Understanding the Fundamentals of Linguistics
1. The Concept of Function
The objective of a function is to meet someone or something. If language is a communication tool, the role to be fulfilled is to enable the communication link between sender and receiver, i.e., its objective is to establish communication. All the elements of a language play this mission and will be called functional elements. The language that focuses its efforts on studying the elements of the language from the perspective of the role, with the main axis of communication, is called functional linguistics.
2. Linkages, Relationships, and Language Units
Language is double-jointed, so that the first joint is formed by minimal signs, each with its own meaning and signifier, and a second joint consisting of meaningless units but meeting with a distinctive function or other functions that help to build linguistic signifiers.
4. Plans and Levels: Language Arts
Language connects two heterogeneous substances such as the field of meanings and the realm of sound. Sound is the area in which signs are externalized. In language, we distinguish two levels: content or meaning and expression, or signifier and four levels: substance content, form, content, form of expression, and substance of expression.
- Substance of content: Low temperature.
- Form Content: To study how linguistic units are organized is the role of grammar: the grammatical morphemes are studied by morphology and lexicology, lexical morphemes or lexemes. Syntax studies the function, but the function can only be studied through the forms.
- Form of Expression: Phonology studies the form of expression that is manifested through phonemes and phonetic features archiphoneme. It deals with the operation in the linguistic system.
- Substance of Expression: Phonetics studies the substance of speech, the sounds by which phonological units are externalized.
- Morphophonology studies the relationship between morphemes and phonological representation, liaison between the level of content and expression.
- Pragmatics studies the relationship between signs and their users.
5. The Basic Units of Linguistic Analysis
A linguistic unit is a discretely segmented element at any level studied and serves a communicative function. A morpheme is the unit most commonly used in linguistic analysis, it has a signifier and signified. We must distinguish between two types of morphemes: lexical morphemes or lexemes and grammatical morphemes. Lexemes provide sign language content, form the core or root of words, and are open sets, i.e., you can create new morphemes by derivation. Among the lexemes are classified sets of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. Grammatical morphemes modify or supplement the meaning of lexemes, morphemes are gender, number. The phoneme is the basic unit of phonology, the minimum unit subsequent to the second joint. It is also defined as a set of distinctive or relevant features. Another definition by Antonio Quilis is the smallest linguistic unit, devoid of meaning, consisting of a bundle of distinctive features simultaneously. If an objection is no longer relevant in certain positions of the speech chain, there is a breakthrough and the result of this neutralization is archiphoneme.