Structural Levels of Language

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Structural Levels of Language Lecture 1 Ferdinand de Saussure  "Language is a system sui generis“ = one of its kind, unique  The division of language into different structural levels is made only for the sake of investigation. have to separate one linguistic fact from another in order to analyse it thoroughly.  We Which are the structural levels of language? phonological morphological syntactical lexico-semantical  Each linguistic level has its own specific features. Benveniste - the hierarchical nature of language structure A phoneme + a phoneme = a morpheme  -e + -r = -er;  -f + -u + -l = -ful;  -m + -e + -n + -t = -ment A morpheme + a morpheme = a word  drive- + -er = driver,  beauty- + -ful = beautiful;  refine- + -ment = refinement A word + a word = a phrase (a clause)  blue + sky = blue sky;  nice + song = nice song;  high + mountains = high mountains A sentence (clause) + a sentence (cause) = sentences of a higher order  the telephone rang + the boy woke up = The telephone rang and the boy woke up. Phonemes, morphemes, words  It is not possible for an item of one level to combine with an item of another level while preserving the qualities of the original level  an item of one level can pass over and be integrated into another level it acquires the features of the level into which it has been integrated, abandoning the features it had in the previous level   Is it possible to have a morpheme made of only one phoneme? in English, there are morphemes consisting only of one phoneme  Example – (-s ) marker: the -s marker for the plural of the nouns; the -s marker for 3rd p. sg.; the -s marker for the genitive case  Yes, What about morphemes? Are there any words consisting of only one morpheme? ,, ,,, , ; It seems that

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