Module 2: Linguistics

Linguistics is the study of language and its structure, and is an invaluable tool for individuals who are trying
to learn a new language. As we begin to think about how we are going to help our students read, write,
speak, and listen to a new language, we need to prepare to give them the basics in structure that will help
them understand the overall structure of the English language. In this module, we will discuss all of the
major aspects of linguistics, including phonology, lexicology, morphology, syntax, phonetics, and
semantics. By studying these concepts yourself, you will be better prepared to help your students learn them
in the future.

Module 2: Linguistics

2.1 Phonology

2.2 Morphology

2.3 Lexicology

2.4 Syntax

2.5 Semantics

2.1 Phonology

Phonology is the study of the sound and structure of a language. Essentially, phonology concerns
itself with the mental representation of a sound. Understanding phonology means you understand
how to break down a word into its smaller sounds and pronounce it. This can help a student
learning English because it gives him or her a great tool for breaking down new words and
pronouncing words that he or she has not necessarily seen before. Let’s take a look at some of the
basic concepts within phonology.

2.1.1 Basics of phonology

You can’t study phonology without discussing phonetics, but for the purposes of this course,
phonology is more important. Phonology deals with how we mentally break down the
pronunciation of words, while phonetics deals with producing the sounds, therefore phonology is
more relevant for people who are learning a new language, not learning spoken language for the
first time.

In phonology, words are broken down into smaller units that represent sounds, to make it easier to
pronounce new words. If a student understands the common sound units in the English language,
he or she will be able to sound out most words, making language acquisition much more
comfortable. Here is a break down of some of those units of sound:

Phonemes: A phoneme is a unit of sound that when replaced changes the sound of a word in a
particular language. English is a complicated language for people to learn because even though
there are twenty-six letters, there are forty-four phonemes. These phonemes represent all iterations
of sounds that a letter can make. For example, a “c” can sound like a “k” or an “s,” depending on
its position in a word. If an individual understands phonemes, he or she will understand all the
different sounds in the English language. Phonemes are broken down into two categories: vowels
and consonants.

Vowels: A vowel is an open sound that is spoken without blockage from the lips or tongue. Vowels
can be difficult because they are very versatile and shift and change a lot depending on the word
in which they appear. Vowels are typically broken down into the following categories:

• Single vowels
• Short vowels
• Schwa
• Long vowels
• Diphthongs

Consonants: Consonants are sounds that are spoken with obstruction from the lips, teeth, or
tongue. Just like vowels, they can be complicated to understand because there are so many
variations of similar sounds. Consonants can be broken down into the following categories:

• Voiced consonants
• Unvoiced consonants

Minimal pair: Two words that differ in meaning because they contain one phoneme that is
different are called minimal pairs. Minimal pairs are often words that rhyme or at least form a near
rhyme.
Phone: A phone is the smallest unit of sound and refers to the way in which an individual
pronounces a sound. It can therefore exist in more than one language. This is different from a
phoneme, which refers specifically to the sound that is assigned to a letter or group of letters in a
given language. For this reason, phones can be universal to all languages, while phonemes are
specific to individual languages.

Accents: When a syllable or sound within a word is given more attention than the others. This
changes the way an individual pronounces a word.

• Stress accent, dynamic accent, or stress: When an accented syllable is also given a
change in pitch and volume, it is referred by any of these three names.
• Pitch accent: When the accented syllable is differentiated through a change in only the pitch
with which it is pronounced.
• Quantitative accent: When the accented syllable is differentiated through only a
lengthening of the syllable.

Intonations: A change in the pitch of a word or syllable that does not change the meaning of the
word or syllable but rather indicates any of a number of different situations, including:

• Revealing the feelings of the speaker.

• Identifying the phrase as a question or distinguishing between different types of questions.
• Giving importance to a word or phrase in the statement or question.

2.2 Morphology

Morphology is very closely related to phonology in that it is concerned with the structure of
language. Specifically, however, morphology deals with the structure of a language’s morphemes,
phonemes, and other linguistic units. The English language relies heavily on morphology,
especially regarding English language acquisition. Understanding the morphological relationship
between two words can help an individual recognize a similar morphological relationship between
two different words, which helps them better understand new words and phrases. For example, if
an individual can recognize the morphological relationship between the words “heart” and
“monitor” in the phrase “heart monitor,” then he or she can use that to understand other complex
nouns. Using this knowledge, an English language learner can take an educated guess to
determine what the phrase “hall monitor” means.

