Core Concepts in Linguistics: Grammar, Phonology, and Morphology

Posted on Nov 2, 2025 in English Studies

Chomsky’s Dichotomy: Competence and Performance

As a start, language has a dichotomy; it can be divided into competence and performance according to Chomsky’s framework. Competence refers to a psychological system, not a set of conventions in a community of speakers. It is the individual speaker’s knowledge of their system. Performance is the actual use of language.

This suggests that the ability to make judgments of grammaticality is one thing, and performance is another. The former depends on competence. We all make occasional performance errors of various types, such as repetitions or stops caused by hesitations. The causes are multifarious. Even if you are competent in your language, you can make performance errors caused by external factors like tiredness or time pressure. We must remark that competence is never wrong.

In the following example, the speaker has missed the relative pronoun, but it does not mean that they lack the knowledge necessary to judge their own utterance as grammatically incorrect. In fact, we can notice that the speaker is a native speaker who would be able to judge their own utterance as ungrammatical. If they are aware of the error they have made, this shows that the error has not been caused by a lack of linguistic knowledge but by other factors. We know that because there are a few more errors; for instance, the speaker self-corrects at the beginning and they hesitate, as we see with the ‘-I-‘ in the middle. That is because this example is taken from an oral presentation. These errors can be caused by external factors, maybe the speaker is not paying attention. But we know that these are performance errors because they use complex structures like the passive voice and correct vocabulary.

To conclude, the correct version of the sentence is: “About two hundred years ago we had ninety-five percent of people in this country who were employed in farming.”

Recursivity in Generative Grammar

4.4.2 Combinational Creativity

One of the properties of a generative grammar that accounts for combinational creativity is recursivity. Recursivity is a property by which a mechanism or rule can be applied any number of times to the output that it has produced in a previous application or operation.

The rule that allows speakers to use a that-clause as a complement of particular types of verbs can be applied an indefinitely large number of times because the verb of the complement that-clause at one level can be complemented in turn by another that-clause at another level, and this mechanism can go indefinitely. What makes this possible is the fact that the input to this rule can also be found in the output. This is the essence of recursivity: the possibility to use the output of a mechanism as the input to another round of the same process.

This opens up the possibility of creating an indefinitely complex set of embedded syntactic structures: we can generate a complement clause that contains a verb which in turn can be complemented by another complement clause, and that clause can contain another verb complemented by a further clause that contains a verb which again is complemented by a that-clause that contains a verb which is complemented by another complement that-clause which contains another verb that is followed by a complement that-clause, and so on.

Phonology and Phonetics

English Consonant Phonemes (IPA)

p

voiceless bilabial plosive

b

voiced bilabial plosive

t

voiceless alveolar plosive

d

voiced alveolar plosive

k

voiceless velar plosive

g

voiced velar plosive

f

voiceless labiodental fricative

v

voiced labiodental fricative

θ

voiceless dental fricative

ð

voiced dental fricative

s

voiceless alveolar fricative

z

voiced alveolar fricative

ʃ

voiceless post-alveolar fricative

ʒ

voiced post-alveolar fricative

h

voiceless glottal fricative

tʃ

voiceless post-alveolar affricate

dʒ

voiced post-alveolar affricate

l

voiced alveolar approximant

r

voiced post-alveolar approximant

j

voiced palatal approximant

w

voiced labial-velar approximant

m

voiced bilabial nasal

n

voiced alveolar nasal

ŋ

voiced velar nasal

English Vowel Phonemes (IPA)

i:

long high front unrounded vowel

ɪ

short high front unrounded vowel

u:

long high back rounded vowel

ʊ

short high back rounded vowel

e

short mid front unrounded vowel

ə (Schwa)

short mid central vowel

ɜ:

long mid central unrounded vowel

ɔ:

long mid back rounded vowel

æ

short low front unrounded vowel

ʌ

short low central unrounded vowel

ɒ

short low back rounded vowel

a:

long low back unrounded vowel

Diphthongs

Ei, ai, ɔi (closing-fronting); əʊ, aʊ (closing-backing); iə, eə, uə (centring)

The /f/ and /v/ Contrast

The sounds /v/ and /f/ are distinct phonemes in English:

• They are similar phonemes as they are both labiodental and fricative; however, /v/ is voiced and /f/ is voiceless.
• They occur in parallel or overlapping distribution, meaning they can share the same context. There are no distributional rules preventing them from occurring exactly in the same environment since they can actually produce minimal pairs.
• If there were any restrictions, they would be allophones (different realizations of the same phoneme), which present complementary distribution, where language units cannot share the same context.
• Minimal pairs: vein/feign; half/have; leave/leaf. These pairs are identical in pronunciation, the only difference being the sounds /v/ and /f/, which, if replaced by one another, change the signifier and thus the meaning of the words they belong to. This substitution is called the commutation test.
• Voicing is the distinctive feature that differentiates one from the other. According to structuralism, linguistic features are distinctive as long as they allow a language unit to gain its value, that is, to distinguish itself from the rest.
• If a commutation test is applied, as in this case, and the feature voiced is substituted by voiceless in the minimal pairs above, both the meaning (the signified) and the form (the signifier) are affected. Therefore, voicing can be regarded as a distinctive feature and /v/ and /f/ as distinct phonemes, not allophones of the same phoneme in English.

