their sound-waves.
Auditory phonetics: speech sounds according to their perception and identification.
Articulatory phonetics has the longest tradition, and its progress in the 19th century contributed a standardize
and internationally accepted system of phonetic transcription: the origins of the International Phonetic Alphabet
used today and relying on sound symbols and diacritics.
It studies production in relation with the vocal tract, i.e., organs such as:
lungs
trachea or windpipe, containing: larynx
vocal folds
glottis
pharyngeal cavity
nose
mouth, containing fixed organs: teeth and teeth ridge
hard palate
pharyngeal wall
mobile organs: lips
tongue
soft palate
jaw
According to their function and participation, sounds may take several features:
Voice: voiced vs voiceless sounds, according to the participation of the vocal folds
e.g. /b, d, g, z, v/ vs
/p, t, k, s, f/
Nasality: nasal vs oral sounds, according to the participation of the velum or soft palate
e.g. /n/ vs /s/
Acoustic phonetics examines the physical nature of sounds according to variables like:
sound quality
pitch
loudness
length
Auditory phonetics studies the perception of sounds by hearers based on two mechanisms:
physiological,
psychological
A complete description of a sound should include information concerning all three stages/fields: production
transmission
reception
Suprasegmental (prosodic) features: they affect not just a segment, but long stretches of utterances:
stress position
rhythm
intonation
2.1.2. Phonology
Phoneme: the smallest linguistic unit which may bring about a change of meaning.
Allophone (or phonemic alternant): a variant form of a phoneme where the variation does not alter the units
basic identity.
within a word
at word boundaries
elision
juncture
2.2. Morphology
The realization of morphemes can be bound or free (according to whether they are dependent or independent,
respectively).
The combination of morphemes does not always take place linearly, that is, morphs do not always occur one
after the other, so formal alterations may occur in various degrees:
Derivational morphology
It studies derivation, that is, the formation of new lexemes.
Two basic types of lexemes can be considered:
Simple: units with only one constituent and not formed by any word-formation process
Complex: units with more than one constituent and affected by a word-formation process
2.3. Syntax
Syntax is globally concerned with the grammaticality of word-strings: it establishes whether sequences of
words (phrases, clauses, sentences) are built in accordance with the grammar of a language system:
e.g. *morning this vs this morning
Sentence: a sequence of words which is the largest structural unit at this level
Which cannot be subordinate
Sentences are thus not linear sequences, but multi-layered sequences. This structure is
brought out by techniques like the Immediate Constituents (ICs) analysis, and its bracketing-
labelling.
2.4. Semantics
A starting point can be that meanings are ideas or concepts which can be transferred from the mind of the
speaker to the mind of the hearer by embodying them, as it were, in the forms of one language or another.
Lexical meaning
Lexicology (the study of lexicon) and lexicography (the application of the former study to dictionary-making) for
the study of meaning.
Sentence meaning
It takes the study of meaning beyond the traditional sphere of just lexemes: the meaning of a sentence
depends on the meaning of the lexemes and of the grammatical elements which operate on those lexemes:
e.g. The dog bit the post man vs The postman bit the dog
2.5. Pragmatics
Pragmatics studies the function or action that language performs in the domains of social interaction
Speech acts: communicative activities defined with reference to the intentions of a speaker
the effects achieved on the listener
As we study speech acts and their contexts, we move away from the meaning or grammar of sentences and
approach the meaning of text and discourse, namely the domains of pragmatics.
Grammar Pragmatics
Declarative sentence Statement
Interrogative sentence Question
Imperative sentence Directive
Exclamative sentence Exclamation
So pragmatics is the study of the principles governing the communicative use of language
from the point of the users (their choices and constraints)
from the point of view of the effects achieved
The basic unit of study is the utterance, defined as the stretch of speech typically followed and preceded by a
silence, or any stretch of speech about which no assumptions have been made in terms of linguistic theory.