Grammar or Meaning Morphological processes serve different functions. Some occur to alter meaning and/or part of speech (derivational), others show grammatical relationships between words (inflectional). In English, the attachment of ‘-ness’ to an adjective such as ‘faithful’ derives the noun ‘faithfulness’. Likewise, when ‘un-‘ is attached to ‘happy’, meaning is reversed (unhappy). In French, … [Read more...]
How to Master Morphology
Words are units of sound, meaning, and grammar that human beings use to communicate everything from basic needs to intricate explanations about the solar system. Babies start using them around nine months of age. Most adults know tens of thousands of them. We keep our words neatly classified and organized in our lexicon (mental dictionary) for easy access (word retrieval). Words can be … [Read more...]
Features and Classes 101
Features Phonetic features The perception of natural speech sounds is based on phonetic features, the smallest units of distinction between any two phonemes. We use features such as voicing to differentiate between the words /kejm/ ‘came’ and /gejm/ ‘game’. The only distinguishing feature between these 2 sounds is that the vocal cords not do vibrate for during the articulation of /k/, and do … [Read more...]
An Introduction to Natural Classes
When studying phonology, it is fundamental to understand phonemes in terms of the features that they bear and share. Doing so allows us to group phonemes together into natural classes, which gives insight into how classes of sounds pattern together when undergoing various phonological processes. Natural classes are groups of phonemes that share one or a set of phonological features. Binary … [Read more...]
More on Semantics
Semantics - The Study of Meanings That Are Unconsciously Understood Semantics is the study of meaning in terms of what speakers unconsciously know prescriptively (what language critics invoke during disagreements over word meaning and sentence interpretation) and descriptively (the way in which word and sentence meaning are encoded in a native language as part of mental grammar). Meaning is … [Read more...]
An Introduction to Semantics
Semantics covers a very broad list of topics dealing mainly with meaning of and the relationships between words. Most introductory linguistics courses focus on three basic areas: lexical semantics (word meaning and relatedness), phrasal or sentential semantics (sentential meaning and relatedness), and pragmatics (meaning in the context of discourse). Lexical Semantics Semantic Features Lexical … [Read more...]
Features
An Introduction to Features The most basic component of a speech sound is a feature, which can be described as the minimal specification that separates one phoneme from another. In fact, a phoneme can be described as a bundle of features, since all phonemes bear at least two or more. Articulatory features are defined in terms of the place and type of constriction of air as it travels through … [Read more...]
An Introduction to Phonology
Phonology is where you put into practice all you’ve learned in phonetics. It is the study of how sounds are strung together (phonotactics), how they interact with each other, and the rules that account for these processes. The focus of phonology at an introductory level course can be categorized into the following areas. 1. The Distribution of Phonemes Phonemes are individual sounds described … [Read more...]
Aspiration and Voice Onset Time
Each language has parameters concerning the distribution of plosives. Some languages only permit voiceless plosives, e.g., Proto-Quechua, whereas others permit both voiced and voiceless, e.g., Spanish. Still others allow a 3-way distribution of plosives, adding aspiration to the mix, e.g., Hindi. (Aspiration is symbolized by the diacritic [h].) Hindi (1) [pʰəl] ‘fruit’ [pəl] ‘moment’ … [Read more...]
Sounds and Spellings
Speech Sounds and Symbols Talking was around for quite some time before any type of writing systems were developed. There are many languages still today today that have no written form. In fact, all human beings learn language perfectly well before ever holding a pencil or decoding a scribed word. So even though symbolizing language visually is not essential to communication, written language is … [Read more...]