Fundamentals of Communication and Linguistic Structure

Posted on Nov 17, 2025 in Language

Communication Fundamentals

Communication is an act by which an individual transmits information to others. Communication exists between people, animals, and phenomena of nature.

Elements of Communication

  • Issuer: The entity that emits the message.
  • Receiver: The entity that interprets and internalizes the message.
  • Message: The information content being transmitted.
  • Channel (Canal): The medium through which the message is transmitted (e.g., air, telephone wire, paper).
  • Code: A set of signs and rules whose combination allows the creation of the message. It must be known by both the issuer and the receiver.
  • Context: A set of all linguistic or non-linguistic circumstances surrounding the production of a message (e.g., time, place, trust).

Functions of Language

  • Expressive (Emotive): Focuses on the issuer. The speaker expresses feelings and emotions.
  • Conative (Appellate): Focuses on the receiver. The issuer aims to constrain the receiver’s behavior. Subjectivity predominates.
  • Referential: Focuses on the content of the message and the situation (context). The message objectively reports something, often using declarative intonation.
  • Poetic (Aesthetic): Focuses on the form of the message. The aim is for the message itself to call attention to its structure (how it is said, not just what is said). Rhetorical devices abound.
  • Metalingual: Uses language to speak about language itself. It focuses on the code.
  • Phatic: Focuses on the channel. It serves to ensure that the communication channel remains open and that the message is understood.

Semiotics and Signs

A sign is a material reality that represents another reality. Signs can be perceived through the senses: gustatory, visual, tactile, olfactory, or auditory. They are grouped into:

  • Icons: Have a certain resemblance to what they refer to (e.g., a picture).
  • Indices (Circumstantial Evidence): Maintain a natural physical relationship of cause and effect with the reality they represent, without necessarily resembling it (e.g., fever, light through a window).
  • Symbols: Have no inherent relation between themselves and the reality they represent; the relationship is conventional (e.g., a flag, an anthem).

The Linguistic Sign

The linguistic sign is realized through the word, whether written or oral.

  • Signifier: The material, linguistic part of the sign (sound image, speech).
  • Signified (Meaning): The concept that the signifier evokes.
  • Referent: The actual object or reality to which the sign refers (sometimes explicitly mentioned in the text).

Characteristics of the Linguistic Sign

  • Conventional: Results from an agreement or social convention.
  • Arbitrary: There is no inherent reason why a specific meaning requires a particular signifier.
  • Linear: Being acoustic in nature, it develops over time, and therefore its components cannot be articulated simultaneously.
  • Mutable and Immutable: It is mutable because it changes over long periods of time; it is immutable because no individual can change a sign at will.
  • Doubly Articulated: Constituted by smaller units that join to form the sign, and these units can be further decomposed into even smaller units (Monemes: lexemes and morphemes; and then even smaller units: phonemes).

Word Structure and Origin

Provenance of Words (Etymology)

  • Patrimonial Words: Words derived from Latin that have undergone phonetic changes throughout their evolution (e.g., lupu → wolf).
  • Cultisms: Words derived from Latin that joined the language in later periods and did not experience the typical phonetic changes (e.g., fraternu → fraternal).
  • Doublets: A phenomenon where one Latin word gives rise to two distinct Castilian words (e.g., delicatu → fine, thin).

Linguistic Loans (Sources)

Sources of linguistic loans include: Pre-Roman, Hellenic, Germanisms, Arabisms, Gallicisms, Americanisms, Italianisms, Anglicisms, Lusisms, Galicianisms, Vasquisms, and Catalanisms.

Morpheme Classes

  • Independent: Morphemes that form words by themselves (e.g., prepositions).
  • Dependent (Subsidiary):
    • Inflectional (indicating gender and number).
    • Derivational (affixes added to lexemes).