CHAPTER III
PHONOLOGY, MORPHOLOGY, AND SYNTAX
(THE STRUCTURAL ASPECT OF LINGUISTIC SIGN: THE STRUCTURAL RELATIONALITY OF LANGUAGE)
What we will try to focus in this chapter is the question of the linguistic sign itself and its structure. Our discourse then will be on the structural aspect of the linguistic sign, i.e. the structural relationality of language. Therefore, our investigation will be aimed at phonology, morphology, and syntax.
There are several questions that we can ask regarding language. Some of these would include the following:
There are various disciplines which attempt to answer in different ways these questions:
We can also categorize our linguistic investigations into a number of the following subdisciplines.
There are common themes that emerge in the study of language:
II. AN INTRODUCTION TO PHONOLOGY
Phonemes are the smallest elements of a word. These are distinct sounds that are enunciated by the speaker as he communicates using words to convey meanings. Linguistics is the discipline that attempts to classify these different sounds or phonemes in a language, and to look for the general rules governing allowable combinations of sounds in a given language system. Therefore, linguistics can help us a lot in our philosophical discourse on language. Linguistic is going to show us how phonological, syntactic, and semantic knowledge is structured and represented in the mind. This is going to help us in understanding, in particular, the relation of language and the human mind.
A. Phonetics and Its Rules
Linguistics claims that there are sets of distinct articulatory features as we classify the sounds in a language. These features are the following:
Each of these features can be present or absent in any particular (consonant) sound. For instance, according to Linguists, there are thirteen features that are used in English consonants (voiced, spread glottis, labial, back, nasal, anterior, continuant, strident, lateral, delayed release, sonorant (versus obstruent), coronal, and high). And the other sounds are called vowels. We are not going to go into the details of this. For our purposes, it is enough to know that when we combine these features they form specific sounds and they convey meaning.
We are told by linguistics that the way sounds are combined always follow regular and systematic patterns. There are combinatorial rules that govern the combination. For example, in the English language, the pluralization of a singular word regularly are formed by adding either an -s sound, a -z sound, or a -ez sound to the end of a word. Words with "similar" phonetic endings take the same sound to form a plural. The similarities must be captured in a precise phonological rule that is represented in the mind. Add a z sound to form a plural; this gives an underlying (phonological) representation. Then, form a phonetic representation which gives the overt pronunciation.
Here, we have to take notice of the distinction between the underlying (phonological) representation and the phonetic representation. Why posit a separate underlying (phonological) representation and a phonetic representation? The reason lies on the aim of the linguists. Linguists usually looks for a general rule that should be applicable as many circumstances as possible, although not in all cases. Thus, in the English language, the pluralization rule, for example, accounts for the plurals, with some exceptional cases.
Sometimes phonological rules will be sensitive to syntax. Consider the combination of sounds usually spelled "gonna." We use this as a way of pronouncing "going to," but the conditions under which we can do so are constrained by the syntactic category of "to". If "to" is part of an infinitive, as in "to drink," the pronunciation "gonna" is allowed (e.g., "I'm gonna drink a glass of water.") If "to" is a preposition, as in "to the park," it is not (you can't say "I'm gonna the park.")
To summarize, phonology gives us the information that most words are a combination of phonemes. And that the combination of phonemes follows a certain rules that govern the putting together of these sounds. The combination of these various and distinct sounds renders a certain meaning of the word. And the change in phonemes of a given word renders also the change of meaning of the word itself, in most cases.
III - AN INTRODUCTION TO SYNTAX
Syntax is the study of the allowable combination of words into phrases and sentences in a given language or group of languages. Syntax is a branch of grammar. In linguistics, the term "grammar" is understood in a descriptive sense, concerned with what combinations of words speakers of a given language actually use, rather than in a prescriptive sense, which is concerned with what combinations of words speakers should use (e.g., for stylistic or aesthetic purposes). Syntax is concerned with the combinations of words that obey the rules of phrase- and sentence-contruction in a language or group of languages, and so is not concerned with the sense or meaning those combinations might have. In fact, some grammatical English sentences are quite meaningless (Chomsky's famous example was "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously"), and quite a lot of meaning can be extracted from some ungrammatical sentences ("The boy fall down the stairs carpeted"). Syntax, then, is separate from semantics, which is the study of meaning, truth, and reference.
