We are going to start by morphology, hence works together morphemes (the fresh new minimal systems out-of linguistic setting and you may meaning), as well as how they make upwards words.
We’ll then discuss phonology, hence deals with phonemes (the new meaningless elements you to definitely “spell out” the brand new sound away from morphemes), and you can phonetics, and that knowledge how language was embodied regarding the passion off talking, this new resulting physical audio, in addition to means of address impression..
Following we’re going to have a look at sentence structure, and that works together with the way that terminology is actually mutual towards phrases and you will sentences. Fundamentally, we’re going to account for a few areas of meaning, specifically semantics, and this works with just how phrases was linked to things on globe outside vocabulary, and pragmatics, and that deals with how some body use all the levels of words to communicate.
The latest unusual nature out of morphology
From a medical perspective, morphology ‘s the oddest of your own amounts of linguistic analysis. When i offer this lecture in order to a basic class, I’m constantly reminded out of precisely what the particle physicist Isidor Rabi said when he found out about this new breakthrough of the muon: “Exactly who bought that?” From the serendipity, this morning’s Ny Moments has actually a peek at a new publication, “New Browse of your own Quark”, you to definitely informs the story:
Throughout the fifth 100 years B.C., that prescient Greek philosopher already been humankind towards the seek this new universe’s biggest foundations when he suggested that amount are made of infinitesimally quick particles titled atoms. In 1897, british physicist J. J. Thomson difficult the difficulty when he discovered the first subatomic particle, the fresh electron. Afterwards, other people approved the newest proton and you can neutron. Because the atom smashers expanded within the next few decades, myriads regarding ephemeral dirt starred in new dirt, a genuine Greek alphabet soup of lambdas, sigmas and pions. ”Who ordered that?” exclaimed the fresh new theorist Isidor I. Rabi if muon are known.
Given the very first type of human verbal language, the amount of phonology, syntax, semantics and you will pragmatics are perhaps inevitable. It don’t need to look precisely the manner in which they actually do, possibly, however, there needs to be one thing to perform the performs off every one of these membership.
Prepositions inform you all of the adopting the kind of relationships but
But morphology is simply gratuitous, as well as complex and you can abnormal: whatever a language does with morphology, they usually can together with carry out a whole lot more straightforwardly which have sentence structure; and there’s constantly other words you to really does a comparable thing with sentence structure.
For-instance, English morphology inflects nouns so you’re able to indicate plurality: thus animals form “more than one dog”. This inflection lets us getting particular, within the a tight means, towards difference between one plus-than-you to. Naturally, we can always state the same thing inside the an even more elaborated means, making use of the resources of sentence structure rather than morphology: several dog. When we want to be obscure, we need to end up being long winded: no less than one dogs.
Modern Practical Chinese (labeled as “Mandarin” or “Putonghua”) produces precisely the opposite possibilities: there is absolutely no morphological marking to possess plurality, therefore we will be succinctly unclear on whether i suggest you to definitely or maybe more away from things, while we must be far more a lot of time-winded if we want to be specific. Ergo (during the Pinyin orthography with http://datingranking.net/cs/clover-dating-recenze build amounts after each syllable):
Such as of another kind of morphological packaging, English can make iconify out of symbol and you will -ify, meaning “generate on an icon.” Maybe it is sweet getting just one keyword because of it, however, we could usually have told you “build toward an icon.” And several languages lack any standard cure for turn a noun X to your a good verb meaning “and work out for the (an) X”, and so need certainly to make use of the longer-winded form from expression. In reality, the method within the English is rather unpredictable: we state vaporize maybe not *vaporify, and you will emulsify perhaps not *emulsionify, and so on.
