What are the basic structural elements of language?

How are these elements organized?

How do the different levels of organization interact?

Anthropologists are interested in naturally occurring behavior and speech. They use ethnographic field work to document the structure of language in its spoken and written form. Through this observation, anthropologists have used phonology, morphology, grammar, syntax and semantics as a means of exploring language.

Phonology is "the study of distinctive, contrasting sounds ('phonemes') of a language" (Bonvillain 2003, pg. 410). A phoneme is a unit or syllable of sound, such as "pot" or "lot". The word "potted" has two syllables and hence, two phonemes: the first is 'pot-' and the second it '-ted'.

Phonemes are units of sound that may not be words, such as "ga" or "ka," which can change the meaning of an utterance or morpheme. They can take the form of voiced and unvoiced sounds. Voiced sounds vibrate the vocal chords. If a speaker says the letters "d" or "z" she can place her fingertips to her vocal chords and feel them vibrate. If the letters "p" or "t" are said, there is no vibration.

There are subcategories of phonemes. A phoneme may reveal one phonetic representation or more than one representation, called an allophone. Allophones are "a variant of a phoneme. Allophones of the same phoneme have different sounds" (Bonvillain 2003, pg. 405). This may be a result of an accent. Allophones usually fall into ordered categories, such as at the beginning or end of words. Note that "pot" and "lot"differ by a single letter or a variant of the letter 'p' to 'l'. Allophones are placed into two subcategories, aspirated and unaspirated. Aspirated allophones have a force of air from the lips, such as, the letter 'p'. Unaspirated allophones include the letter 'l' and are without forced air from the lips.

There are three features to sound:
1) Stress: Accent on the syllables of words.
2) Pitch: Tone that accompanies a syllable's production.
3) Length: Continuation of sound.
(Bonvillain 2003, pg. 15).

Morphology is the study of meaning in human language by analyzing language units, such as words. These units contain root words and affixes. For example, "cave" is a word. "Caved," "concave" and "caves" all contain the root word "cave" and also the affixes -ed, con- or -s. Each of those three words are morphs of "cave."
TRICKY: A morph may be a phoneme, but not all phonemes are morphs.

Affixes are placed into three subcategories:
1) prefixes (before the word)
2) suffixes (after the word)
3) infixes (within the word)

A morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit that contains both sound and meaning in a word. Prefixes, suffixes and affixes are all morphemes.
1) Free Morpheme: Is not part of a word.
2) Bound Morpheme: Is part of a word.

"Cat" is one morpheme; "cats" has two morphemes 'cat-' and '-s'. Morphemes are organized by root words and affixes. They may have one constant form (shape) or more than one form, know as an allomorph. For example, the 's' sound at the end of words in English as three allomorphs.
1) -iz sound = classes
2) -s sound = cats
3) -z sound = bees
(Bonvillain 2003, pg. 17).

There are three main morphological typologies
1) Isolating Languages: Few morphemes per word and simple methods of combining morphemes. This includes English, Chinese and Semitic languages.
2) Agglutinating Languages: Words contain many mophemes and combine according to regular rules. Turkish is an example.
3) Synthetic Languages: Many morphemes with highly complex rules, such as the Native American Mohawk language.
(Bonvillain 2003, pg. 19).

Grammatical concepts relate to both nouns and verbs:
Noun Related
1) Case: Grammatical relationships between nouns or nouns and verbs. Russian is an "inflecting language" that marks case with affixes of inflection.
2) Number: Nouns can be singular even in the plural form. Dual nouns can make a unique marker.
3) Gender: Romance, Slavic and Germanic languages have masculine, feminine and neuter nouns. Navajo categorizes nouns based on complex kinds of meanings, including shape and texture of objects.
(Bonvillain 2003, pgs. 22-23 ).
4) Veracity: The truthfulness of a speaker determined by markers in a statement. European languages do not typically contain veracity markers. For example, if the fictitious word ABCD = I heard the news. ABCDYY = I heard the news from someone I trust.

Verb Related
1) Tense: Time an event occurred.
2) Aspect: Manner in which an event occurred.
3) Mode: Liklihood of an event's occurrence or the speaker's attitude of an event's occurrence.

Syntax attempts to make sense of morphemes through word order. Most languages contain some variation of subject, verb and object. Subjects often come before objects. Anthropological linguists believe this to be the case because subjects have "agency," that is they are impacting the object (Bonvillain 2003, pgs. 25-26).

Semantics is the study of meaning. It attempts to the answer the question, "How is it when we use a common language, we can still come to an agreed upon understanding?"
1) Denotation: Literal, expressed meaning. "Slut" and "stud" have similar dictionary definitions.
2) Connotation: What the word implies? A "slut" is a negative word, demeaning a woman. A "stud" is often used as a positive word, complementing a man.

Semantics involves meaning beyond the spoken word.
1) Kinesics: Gestures, facial expression, eye contact and body posture
2) Proxemics: Use of touch and definitions of personal space.
a) Emblems: Non-verbal actions in an interpretative system, such as shrugging shoulders in the U.S.A and Canada mean uncertainty.
(Bonvillain 2003, pg. 19).


Bibliography
Amnott, Joel. 2006. Anthropological Linguistics. ANT 3610 Summer A Class. The University of South Florida, Tampa.

Bonvillain, Nancy. 2003. Language, Culture, and Communication: the meaning of messages. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.