We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Introductory
‘Sounds’ and ‘words’
If we were to ask a non-linguist what are the ultimate units of language, the building-blocks, so to speak, out of which utterances are constructed, he might well reply that the ultimate units of language are ‘sounds’ and ‘words’. He might add that words are made up of sequences of sounds, each sound being represented, ideally, by a particular letter of the alphabet (in the case of languages customarily represented by a system of alphabetic writing); and that, whereas the words of a language have a meaning, the sounds do not (their sole function being to form words). These several propositions underlie the traditional view of language reflected in most grammars and dictionaries: the grammar gives rules for the construction of sentences out of words, and the dictionary tells us what the individual words mean. In the following chapters, we shall have occasion to examine critically the terms ‘sound’, ‘word’, ‘meaning’ and ‘sentence’ which figure in these general statements about language. However, for the purpose of the present preliminary discussion of the structure of language, we may leave these terms undefined. Certain distinctions will be indicated in the course of this chapter and will be made explicit later.
Phonology, grammar and semantics
The traditional view of language incorporates the notions of composition (a more complex unit is composed of simpler, or smaller, units: a word is composed of sounds, a phrase of words, a clause of phrases, a sentence of clauses, and so on) and of correlation (each word is correlated with one or more meanings).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
