Language Subsystems Phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics Pragmatics Linguistic

Language Subsystems Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics

Linguistic Subsystems – Phonological System – Syntactic System – Semantic System – Pragmatic System

Phonological System – Phonological System (The sound system) • Phoneme is a single discrete sound • Languages do not all have the same phonemes • Grapheme is how we write the sound-letters • Phonics is sound/symbol, phoneme/grapheme relationship • Not always predictable, need more than phonics to read • 44 phonemes (sounds) 26 letters, 500 ways to write the 44 sounds, not one-to-one correspondence • Some phonemes in English don’t exist in other languages

Syntactic System l Syntactic System (The structural system) l. The grammar—sentence order and word forms l. Predicting word order helps students read and guess words l. Word order varies across languages: red ball, ball red l. Morphology is how words are put together. Smallest meaningful units: Prefixes, root words, affixes

Free and Bound Morphemes Free morphemes can stand alone as words. Bound morphemes are affixes: prefixes and suffixes that are added onto the beginning and endings of words: unfriendly un=bound friend=free ly=bound

Number of Morphemes Helpful for decoding, to recognize word parts Prefixes, root words, suffixes ou (0) jump (1) played (2) unfriendly (3) butterfly (2) cats (2) (inflectional morpheme)

Semantic System l Semantic System (The meaning system) Vocabulary—word meanings 5, 000 words by age 5 Multiple meaning words: trunk Homophones: eight/ate Homographs: dove/dove Figurative Language: It’s raining cats and dogs. She was as happy as a clam.

Pragmatic System – Pragmatic System (The social/cultural use system) • Knowing how to use the language appropriately • What to say when and to whom. • Formal and informal registers: Talking to sibling vs President • Dialects, regional varieties, Standard English