AS4 ENG 103

LESSON 1
Review on Linguistic Components of Language

Introduction

Language is a powerful tool people use to communicate. On a

day to day living, the presence of language can never be taken for
granted.

In this lesson, you will be reintroduced to the different linguistic

components of language and what language is as viewed by many
authors and linguists.

Read and Ponder

I. LANGUAGE AND ITS COMPONENTS

A. Language

• System of conventional spoken, manual, or written

symbols by means of which human beings, as members
of a social group and participants in its culture express
themselves.
• Used in communication, the expression of identity,
play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.
(https://www.britannica.com/topic/language)

• The representation of the experience of the mind.

• That is according to Aristotle, language stands for speech that humans
produce for exchanging their experience resulting in ideas and
emotions.

• Refers to “a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length

and constructed out of a finite set of elements”
• Hence, once a particular string of words or a sentence causes a feeling
of wrongness in a native speaker, then it can be classified as
ungrammatical.
(Chomsky 1957:13)
Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed
 • According to Sapir, it is a purely human and non-instinctive method
of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system
of voluntarily produced sounds.
• This definition reveals that language is concerned with only human
beings, and constituted a system of sounds produced by them for
communication.

B. The Macro Skills of the English Language

 Learning what language and linguistics in your previous

courses, you might be wondering how we have mastered our
language the way we do. When we learn a language we listen
first, then speak, read and write. These are what covers the
Macro skill.

 In this part of the module, we will identify the FOUR

MACROSKILLS of the LANGAUGE. A diagram is shown
below.

MACROSKILLS OF THE LANGUAGE

LISTENING

SPEAKING

READING

WRITING

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 Knowing the four macro skills of the English language in
order, these skills can be divided into two: receptive and
productive skill.

RECEPTIVE SKILLS PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

These skills are receptive skills These skills are productive skills
because the learner receives because the learner produces
the language while doing the the language while doing the
skill. skill.

LISTENING SPEAKING
 the active process of  the delivery of language
receiving and responding through the mouth. To
to spoken (and speak, we create sounds
sometimes unspoken) using many parts of our
messages. It is one of the body, including the lungs,
subjects studied in the vocal tract, vocal chords,
field of language arts and tongue, teeth and lips.
in the discipline
of conversation analysis

READING WRITING
 is the process of looking  the process of using
at a series of written symbols (letters of
symbols and getting the alphabet,
meaning from them. punctuation and
 When we read, we use spaces) to
our eyes to receive communicate
written symbols (letters, thoughts and ideas
punctuation marks and in a readable form.
spaces) and we use our
brain to convert them into
words, sentences and
paragraphs that
communicate something
to us

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

  In sequence, the order of macro skills are as follows:

LISTENING SPEAKING READING WRITING

C. Communicative Competence

I. COMPETENCE vs PERFORMANCE

• Chomsky separates competence and performance; he describes

competence' as an idealized capacity that is located as a
psychological or mental property or function and ‘performance’ as the
production of actual utterances. 

•   In short, competence involves “knowing” the language and

performance involves “doing” something with the language. The
difficulty with this construct is that it is very difficult to assess
competence without assessing performance.  

Defined in the context of Language, Chomsky’s explained:

• COMPETENCE pertains to the person’s underlying ability to create

and understand sentences, including sentences they have never
heard before.

• PERFORMANCE pertains to the OUTPUT using one’s competence.

II. COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE by DELL HYMES

• Communicative competence is a term coined by Dell Hymes in 1966
in reaction to Noam Chomsky’s (1965) notion of “linguistic
competence”.
• Communicative competence is the intuitive functional knowledge and
control of the principles of language usage. As Dell Hymes observed:

“…a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not

only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 acquires competence as to when to speak, when not, and as to
what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In
short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of
speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate
their accomplishment by others.” (Hymes 1972, 277)

 Hymes further explained that for Communicative Competence to be

achieved by the learner, the there are levels to meet. Figure
shows the levels in order.