2.2.1 Basics of morphology

To truly understand morphology, one must fully understand morphemes, which are the basis of
the area of study. While phonemes refer to the sounds that make up the structure of words,
morphemes are the physical structural units in a word.

Morphemes: Morphemes are sometimes referred to as the smallest linguistic unit that carries
meaning. While phonemes are smaller, they essentially build towards pronunciation rather than
meaning. Breaking a word into its morphemes allows an individual to separate and (better
understand) the root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Here is an example:

In the sentence, “Send these schematics down to the marketers.” the word, “marketers” has
3 morphemes.
Morpheme 1: Market. The root of the word that carries the major meaning of the word. This word
could stand alone and make sense if it needed to (though not in the sentence we plucked it from).
This morpheme is called the free lexical morpheme.

Morpheme 2: -er. This is the suffix that is added to the word, carrying with it the inherent meaning
of “one who does something.” Understanding the suffix allows a student to understand that a
marketer is one who markets. This morpheme is called the bound lexical morpheme.

Morpheme 3: -s. This letter is added so that the amount is clear and that the word fits in the
sentence grammatically with the intended meaning. The sentence would still make sense without
this morpheme, but it would change the meaning. This morpheme is called the bound grammatical
morpheme.

In the above example, we discussed some classifications for morphemes. Let’s look closer at
these three classifications.

Free lexical morpheme: This term is used to describe a morpheme that can exist on its own and
make sense. In the previous example, the free lexical morpheme was “market.” Alone, “market”
is a word. Conversely, “er” is not a word that can exist on its own and still make sense. While in
this case the free lexical morpheme was the root word, it does not have to be. The word
“classroom” is composed of two free lexical morphemes—“class” and “room.”

Bound lexical morpheme: This term is used to describe a morpheme that is bound to another
morpheme lexically and cannot make sense without it. This term often refers to prefixes and
suffixes that are added to words to adjust their meaning. These morphemes cannot function alone
and serve to simply modify the meaning of the free lexical morpheme to which they are attached.

Bound grammatical morpheme: This term is used to describe a morpheme that is bound to
another morpheme and serves the purpose of helping its word fit into a sentence grammatically.
In the following example, notice the importance of the bound grammatical morpheme (we will use
“s” in the same way we used it in the previous example). In the phrase, “John threw two balls to
Mike,” the “s” in the word “balls” is the bound grammatical morpheme. The sentence would not
make grammatical sense without it, as it would read “John threw two ball at Mike.”

Free grammatical morpheme: While we did not clearly identify this in the previous examples,
free grammatical morpheme is a term used to describe morphemes that are not bound to other
morphemes but are there to serve a grammatical purpose. Usually, these words are articles,
conjunctions, and prepositions. In the sentence above, “John threw the ball at Mike,” “at” is a free
grammatical morpheme.

Understanding these basic concepts can help a new language learner get a sense of how a
language is structured and help them be able to make connections and learn new words and
phrases more easily.

2.3 Lexicology

Lexicology is the study of words and therefore includes elements of many other aspects of
linguistics that we will discuss in this module. When we study words in lexicology, we look closely
at how words are formed, what makes them different from other words, uniform rules that affect
usage and/or conjugation, and the different connotations and meanings of synonyms. All of these
ideas will help your students move from understanding the sounds that make up the English
language to understanding the words that make up the English language. Here is an overview of
some of the basic principles of lexicology and its associated vocabulary:

2.3.1 Basics of lexicology

To understand lexicology, it is important to break it down into its smaller parts to look at how each
works to create the overall study of lexicology. A clear understanding of lexicology and its basic
principles and terminology will help you and your students find more success by easing their
understanding of words and their function within a sentence.

Lexeme: A lexeme is a lexicological unit of linguistics, which, for the most part, refers to a root
word. The lexeme is the part of a word (even if that is the whole word) that imparts the most
meaning, with conjugation or prefixes and suffixes added to adjust the meaning. In other words,
the word “snow” is a lexeme, and all iterations of that word, such as “snows,” “snowed”, or
“snowing,” all share this same lexeme. By breaking down words to their roots, students can better
break down new words, connect to a word’s etymology, or even find a cognate they can relate
to.

Lexical items: Whereas a lexeme is the root of a word, a lexical item is the entirety of a word or
phrase that imparts meaning. In our previous example, we mentioned that “snows,” “snowed,”
and “snowing” all have the same lexeme, which is “snow.” In that example, all of those words are
different lexical items. A lexical item can also be a combination of words, such as “class work,” or
a phrase, such as “in the way.” Essentially, lexical items are the units in a sentence that have
separate meaning.

