Class 1 LANGUAGE All languages are a system, or series of interrelated systems, of sound governed by rules and conveying meaning.

Languages are highly structured; they consist of patterns that recur in various combinations and rules that apply to produce these
patterns.
All natural languages are both conventional and arbitrary.
Natural languages are also highly redundant; that is, the same information is signaled in more than one way.
All natural languages change.

The interrelated systems of a language include phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and semantics.
Phonology is the sounds of a language and the study of these sounds.

Phonetics is the study of the sounds of speech taken simply as sounds and not necessarily as members of a system.

Phonemics is the study of the sounds of a given language as significantly contrastive members of a system. The members of the system are
called phonemes.


Morphology is the arrangement and relationships of the smallest meaningful units in a language.

The minimum units of meaning are called morphemes.

Morphemes may be free or bound.


Examples:
Freelawn; water; mower; proof. These may combine to make a word of two morphemes: lawnmower; waterproof.

Boundun-; -ly; -ous; dis-. These are used along with other morphemes to create words: ungainly; poisonous; discover.


The most common bound morphemes are affixes: prefixes and suffixes.


One may also classify morphemes as inflectional (like ed to make a past tense) or derivational (like transplant). The latter may change the
function of the morpheme to which it is bound (tiredness, adjective>noun; empower, noun>verb).


The same morpheme can sometimes take on a changethe dental suffix that indicates the past tense is pronounced t in vanished, but like d
in hunted. This makes no change in meaning. This change in sound that is not accompanied by a change in meaning is called an allomorph, in
this case of the past tense morpheme.


Another useful distinction is that between lexical and functional morphemes.

The first are content words, referring to real things (dog, handsome, run). The second show relationships within the language (but, the,
myself, however). Many morphemes exhibit both aspects (in love, in the bath).


Syntax is the arrangement of words into phrases, clauses, and sentences; loosely speaking, it is word order.


The lexicon of a language is the list of all the morphemes in the language. In linguistic terminology, a lexicon differs from vocabulary or a
dictionary of a language in that it includes not on]y independent words but also morphemes that do not appear as independent words,
including affixes such as ed, -s, mis; and poly; and bound forms like the clude of include, exclude, and preclude, which appear only as
parts of words and never as independent words.


Semantics is the study of meanings or all the meanings expressed by a language.

Types of semantic change:

Generalization and Narrowing.

Amelioration and Pejoration.

Strengthening and Weakening.

Abstraction and Concretization.

Shift in Denotation.
Shift in Connotation.

Graphics as a linguistic term refers to the systematic representation of language A single unit in the system is called a grapheme.

Language change may be:

systematic or sporadic


conditioned or unconditioned

involve loss or gain, by fission or fusion


Reasons for change:

The principle of least effort.


Analogy.
Imperfect learning.

Fashionsocial bonding and group differentiation.

Change may be caused by internal or external factors.