STRATEGIC
COMPETENCE

COMPETENCE Description
DISCOURSE
COMPETENCE
• knowledge of the language code,
SOCIO- LINGUISTIC
COMPETENCE i.e. its grammar and vocabulary,
LINGUISTIC
LINGUISTIC and also of the conventions of its
COMPETENCE
COMPETENCE written representation (script and
Figure… Levels of Communicative Competence

orthography).
• The grammar component includes
the knowledge of the sounds and
their pronunciation (i.e. phonetics),
the rules that govern sound
interactions and patterns (i.e.
phonology), the formation of words
by means of e.g. inflection and
derivation (i.e. morphology), the
rules that govern the combination
of words and phrases to structure
sentences (i.e. syntax), and the
way that meaning is conveyed
through language (i.e. semantics).

SOCIO-LINGUISTIC • the knowledge of sociocultural rules

COMPETENCE of use, i.e. knowing how to use and
respond to language appropriately.
• The appropriateness depends on
the setting of the communication,
the topic, and the relationships

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 among the people communicating.

• Moreover, being appropriate

depends on knowing what the
taboos of the other culture are,
what politeness indices are used in
each case, what the politically
correct term would be for
something, how a specific attitude
(authority, friendliness, courtesy,
irony etc.) is expressed etc.

DISCOURSE • the knowledge of how to produce

COMPETENCE and comprehend oral or written
texts in the modes of
speaking/writing and
listening/reading respectively.
• It is knowing how to combine
language structures into a cohesive
and coherent oral or written text of
different types.
• Thus, discourse competence deals
with organizing words, phrases and
sentences in order to create
conversations, speeches, poetry,
email messages, newspaper
articles etc.

STRATEGIC • the ability to recognize and repair

COMPETENCE communication breakdowns before,
during, or after they occur.
• For instance, the speaker may not
know a certain word, thus will plan
to either paraphrase, or ask what
that word is in the target language.
• During the conversation,
background noise or other factors
may hinder communication; thus
the speaker must know how to
keep the communication channel

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 open.
• If the communication was
unsuccessful due to external
factors (such as interruptions), or
due to the message being
misunderstood, the speaker must
know how to restore
communication.
• These strategies may be requests
for repetition, clarification, slower
speech, or the usage of gestures,
taking turns in conversation etc.

D. Views on Language

I. BEHAVIORIST APPROACH
Language and HUMAN BEHAVIOR
Immediate perceptible aspects of linguistic behavior – publicly
observable behavior – and the relationship between those
behaviors and the events and world surrounding them.
Language is learned by IMITATION, PRACTICE,
REINFORCEMENT AND HABIT FORMATION

 Theories involved:

a. Verbal Conditioning by B.F. SKINNER

 This theory is an extension of B.F Skinner’s general theory
known as the OPERANT CONDITIONING THEORY
 Verbal Behavior, like other behavior, is controlled by its
consequence
 When a consequence is rewarding, behavior is maintained and
is increased in strength and perhaps frequency.
 When consequences are punishing, or when there is lack of
reinforcement, the behavior is weakened and eventually
extinguished.
 In view of language, when a child learns a language and is
praised when uttering the spoken language, he or she may

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 continue to use that language. However, when given a
punishment after speaking a language, the child may not
continue or fully stop the utterance.
 For example, a young boy utters a bad or vulgar words and is
punished. This may cause the child to never use or learn those
words again as he is made aware to utter such is wrong.

b. Mediation Theory by Charles Osgood

 Meaning was accounted for by the claim that the linguistic
stimulus (a word or sentence) elicits a “mediating response that
is self-stimulating.
 Osgood termed this self –stimulation a “representational
mediation process” a process that is really covert and invisible,
acting within the learner.

c. Jenkins and Palermo (1964)

 Claimed that the child may acquire frames of phrase-structure
grammar and learn stimulus-response equivalence that can be
substituted within each frame
 Imitation was an important if not essential aspect of establishing
stimulus-response associations.

A. NATIVIST APPROACH
The nativist approach asserts that language acquisition is
INNATELY DETERMINED wherein man was born with a built-in
device that allows him language acquisition.

 Theories involved:

a. Innateness Hypothesis by Eric Lenneberg

 Language is a “species-specific” behavior and that certain
modes of perception, categorizing abilities and other
language-related mechanisms are BIOLOGICALLY
DETERMINED.

b. Language Acquisition Device by Noam Chomsky

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

  Similarly claimed the innate properties of language to explain
the child’s mastery of his native language in such a short time
despite of the highly abstract nature of the rules of language.
 This innate knowledge is embodied in a “little black box” of
sort, a language acquisition device (LAD).