Word forms: The term “word forms” encompasses all the iterations of a similar lexeme. In other
words, some word forms of the lexeme “go” are “goes,” “went,” and “will go.” This term is used to
describe the different conjugations of a verb, the different tenses of a word, or the different forms
of a word based on amount.

Another important idea that would be helpful to know is that lexicology also encompasses lexical
structure, which deals with the structure of words and their parts. Let’s take a closer look at lexical
structure:

Lexical structure: Lexical structure refers to the internal structure of lexemes as well as the
structure of the lexicon of a language. The “lexicon” is just a fancy term for all of the words in a
group.

• Paradigms: Differences in meaning that rely on the substitution of words. In other words,
if you look closely at a phrase, like “Bill ran to his truck”, making a paradigmatic change
would require a substitution. This would result in a different phrase, like “Bill ran to his
wife,” or “Frank ran to his truck”. These changes completely change the meaning of the
sentence because different subjects and objects can be substituted.

• Syntagms: These are differences that result from the positioning of words in a phrase. In
other words, to make a syntagmatic change in a sentence, you would change the order of
the words to adjust the meaning of the sentence. For example, if the sentence “Johnny
threw the ball to Mary” is changed to “Mary threw the ball to Johnny,” then the difference
is syntagmatic.
 • Co-text: We will discuss semantic ideas in detail later in the module, but this term is
relevant to both aspects of linguistics. The co-text of a word is the linguistic context, which
means that it is the linguistic meaning of a word or the meaning that a word inherently
carries with it.
• Context: Context is another semantic term but also a concept that even laymen know.
The context of a word is the words and sentences around it that give it meaning. Whereas
co-text covers the various meanings that can be attributed to a word, the context refers to
the specific meaning of the word that is intended based on the surrounding words and
sentences.

2.4 Syntax

Now that we have learned about how sounds and words are created, it is time to discuss how
sentences are formed. Syntax is the set of rules that govern the grammatical construction of
sentences in a language. For English, these rules are fairly complicated, but let’s take a close
look at some of the basic ideas behind English grammar and syntax.

2.4.1 Basics of syntax

To understand syntax, we have to look more closely at all of the parts that make up a sentence.
The first step is to understand how sentences are classified:

Clausal sentence (simple sentence): A clausal sentence is a simple sentence that contains
only one clause or one complete proposition (subject and predicate). For example, the sentence
“Gloria is going to the store” contains only one clause, which includes a subject (“Gloria), a verb
(“is going”), and an object (“the store”).

Compound sentence: A compound sentence is a sentence that consists of more than one
clause (known in this case as coordinating clauses because they work together to complete an
idea). For example, the sentence “Maryann went to the mall and got a new shirt” is a compound
sentence containing the clauses “Maryann went to the mall” and “got a new shirt.” In the second
clause, the subject (“Maryann) is implicit.

What about the words that make up these clauses? The English language has innumerable rules
for how words should be structured and organized within a sentence. The first categories you need
to know to understand these rules, though, are the parts of speech.

• Noun: A noun is a word that describes a person, place, thing, or idea.

• Verb: A verb describes an action or a state of being.
• Adjective: An adjective is a word that modifies a noun.
• Adverb: An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
• Preposition: A preposition is a word that describes the relationship between a verb and
its object.
• Pronoun: A pronoun is a more general word that takes the place of a specific noun.
• Conjunction: A conjunction is a word that links two coordinating clauses.

Now that we know the parts of speech, we can begin diagramming sentences. Here is an example
of a sentence with all the parts of speech labelled:
Lei quickly ran down the dark street to find and catch his dog.

Lei Noun
quickly Adverb
ran Verb
down Preposition
the Adjective (article)
dark Adjective
street Noun
to Preposition
find Verb
and Conjunction
catch Verb
his Pronoun
dog Noun

While it would be impossible for us to cover every single syntactical rule in the English language,
here are a few more that are directly relevant to your students who are learning English for the
first time:

• Every sentence needs at least a subject and a predicate. The subject of the sentence is
the noun that is acting or being. The predicate is the phrase that consists of the verb and
the object (not every sentence needs an explicit object).
• The verb and the subject of the sentence need to agree, meaning that if you are using a
plural noun, you need to use the plural form of a verb.
• For the most part, the best way to frame a sentence is in active rather than passive voice.
This means the sentence, “Sammy threw the ball to Jane”, is more grammatically sound
than if it were passive and written: “The ball was thrown to Jane by Sammy”.
• Verb tense needs to agree throughout a piece of writing or spoken language. If the first
verb you use is in past tense, then all subsequent verbs with the same intention should be
past tense.

