Understanding Phonetics and Phonology
Phonetics and Phonology: Sounds of Language
Place of Articulation
The location of a consonant’s obstruction in the vocal tract:
- Bilabials: Involve closure or constriction of the two lips.
- Labiodentals: Involve constriction of the upper teeth and lower lip.
- Dentals: Involve constriction of the tongue tip and the upper teeth.
- Alveolars: Involve constriction of the tongue tip and the alveolar ridge.
- Post-alveolars: Involve constriction of the tongue tip and the palate, just behind the alveolar ridge.
- Palatals:
Phonemes, Syllables, and Word Classes
Phonemes and Sounds
Sounds: Are the actual emissions of each of the speakers, while the mental image of the units to meet these constant acoustic properties are phonemes.
Phonemes: These are made up of a set of distinctive features that distinguish one phoneme from the others.
- Vowel Phonemes: Occur when air passes through the vocal cords, and these vibrate, resulting in a sound that does not encounter any barrier in its path.
- Consonant Phonemes: The air vent is not free, but it encounters an obstacle
Levels of Language Use and Verbal Periphrasis
Levels of Language Use
Three levels are distinguished:
- Cultivated Level: Characterized by an elaborated code and adherence to grammatical rules (primarily written language).
- Reflective and thoughtful language.
- Complete and correct syntactic structures.
- Precise and varied lexicon.
- An original style and creativity.
- Colloquial or Familiar Level: Employs a restricted code with common expressions (primarily oral).
- Improvised, spontaneous, fast, and direct expression.
- Short sentences (sometimes incomplete).
- Less
Morphological, Syntactic Change, and Grammaticalization
Morphological Change, Syntactic Change, Grammaticalization
Morphological Change
Morphological Typology
Languages can be classified typologically, according to their characteristics:
- Isolating or analytic
- Agglutinating or agglutinative
- Inflectional or inflecting
Isolating languages:
- One (free) morpheme per word
- Words do not use affixes
- Word order is very important.
- Chinese júzi wo chi le “orange I eat past”
Agglutinative languages:
- A word may contain several morphemes (a root and a number of affixes). They
Adjective Phrases and Adjectives: Structure, Functions, and Types
Adjectival Phrase: Structure and Functions
Constituents of the Adjective Phrase
The adjective phrase (AdjP) is a phrase whose core is an adjective. This core can have two types of modifiers:
- Specifiers: Usually adverbs of quantity that express the degree or intensity of the adjective.
- Complements: Prepositional phrases that modify the meaning of the adjective.
Functions of the Adjective Phrase
Adjective phrases can function as:
- Complements within a noun phrase.
- Attributes in a copular sentence (with verbs
Understanding Copula Verbs: Definition and Examples
Understanding Copula Verbs
A copula (from the Latin copula, meaning ‘loop’ or ‘link’) is a type of verb used in some languages to build what is called nominal predication. This identifies a sentential subject as a member of a class given by a complementary semantic attribute (e.g., my father is a doctor). Although it doesn’t usually express an action or condition, it serves to equalize the subject and predicate, representing a state or quality of the subject.
Common Linking Verbs
The most common linking
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