 Four Innate Properties of the LAD by McNiell (1966)

 The ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in
the environment;
 The ability to organize linguistic events into various classes
which can be later refined;
 Knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is
possible and that other kinds are not;
 The ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing
linguistic system so as to construct the simplest possible
system out of the linguistic data that are encountered.

 In view of the Nativist approach, two types of grammar are

highlighted specifically, UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR and the PIVOT
GRAMMAR.

 Universal Grammar
 explains that all human beings are genetically equipped with
language specific abilities
 researchers are now expanding the LAD notion into a system of
universal linguistic rules that go well beyond what was originally
proposed for LAD.
 Pivot Grammar
 The early grammars of a child
 It was commonly observed that the child’s first two-word
utterances seemed to manifest two separate word classes and
not simply two words thrown together at random.
Examples:
My Cap | That horsie | Mommy sock
 In the example given, the sentence utterance of the child is
composed of two parts classified as follows:
SENTENCE = PIVOT WORD + OPEN CLASS

PIVOT WORD OPEN CLASS

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 MY CAP
THAT HORSIE
MOMMY SOCK

B. FUNCTIONALIST APPROACH
This approach aims to look into an elusive facet of the
language: MEANING of what is spoken or uttered.

a. LOIS BLOOM
 Pointed out that the relationships in which words occur in
telegraphic utterances are only superficially similar.
 The utterance “MOMMY SOCK” which the nativists would
describe as a sentence consisting if a pivot word and an open
word, has three possible underlying relations as Bloom explains
 Bloom, along with Jean Piaget, Dan Slobin and others,
proposed a new wave of child language study, centering on the
cognitive pre-requisites of linguistic behavior.
 Piaget describes overall development as the result of children’s
interaction with their environment, with a complementary
interaction between their developing perceptual cognitive
capacities and their linguistic experience.
 What children learn about language is determined by what they
already know about the world.

b. DAN SLOBIN
 Demonstrated that in all languages, semantic learning
depends on cognitive development and that sequences of
development are determined more by semantic complexity
than structural complexity.
 Accordingly, there are two (2) pacesetters to language
development, involved with the poles of function and form.
 on the functional level – growth of conceptual and
communicative capacities
 on the formal level – growth of perceptual and
information-processing capacities

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 c. Holzman (1984)
 proposed that a reciprocal behavioral system operates between
language-developing infant-child and competent (adult) language
user in a socializing-teaching-nurturing role.

E. Components of Grammar

Phonetics • Phonetics deals with the

production of speech
sounds by humans, often
without prior knowledge of
the language being spoken
Phonology • Phonology is the study of
phonemes, which are the
speech sounds of an
individual language. It is
about patterns of sounds,
especially different
patterns of sounds in
different languages, or
within each language,
different patterns of sounds
in different positions in
words etc.
Morphology • Morphology is the the
study of word structure, the
way words are formed and
the way their form interacts
with other aspects of
grammar
• It is the study of words and
other meaningful units of
language like suffixes and
prefixes.
• A morphologist would be
interested in the
relationship between words
like “dog” and “dogs” or
“walk” and “walking,” and

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 how people figure out the
differences between those
words.

Syntax • Syntax is the grammatical

structure of sentences. The
format in which words and
phrases are arranged to
create sentences is called
syntax.
• It is the study of sentences
and phrases, or how
people put words into the
right order so that they can
communicate meaningfully.
• All languages have
underlying rules of syntax,
which, along with
morphological rules, make
up every language’s
grammar.
• An example of syntax
coming into play in
language is “Eugene
walked the dog” versus
“The dog walked Eugene.”
The order of words is not
arbitrary—in order for the
sentence to convey the
intended meaning, the
words must be in a certain
order.

Semantics • Semantics, most generally,

is about the meaning of
sentences.
• Someone who studies
semantics is interested in
words and what real-world
object or concept those

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed

 words denote, or point to.

Pragmatics • Pragmatics is an even

broader field that studies
how the context of a
sentence contributes to
meaning
• for example, someone
shouting “Fire!” has a very
different meaning if they
are in charge of a seven-
gun salute than it does if
they are sitting in a
crowded movie theater.

Prepared by: Kharylle Schyaneid T. Kenoh, LPT, M.A.Ed