A syntax would include a lexicon, i.e., a list of which words fit into the basic categories (noun, verb, preposition, etc.), and any special syntactic properties of those words, e.g., whether a verb is transitive (takes an object) or is intransitive. A syntax would also include a specification of how various phrases can be formed from the items in the lexicon. For example, the rule that 'a sentence can consist of a noun phrase and a verb phrase'. A noun phrase can consist of an optional determiner, a noun, and an optional prepositional phrase. A verb phrase can consist of a verb, a noun phrase (if the verb is transitive), and an optional prepositional phrase. Finally, A prepositional phrase can consist of a preposition and a noun phrase. Together, these syntactic rules generate an infinite number of phrase structures. A phrase structure can be represented as a kind of tree, where a larger structure is written above its parts, which are represented as nodes at the end of branches. Syntax is adequate for a language when it generates all the phrase structures in a given language, and nothing that is not a phrase structure of that language.
The idea is that linguistic knowledge consists in part of a representation of syntax of this sort, with rules that operate on (alter and modify) phrase structures. A particular instance of a phrase structure (i.e., a particular syntactic structure, such as a sentence) is formed by lexical insertion, i.e., associating lexical items of the appropriate categories with the nodes in a phrase structure tree. Based on the syntax above, we have , for example, a sentence "The policeman in the park gave a ticket to the driver."
There are two things to note about a phrase marker. First, a substitution test can be performed on the phrase marker. If the syntax (generative grammar) that generates the structure is adequate, so that the sentence is grammatical, then substituting any phrase or lexical item of the same syntactic category (e.g., a noun phrase for a noun phrase) will result in a grammatical sentence. For example, since "The policeman in the park gave a ticket to the driver" is a grammatical sentence of English, so is the sentence "The policeman in the park gave a turkey to the driver." The moral is that all instances of a given phrase structure stand or fall together; a language will not treat one instance of a phrase structure as grammatical and another instance as ungrammatical. Second, phrase markers can be altered according to certain transformation rules; the canonical (standard) form above could be altered into "The policeman in the parka gave the driver a ticket" using the English transformation rule that says that you can form a new sentence by switching the order of the Noun Phrase and the Prepositional Phrase in a Verb Phrse where the verb is "give" and deleting the preposition "to".
In general, transformation rules work by moving words, and adding or deleting other words as is necessary for the case in question. Note that as was the case with the syntactic rules that generate phrase structures, transformation rules operate systematically on phrase structures. First, transformation rules act on phrases; the general rule is that a transformation rule can alter a tree but only by moving nodes that form a single syntactic unit. So, if you want to move the noun "ticket", you must also move the determiner "a" that is included in the Noun Phrase where "ticket" occurs. Second, the transformation rule applies to any phrase marker with the same structure. Thus, if "The policeman in the parka gave the driver a ticket" is a permissible transformation of "The policeman in the parka gave a ticket to the driver," then "The boy gave the dog a bone" will be an allowable transformation of "The boy gave a bone to the dog." It seems that since languages seem to work systematically in this way, there seems to be a linguistic universal, i.e., a property common to all human languages.)
Other interesting transformation rules in English include the alteration of a sentence from active to passive tense, and the formation of who, what, when, how questions. Though we cannot go into all the complications here, sentence in active tense can be transformed into passive sentences by switching word order and systematically adding extra words. Active sentences in English, such as "John followed Bill," can express sentences with specific meanings because the noun phrases (in this case, single names) are implicitly marked by case (subject versus object) according to the word order. Not all languages use word order to mark case; some (such as Latin) alter words based on their case, which leaves much more room for different word orderings (while preserving the same meaning). However, it seems to be a linguistic universal that every NP must have a case. In English, an active sentence can be transformed into a passive one while retaining the same meaning so long as steps are taken to mark the cases of the nouns (here, names). Thus, "Bill was followed by John" has the same meaning as "John followed Bill"; the meaning is preserved by inserting an auxiliary verb ("was") and a preposition ("by").
The rules governing the formation of (Why...? What...? Where...? Who...? and How...?) questions are interesting and surprisingly complex. The idea is that an underlying phrase structure is transformed to produce a wh-question. For example, "Tom went to the park" can be transformed first into "Tom went where" (substituting "where" for "to the park"), moving "where" to the beginning of the sentence, adding the appropriate auxilary verb after "where," and altering the form of the verb "go", producing "Where did Tom go?" Coming up with a general rule that correctly reproduces the entire class of wh-questions (with the correct orderings, auxiliary verbs, and alteration in the form of the main verb) from canonical phrase structures turns out to be far from trivial.