2.5 Semantics

We have successfully worked our way up to understanding how sentences are structured, and
now it is time to discuss words again, but this time we will look at the connotative and complex
meanings that they carry. Semantics is a branch of linguistics that involves the study of words
and their meanings.

2.5.1 Theories of semantics

Typically, the concept of semantics is divided into three theories of semantics: formal semantics,
lexical semantics, and conceptual semantics. Each of these types of semantics delves into the
true meanings of words and will help your students understand the intricacies of the English
language.
Formal semantics: Formal semantics is a very mathematical theory that strives to understand
the meaning of words by forming exact mathematical principles and ideals that speakers and
writers can use. People who subscribe to the formal semantics theory look for the relationship
between how language forms and the world in which it forms to try to understand how people
create meaningful discourse.

Lexical semantics: Lexical semantics is a theory that the meaning of a word is understood by
looking at its context. In this way, sentences can be broken down into semantic constituents or
words and phrases that carry meaning and context. This theory promotes the analysis of how
words and phrases play off each other to build meaning.

Conceptual semantics: Conceptual semantics is a theory that highlights the importance of the
internal structure of words. Theorists believe that the best way to understand the meaning of a
word in a sentence is to look at the word itself, its internal structure, and how it combines different,
smaller elements.

2.5.1 Extending word meaning

Truly understanding the English language means understanding the complexities of the language
that allow speakers of the language to build different layers of meaning in their speech.
Understanding these complexities takes a strong grasp of semantics and the ability to analyze
context. When we talk about word meaning, we can generally break it down into two categories:

Denotation: Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word. You can easily find the denotation
for a word in the dictionary. With synonyms, the denotation is similar or the same.

Connotation: Connotation refers to the implied meaning that the word often has because the
word is used to describe something beyond what the denotation states. Take a look at two
synonyms, such as “skinny” and “thin.” If you use these two words to describe a person, their
denotations are pretty much the same, but the connotation behind “skinny” is more negative than
the connotation behind “thin.” Thin implies someone who is at a healthy weight, while skinny
implies that the person is frail or weak. It takes true understanding of a language to get such small,
but important complexities of meaning.

Because of the complexity of language, speakers and writers can build meaning that is implicit
rather than explicit and sometimes difficult to decipher even for the most fluent English speaker.

Literal language: Literal language is when a speaker or writer directly describes what they mean.

Figurative language: When the writer builds meaning that goes beyond the literal meaning. Here
are some examples of figurative language:

• Metaphors
• Similes
• Personification
• Irony
• Symbolism

2.5.3 More semantic terminology

Beyond what we already described, there are important terms within the study of semantics you
should be aware of.

Synonymy: This word literally translates to “sameness of meaning” and is the root of the word
“synonym.” As we displayed in our discussion of connotation, however, while two words can be
synonyms, they do not necessarily mean the same thing. If two words meant exactly the same
thing, then one would be extraneous. Synonyms are necessary because they represent the detail
and specificity of the English language.

Hyponymy: This term literally translates to “inclusion of meaning” and essentially refers to words
that belong in groups. A fork is a hyponym of silverware because it is a member of the silverware
group.

Antonymy: This term literally translates to “oppositeness of meaning,” which means that
antonyms are meant to be opposites. It is very difficult to find an exact antonym for most words,
however, so words are often paired up because they’re close to being antonyms, much like how
synonyms have similar but not exact meanings.

Incompatibility: This term literally translates to “mutual exclusiveness within the same
subordinate category,” which means that it refers to two members of a group that are different
entities. For example, cats and dogs are both animals, so they would fit under the purview of this
term.

Homonymy: This is a term that refers to when two words sound the same even though they have
different meanings. These can be especially confusing to new language learners because they
require a strong idea of context to identify. A good example of a group of homonyms is “there,”
“their,” and “they’re.”

Polysemy: This term refers to when a word has more than one meaning. This is different from a
homonym because the spelling of the word does not change depending on the meaning. For
example, the word “close” can refer to two items that are in near proximity to each other, or it can
refer to something being shut.