Asri Psycho

8/12/2019 Asri Psycho

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COMPONENT OF LANGUAGE

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COMPONENT OF LANGUGAE

Linguistic study involves a search for patterns in the way speakers use language; linguists aim to

describe these patterns by reducing them to a set of rules called a grammar. As Edward Sapir

once commented, however, "All grammars leak" !#!, $%&. 'ver time linguists came to

recogni(e a growing number of language components; each new component was an attempt to

plug the "leaks" in an earlier grammar, to e)plain what had previously resisted e)planation. *he

following discussion pinpoints the various leaks linguists have recogni(ed as well as their

attempts to plug the leaks& and demonstrates how culture and language influence each other.

According to +homsky !-&, mental& grammar can be divided into three basic components

synta), semantics, and phonology. Each component or module& has its own categories and rules

that are in principle independent of each other.

!. /orphology 0 the internal structure of words

*he term morphology is 1reek and is a makeup of morph2 meaning 3shape, form3, and

2ology which means 3the study of something3. 4n sum, it can be concluded that morphology is the

scientific study of forms and structure of words in a language. As a sub2discipline of linguistics,

it was named for the first time in !%- by the 1erman linguist August Schleicher who used the

term for the study of the form of words.

2ht is 3o#d4

4f morphology is the study of the internal structure of words, it is needed to define the

word wordbefore. *hat might soundeasy 2 surely we all know what a word is. 4n te)ts they are

particularly easy to spot since they are divided by white spaces. 5ut how do we identify words in

speech6 A reliable definition of wordsis that they are the smallest independent units of language.

*hey are independent in that they do not depend on other words which means that they can be

separated from other units and can change position.7$8+onsider the sentence

The man looked at the horses.

*he plural endingsin horsesis dependent on the noun horseto receive meaning and can

therefore not be a word.Horses however, is a word, as it can occur in other positions in the

sentence or stand on its own


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The horses looked at the man.

- What is the man looking at? - Horses.

9ords are thus both independent since they can be separated from other words and move around

in sentences, and the smallest units of language since they are the only units of language for

which this is possible.

Mo#"hemes 5 the building bloc!s of mo#"hology

Although words are the smallest independentunits of language, they have an internal structure

and are built up by even smaller pieces. *here are sim"lewords that don:t have an internal

structure and only consist of one piece, likework. *here is no way we can divide work wo2rk6&

into smaller parts that carry meaning or function. Com"le6 words however, do have an internal

structure and consist of two or more pieces. +onsider worker, where the endingeris added to

the #oot workto make it into a noun meaningsomeone who works.*hese pieces are

called mo#"hemesand are the smallest meaning-bearingunits of language.78

9e said that words are independent forms, and a simple word only consisting of one single

morpheme is therefore a f#eemorpheme, that is, it is a word itself. E)amples are house, work,

high, us and to. /orphemes that must be attached to another morpheme to receive meaning

are bound morphemes. 4f we break the word unkindness into its three morphemes un-, kind and -

ness, we get two e)amples of bound morphemes un2 and 2ness, as they re


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,#3ing Mo#"hology T#ees

4n order to show the internal structure of a word, we draw morphology trees. *he following

video demonstrates how to draw a simple morphology tree and a comple) morphology tree

5elow are the completed morphology trees from the video


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The "u#"oses of studying mo#"hology

*he internal structure of words and the segmentation into different kinds of morphemes is

essential to the two basic purposes or morphology !. the creation of new words and #. the

modification of e)isting words.78*hink about it, we create new words out of old ones all the

time.

#. Synta)

*he study of how individual words and their most basic meaningful units are combined to create

sentences is known as synta). As words are grouped together when we communicate, we must follow the

rules of grammar for our language, in other words, its synta). 4t is the knowledge of synta) that allows us

to recogni(e that the following two sentences, while containing different word order and levels of

comple)ity, have the same meaning.

*he boy hit the ball.

*he ball was hit by the boy.

Synta) also allows us to accept >4 went to the store? as a meaningful grammatical& sentence while >*o

store went 4? would not be acceptable English.

Synta) is most related to grammar. 4t has to do with sentences and their structure. *he English language

has a certain word order we have to follow if we want to create useful language. *he basic sentence in

English consists of sub@ect, verb, and ob@ect S'& as is represented in this simple sentence 4 eat

breakfast. *his sentence is grammatically correct because the words are presented in the right order.

9e could add to the previous sentence and make it more comple) 0 Bor 4nstance,

!& Every morning, 4 eat breakfast at C o:clock and then 4 go to school.

*he sentence follows an acceptable word order in the English language.

4f we said 5reakfast 4 eat.

*he listener will immediately reali(e that the sentence does not follow the correct word order.

#& *he boy ate a sandwich vs. A sandwich ate the boy.

'ne sentence is correct because it follows the right word order but although the second one

followed the right word order it did not make sense because it was not semantically correct.


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The Pu#"ose of Synt6

Linguists and grammarians who study synta) are not necessarily prescriptivist, which means

they do not attempt to tell people how to "correctly" form a sentence. Dather, they are

descriptivist, in that they look at how people actually speak and then create rules that describe

what a language community considers grammatical or non2grammatical. Synta) deals with a

number of elements, all of which help to facilitate being understood through language. 9ithout

rules, there would be no foundation from which to discern meaning from a bunch of words

strung together; whereas these rules allow for a virtually infinite number of sentences.

*here are many reasons for studying synta), from general humanistic or behavioral motivations

to much more specific goals such as those in the following

2 *o help us to illustrate the patterns of English more effectively and clearly.

2 *o enable us to analy(e the structure of English sentences in a systematic and e)plicit

way.

2o#d O#de# in Lnguge Const#uction

erhaps the most important aspect of synta) is how the various parts of speech connect together.

Every language has rules that dictate where certain types of words can be used in a sentence, and

how to interpret the resulting sentence. A new language learner has to understand how this word

order is structured, which can be difficult for someone used to a different language.

4n English, there are nouns, verbs, ad@ective, and adverbs, articles determiners, the, a, an&, prepositions

in, on, up, near, at, F&, con@unctions and, but, or, etc.&, and pronouns . All of them are called part of

speech. 5esides, there are phrasal categories which include noun phrases the smart girlF&, verb phrases,

and prepositional phrases F in the park&.


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