Morphology: Morphemes and Allomorphs

I would like to differentiate between morphemes and allomorphs, which relate to each other like phonemes and allophones.

• Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units in the language system. They may express either lexical (free morphemes) or grammatical meaning (some bound morphemes) or both.
• Allomorphs are different morphs or realizations of one single morpheme.

Their distribution therefore varies, being complementary for allophones/morphemes (they cannot share the same context) and parallel for allomorphs (their contexts of usage might overlap). Consequently, allomorph variation does not affect grammatical or lexical meaning since they may convey one single grammatical meaning like past tense, plural, or indefiniteness, which does not vary regardless of the allomorph that might be produced in each case.

Allomorph Conditioning

Allomorphs might be lexically or phonologically conditioned.

• Phonologically Conditioned: This occurs when the surrounding phonological context causes them to vary, like the allomorphs of the {PAST TENSE} morpheme for regular verbs. In this particular case, there are three possible realizations of this morpheme: /d/, /t/, and /ɪd/. They all convey the meaning “past tense” although their form changes in pronunciation. This is why they are phonologically conditioned, since the preceding sound provokes variation:
  • If the final sound of a regular verb is voiced (e.g., swell, swerve, brew), the [-ed] ending becomes voiced (/d/).
  • If the final sound is voiceless (e.g., whack, pass, hop), the allomorph will be the voiceless alveolar plosive (/t/).
  • The third allomorph, /ɪd/, is produced when a verb ends in /d/ or /t/ (e.g., melt, need).
• Lexically Conditioned: We may also find lexically conditioned allomorphs of the past tense amongst irregular verbs like go (went), do (did), or buy (bought), where pronunciation is not related to the production of the allomorph itself, but rather a whole new lexeme becomes the allomorph.

Structuralism: Value by Opposition

The boxes mentioned previously represent the kind of relation existing amongst the words hermano, hermana, sibling, brother, and sister according to structuralist linguistics. Structuralist linguists like Saussure understand language as a system where language units (phonemes, words, semes, and the like) gain their linguistic value by opposition to other units which exist within the system. For instance, the phonemes /b/ and /p/ differ in just one feature, ‘voicing,’ which distinguishes them as separate units.

Relations Between Lexical Units

• Opposition: As regards the Spanish words hermano and hermana, if hermano refers specifically to the male descendant of a couple, as opposed to hermana, these two words bear a relation of opposition since the feature ‘gender’ distinguishes them from one another. Similarly, brother and sister are opposed to each other in English.
• Neutralization: If hermano is used as generic masculine (e.g., los hermanos deben cuidarse mucho), their relation would be labeled as neutralization (following the structuralist model), since the masculine noun has the capacity to absorb or comprise both the masculine and the feminine genders and thus eliminate the opposition.
• Inclusion: The English masculine noun brother does not have the capacity to neutralize the feminine as in Spanish (it cannot be used to refer to the female descendants of a couple). However, there is another word that refers to both: sibling. Therefore, while brother and sister are opposed, the term sibling includes them both. This is called inclusion.

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Approaches to Grammar

Grammaticality is associated with the idea of grammatical correctness or well-formedness. It refers to the fact that a given linguistic expression is possible or not in a language. Depending on the approach one takes for studying a language, the concept of grammaticality will vary.

Defining Grammaticality

• Prescriptive Viewpoint: Expressions are considered grammatical or correct only when they follow the sets of rules that apply for the standard of the language, which is taken as a model. Any deviation from the standard is perceived as an error.
• Descriptive Viewpoint: Any expression which is used consistently by a community of speakers and that is possible in the system is accepted as grammatical.

Analyzing Non-Standard Grammaticality

In the examples provided below, we can observe deviations from the standards of Spanish and English, respectively, and, as a consequence, prescriptivism would classify them as ungrammatical:

1. In Spanish, the verb for the second person singular is inflected with a final –s, “tuvistes,” which does not concord with the subject.
2. The Spanish expression “estar segura que…” lacks the preposition “de,” which is always used in the standard (should be “estar segura de que…”).
3. In English, the function of the possessive adjective “my” is replaced by the form of the personal pronoun “me” (e.g., “Me car” instead of “My car”).
4. The adverb “already” is associated with the past simple tense “did” when in standard English it is typically used with the present perfect tense.

Nevertheless, from a descriptive standpoint, all these examples are grammatical because they are used in different situations by certain groups of people. This means that, even if they are not part of the standard, they are possible in the system depending on the context.

Appropriateness

The relation between the language and the context where it is produced is called appropriateness. Appropriateness tells us in which situations we will find a given expression. The first and second examples are usually connected to oral, informal contexts; the third one is typical of regional dialects of English like AAVE (African American Vernacular English); and the fourth example happens in American English.

Case Study: Double Negation

This is an instance of double negation: “will not” and “no good.”

• Prescriptive Perspective: The usage is considered incorrect. Double negation is not accepted in standard English because of the application of mathematical logic to language (negative + negative = positive).
• Descriptive Approach: The usage is considered correct. We find this use in different contexts, and it is used consistently by speakers of the language. Linguistic logic is different from mathematical logic, and all listeners understand what the speaker means.

The example would be considered appropriate in contexts such as AAVE or informal oral language, demonstrating that while it violates prescriptive rules, it functions perfectly within specific linguistic communities.