Assignment 1

Discuss and analyse the components of language

There are several of components of language. There are semantics,

pragmatics, phonology, syntax and morphology. These components of language are
important so that children can know to pronounce the words correctly.

According to Taylor, J. (2003) semantics is the study of the meaning of words,

phrases and sentences. There are broad distinction in semantics field which are
conceptual meaning and associative meaning. Conceptual meaning is the essential
components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word. It is a type of
meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe. One of the examples of basic
components of a word like needle in English it might include thin, long, and sharp.
These components would be part of conceptual meaning of needle. In contrary, the
associative meaning can be express like ‘low-calorie’. It is used to describe a product
which is healthy. In short, semantics is the study of meaning of linguistic
expressions. The importance of semantics is to understand how speakers acquire a
sense of meaning.

The next component of language is pragmatics. According to Yule,G. (1996)

pragmatics can be defined as the study of “invisible’ meaning, or how we recognise
what is mean even it is not actually said or written. American Speech Language
Hearing Association.(1997) mentioned that adults may have difficulty with
pragmatics like brain injury or stroke. Pragmatics involve in three major
communication skills. First, is when using language for different purposes such as
greeting; Hello and goodbye. The next is changing language according to the needs
of listener or situation by talking differently to a baby than to an adult. Thirdly, is
when following rules for conversation an individual know to use verbal, non-verbal
signs, facial expression and able to make eye-contact. In brief, pragmatics is a
systemic way to explain the language use in context. However, pragmatics is
essential because it can develop vocabulary, grammar and improve communication
skills.

Phonology is fundamentally describes the systems and patterns of speech

sounds in a language. Phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of
the sounds in language rather than the actual physical articulation of speech sounds.
This involves discovering how what happens in the brain is transformed and
produced as the physical sound. Phonology is divided into two parts which are
phonemes and allophones. Phonemes are the meaningful different sound units in a
certain language. For example, ‘pat’ and ‘bat’ which is different in their first phoneme.
In contrast, allophones are the various ways in which phonemes are realized as
actual phonetic speech sounds and can give rise to different pronunciation of the
same word. As an example, pin and spin are the allophones for the phoneme /p/ in
English language because they cannot distinguish words. In short, phonology is the
study of the sound structure of languages and it helps to be more effective
communicators.

According to Dictionary.com (2014) syntax is the branch of linguistics that

deals with the grammatical arrangement of words and morphemes in the sentences.
The syntactical rules of a language determine whether the sentence is meaningful or
not meaningful. For instance, “I love you” is meaningful whereas “love you I” is not.
This can be explained that syntactical rules will determine how word order and
sentence structure is constrained and gives meaning. An example would be, the boy
hit the girl. The girl hit the boy would be a change in syntax. This means that the role
of the grammatical subject is encoded by the noun being in front of the verb, and the
role of object is encoded by the noun appearing after the verb. Briefly, syntax is the
way you word a sentence to convey the meaning and it helps to show how words are
related between sentences

Morphology is the study of the internal structure of complex words and the
process by which words are called morphology. In many languages, it is possible
that to construct complex words that are built of several morphemes. For instance,
the English word “unbelievable” can be analysed as being composed of the three
morphemes “un-”, “believe” and “-able”. Morphemes are then classified into two parts
which are independent morphemes, so-called roots and bound morphemes can be
called as affixes. Morphology is also concerned with two different phenomena which
are derivation and inflection. The process of derivation is creates a new word from
an existing one whereas inflection is to modify or elaborate on a word. An example of
derivation is unpleasantly. Pleasant is the root word while un- and ly- are the
derivational affixes. Example of inflection is dogs’ where .it gives possessive
meaning. Hence, morphology facilitates in several ways to master language include
spelling, fluency, word recognition and structure of language.

Taylor,J.(2003) Linguistic Categorization (3rd edition) Oxford University Press

Yule,G. (1996) Pragmatics Oxford University press

Discuss issues related to learning in schools context, particularly in relation to
teaching, the curriculum and literacy.

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders can be among the most difficult to
teach in a regular class. Behavior becomes a problem when it deviates so greatly
from what is appropriate for the child’s age group that is significantly interferes with
the child’s own growth and development. Clearly, deviation implies a difference from
some standard, and standards of behavior differ from one situation, age group,
culture, and historical period to another. Quay and Peterson (1987) describe six
dimensions of emotional and behavioral disorders. One of example is teacher faced
in teaching in schools is attention problems immaturity. The characteristics include a
short attention span, frequent day dreaming, messiness and poor coordination.
Thus, teacher have to enforce clear and rules and consequences during teaching so
that emotional and behavioral disorders can be reduced.