IV. DISCOURSE, PHRASES, AND WORDS.
According to the logical order, the structural aspect of language of every sign system would be treated after that which is sign, but historically the awareness of the structure of language in Sausurre precedes the evolution of a unified theory of signs.
The linguistic sign as distinct to its meaning is treated in the proper sense from the syntax: this is a clear case of linguistic signs in their interrelation, which is the structure of language. The disciplines that treat in various considerations are in the order from external to the internal: the acoustic and the phonetic; phonology, grammar, especially the morphology and the grammatical ‘syntax’.
The elements of a structure are not simple, but rather compound. They are not isolated from each other. Each element is related to the other elements, and each function is determined by the structure where each belongs. The elements of a structure are real only in as much as they belong to ensemble as of their horizon.
Therefore, this structural consideration of linguistic sign opposes itself to the linguistic atomism. A linguistic sign is only such, in as much as it is not simple, but rather compound or complex.
Every linguistic sign, every expression, significative linguistic (a meaningful expression in language) is composed of elements, which has a determined meaning precisely as it is co-ordinated with each other.
The meaning of a discourse is determined by the co-ordination of phrases, which are its significative elements, but also from the connections of those phrases with other extra-linguistic elements: i.e. subject speaking, situation, etc.
The meaning of a discourse in general is understood, this is normally so, as a unitary. That is why various linguistic forms have no definite meaning, if they do not constitute a structured whole.
The meaning of a linguistic form is not the sum of meanings of each element. The meaning of a discourse does not consist in pure addition of the meanings of phrases.
The singled out phrases, which are elements of discourse, considered in itself and isolated from their context in the concrete discourse, have a certain meaning, but only imperfect and "potential", but not completely determined.
One can think of televise transmission or radio broadcast, of which one did not hear from the very beginning; or from a reproduction of a recorded electromagnetic tape, when one does not know who is speaking to whom, in which situation, in which surrounding, when or where the conversation occurred. So also the meaning of the other elements remains indeterminate, the meaning can only be known by reconstructing the context.
The meaning of a phrase, already not wholly determined, is given by the co-ordination of words, which are its significative elements. The relation between the phrase and the words is analogous to that relation between the discourse and the phrases. Also the single word considered in itself and isolated from its context, has a certain lexical meaning, but greatly indeterminate and potential. This meaning the word possesses only in as much as it is ordained to the construction of the phrases, and, as we have seen, in as much as it belongs to the whole language, and the entire of it is correlated to other words.
The phonemes are the last sonorous elements which in a determined language, they constitute a significative difference between word and word, e.g. ro-sa, po-sa, ra-sa.
The relationship between the word and the phonemes is again analogous to that between discourse and phrases, and between phrases and words. But there is a need to note that an isolated phoneme does not have any more meaning. Thus, the last element of the language as such, differentiates the meaning of the complex expressions, but it is not the same meaning.
The phonemes are not natural reality, but cultural. They are different in diverse languages. From a multitude of sounds, which man can phonetically produce, every language uses only a very limited number as phonemes, that is as discriminating "sounds" of meaning. Their number is generally around, thirty or fifty. The Phonemes then does not count their physical reality, but in their styled forms, even abstract: the phonetic differences are not important. They do not make difference of meaning nor the dialectical difference or of pronunciation, generally those among high and low, if not in certain language, for example in Chinese, and in certain "Bantu" language. For the differentiation of meaning, they count only well the determined phonic differences, which are different in diverse languages.
The same fact is noted also in as much as the phonemes of a certain language, they are learned in the process of socialisation of children on the basis of a phonetic competence antecedently very much wider.
And it is clear that they can give themselves, and in fact they give themselves, the discourses of a sole phrase, phrases of a sole word, words of a sole phoneme. Think, for example of the "I"(go), of the Latin word "ire" (to go). But this, however, these linguistic expressions cannot themselves be said to be simple: in fact, the are to be considered as elements which contribute in determining their meaning, the rest, that is the absence of other elements. Semantically the absence of a sound and significative.
The structural analysis of the linguistic form is not always and necessarily carried from the discourse to the phonemes across the intermediate semantic levels. Given the circumstances and the utility, the discourse can also be immediately analysed in its words or even in its phonemes.