Understanding Language Structure: Phonemes, Morphology, and Semantics
The Structure of the Language: Phonemes and Words.
Language is a system of signs, related and interdependent, and a set of combining rules. The function of each sign is given by its opposition to another. The study of language is structured in three levels, and each of them deals with a particular aspect:
+ + Level 1: Phonetics – Phonemes, looks, and sounds of the language.
The phoneme is an abstract unit of meaningless jargon that serves to distinguish words. The sound is the individual and concrete realization of the phoneme. There are 24 phonemes in Castilian and many sounds as there are speakers. The consonant phonemes are classified into 19 and vocal (5). Each phoneme is defined by its distinctive features.
To recognize a phoneme, the strategy of substitution is used: Changing the meaning of the word, we face another phoneme (imprisonment / weight / pear / peeling).
The realization of the phoneme in written script is called. There is no total correspondence between spelling and phoneme, giving rise to some problems in spelling, such as:
• The phoneme /k/ has three spellings: c> casa, k> kilo, q> queso.
• The phoneme /x/ has two spellings: g> gente, j> jardinero.
+ + Level 2: Morphosyntactic – This level deals with the formal aspect of the word (morphology) and their combinations in the sentence (syntax).
The word is the central unit. It is composed of minimal units of meaning, monemes, which in turn are divided into tokens (lexical meaning) and morphemes (grammatical meaning).
Types of Morphemes:
A. Dependent:
Inflections: gender, number (nouns and adjectives), time, mode, number, person, aspect … (verb)
Derivational: prefixes (culpable), interfijos (peces de oro), and suffixes (culpable).
B. Independent:
Determiners: articles, demonstratives …
Relational: prepositions, conjunctions.
Types of Words:
According to the possibility of certain grammatical morphemes and their association with certain syntactic functions: nouns (perro), adjectives (marrón), verbs (ladrar), prepositions (con), conjunctions (y), adverbs (suavemente), determiners (el).
According to Constitution: simple (sol), composite (cortapelos), derivatives (soleado), parasintéticas (triste), acronyms and abbreviations (radar, ESO), short forms and apheresis (cine, chacha).
+ + Level 3: Semantics – This level studies phenomena related to the scope of the meaning of the linguistic sign. The meaning of a word depends on the combination of minimal semantic features called semes. The set of semes is called sememe. Example: perro (mascota, mamífero, macho).
Semes: Words have denotative (objective features) and connotative (subjective features provided by the speaker or the context). The words that contain a common seme form a semantic field. For example, the semantic range of objects used to sit includes silla, sillón, sofá, taburete … The semantic relations between words can be of polysemy, homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, and paronimia monosemy.
Words can change their meaning for different reasons: historical and social, psychological and linguistic minorities. The semantic change can produce a broadening of the meaning of a word to different areas or restricting the meaning to one. The mechanisms of semantic change are metaphor, metonymy and euphemism.