Levels of Grammatical Analysis (The primary components of grammar) (G…
A. Phonetics and Phonology (Sounds): Speech Production and Perception: Producing sounds using the vocal tract; articulation; phonation; acoustic properties of sounds; perceptual cues; auditory system. Sound Systems: How languages organize sounds into a system; IPA; finding the abstract sound units (phonemes), analyzing their distribution (allophones, complementary vs. contrastive distribution); tonal, segmental and suprasegmental phonological processes and their representation (including distinctive features). Modern Theories: Key ideas from theories (linear and non-linear approaches) like autosegmental phonology, generative phonology, lexical phonology, prosodic morphology, and optimality theory. B. Morphology (Words): Building Blocks: Identifying the smallest units of meaning (morphemes) and their variations (allomorphs); morpheme types. Word Formation: The difference between grammatical changes to words (inflection) and creating new words (derivation and other processes of lexeme building); constraints on word formation; lexical and structural ambiguity; the morphology-phonology interface. The Mental Dictionary: How words and the rules to create them are stored in the mind (mental lexicon). Modern Theories: Key ideas from theories like distributed morphology, lexicalist vs paradigm based approaches, construction morphology. C. Syntax (Sentences): Sentence Structure: Understanding the basic units of syntax like words, phrases, and clauses, and the rules for combining them (e.g., Phrase Structure Rules, X-bar Theory); syntactic processes and representations; diagnostics of structure; sub-modules of syntax such as theta theory, case theory, binding, argument structure; valency alternations etc.; syntax-morphology and syntax-phonology interfaces; structural and semantic ambiguity. Major Theories: The core principles of key syntactic theories, like generative grammar (including the Minimalist Programme), LFG, and HPSG. Universal Grammar: The concept that all human languages share an underlying blueprint (Universal Grammar), which addresses the language acquisition problem; tacit knowledge vs. explicit knowledge; core grammar vs. peripheral grammar. Syntactic Analysis: Analyzing common syntactic phenomena across languages. D. Semantics and Pragmatics (Meaning): Literal Meaning (Semantics): How word meanings combine to form sentence meaning (compositionality); truth conditions; basic logic (propositions, quantifiers); lexical semantics (e.g., synonymy, antonymy); propositional semantics (paraphrase, entailment, contradiction etc.); syntax-semantics and semantics-pragmatics interfaces. Meaning in Context (Pragmatics): Contextual use of language including speech acts; implied meanings based on conversational rules (Grice’s Maxims and implicatures), and assumed knowledge (presuppositions); deictic and indexical elements; discourse analysis.