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LESSON 3: Components of Language
Treating language is a huge domain of what is treated in speech therapy. But what does
“language” in “speech-language pathology” mean?
Language is the system of words and symbols, whether they are spoken, written, or
signed that are used to communicate meaning. This encompasses both expressive (speaking,
writing) and receptive (listening, following directions, reading) language.
Speech-language pathologists oftentimes find themselves explaining their role in
development and intervention. Language is typically the piece that teachers, parents, and
others don’t realize is under an SLPs scope of practice! Many people think of correcting an “s”
sound or a stutter when thinking of speech therapy. Still, they don’t realize social skills,
following directions, grammar, and so much more occur in speech-language intervention!
THE 5 COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE
These are the five basic rules systems found in language.
1. Syntax – The rules that govern word order to form clauses, phrases, and
sentences.
2. Morphology – The rules that govern change in meaning at the word level.
3. Phonology – The rules that govern the structure, distribution, and sequencing of
speech-sound patterns.
4. Semantics – The rules that govern the meaning and context of words or
grammatical units.
5. Pragmatics – The rules that govern language use across communication contexts
These domains are important for SLPs (Speech-language pathologists) and SLPAs
(Speech-language pathology assistants) to be familiar with because they contribute to language
in different ways. They all work together and are necessary for everyday communication.
Understanding the role these five components play in language development is how goals are
written and treated. Having a grasp on them and how they are related, makes it easier to listen
to a language sample and quickly assess missing links in a child’s language.
1. SYNTAX
Syntax is the study of how we arrange words and phrases to form sentences. It requires
understanding and the use of correct word order and organization.
The English language follows a subject-verb-object word order. For example, “Daniel
loves the llama.” Switching the word order of this basic sentence can create a much different
meaning, “The llama loves Daniel.” Another rule is that each sentence must contain a noun
phrase and a verb phrase. Within noun and verb phrases, there are rules and predictable
patterns. For example, articles appear before nouns, and adverbs modify verbs.
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Syntax skills help us understand how sentences work the meanings behind word order,
structure, and punctuation. By providing supports for developing Syntax skills, we can help
students understand and write increasingly complex texts.
Components of Syntax include:
Expressive Syntax: The Syntax a student can produce and use in speaking and writing; and
Receptive Syntax: The Syntax a student can understand when hearing speech and reading
text.
Syntactic development begins in childhood and continues through early adulthood.
Written language typically uses more complex Syntax than oral language. In particular, writing
that incorporates academic language uses more sophisticated Syntax and Vocabulary than the
social language we use in informal conversations and writing.
Syntax awareness is an essential metalinguistic skill that refers to the ability to
consciously reflect on and manipulate Syntax. As students advance through school, they are
required to comprehend and write increasingly more complex texts with the support of their
Syntax skills and awareness. Reading is critical for the development of Syntax skills, and
students in turn use those skills to read increasingly challenging texts to learn class material.
Students also are required to communicate more complicated ideas in their writing, and one
way they do this is by properly using Syntax to effectively combine sentences.
SYNTAX VS. GRAMMAR
Grammar comprises the entire system of rules for a language, including syntax. Syntax
deals with the way that words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and sentences.
Grammar is the set of rules a language follows to convey meaning. Grammar is a broad term
that encompasses more specific areas of study including Morphology, Phonology,
Semantics and Syntax.
Syntax on the other hand is the part of grammar that focuses on how words are
combined to form phrases and clauses and how those components are then arranged into
meaningful sentences.
2. MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is the study of the structure and construction of words. It is the aspect of
language that deals with the rules that change word meaning, such as roots, prefixes, and
affixes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. For example, “sing” is one morpheme,
while “singing” is two morphemes – “sing” holds its own meaning, and “ing” signifies the
present progressive tense. Another example, “watermelons” is three morphemes, “water” and
“melon” are two stand-alone words and “-s” is the plural suffix.
There are two varieties of morphemes, free and bound. Free morphemes are
independent, such as “sing.” Bound morphemes are grammatical markers that are not
independent, such as “-est”, “un-“, or “-s”.
Grammatical morphemes, such as “-s”, “–ing”, and prefixes and suffixes such as “pre-”,
“-ly”, “-er” are necessary for language development. They aid in expanding vocabulary and
using more complex words. Children with specific language impairment have greater difficulty
with morphological concepts such as verbs, verb endings, tenses, and verb phrases.
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3. PHONOLOGY
Phonology is the study of phonemes in a language and the rules for their combination. A
phoneme is the smallest unit of sound, such as “p” or “t.” The words “pea” and “tea” hold very
different meanings due to the difference in the first phoneme of the word.
Phonological rules also govern the distribution of phonemes, one example being “ing”
never appears as the first sound in the English language. These rules also govern sequencing or
the order that phonemes may be combined. An example of this is the sequence “tn” does not
appear in the English language.
PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, move or change sounds, called
phonemes, in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is an important basic skill that gets students
ready to develop into readers. Phonemic awareness is usually taught during kindergarten and
beginning first grade.
THERE ARE 5 LEVELS OF PHONEMIC AWARENESS
The Phenome segmentation can include the segmentation of syllables. It further
progresses to the segmentation of a word and then to that of a sentence. It involves literally
counting and sounding out the phonemes separately to understand a word’s sound. Since
phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize the sounds of parts of the word/letter/sentence,
it means differently while moving from word to sentence segmentation. For example,
When trying to grasp syllable segmentation, a learner is actually internalizing
how the letter sounds differently. Knowing which parts of the mouth are being
used to sound a particular letter helps attain pronunciation proficiency. Also, it
improves word recognition[1] and helps bring improved reading comprehension.
On moving to word segmentation, cognition is focused on the starting, middle,
and ending sounds that compose the word. It extracts some parts of
phonological learning that teach rhyming and alliteration.
Finally, when the sentence segmentation is learned, each word’s sound is worked
out to help correct pronunciation and prosody while reading.
Phoneme blending and splitting refers to the blending and splitting of phonemes to
create new words. Once the student learns the sound of each phoneme, the correct blending is
required to read the word correctly.
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So, the concept of onset-riming, which means sounding out the beginning (onset) and
end (riming), is learned by splitting and blending the phonemes mentally. When teachers ask to
speak and write, they are given the pretext to learn spellings using phoneme splitting and
blending.
Phoneme rhyming and alliteration involve words that represent a common sound.
Rhyming focuses on the commonality of ending sounds, while alliteration focuses on learning
words that start with the same sound. When the teacher asks a child to write rhyming words,
the answers are mostly those words that have the same letters in rhyming. This means,
learning ‘pack’, ‘back’, and ‘lack’ are examples of rhyming.
Alliteration practice involves learning tongue twisters. ‘She sells seashells on the
seashore’, and other such phrases give an idea of alliteration. It acquaints a child with various
repetitions of the same sound.
In Phoneme Comparing and Contrasting, Words change when contrasting
phonemes are used to make the word sound. Means, f, and v are the contrasting phonemes
because these are sounded out by applying phonetic differences. And, using these sounds
replaceable changes the meaning of the word entirely. Fan and Van may be rhyming, but
phonetic difference leading to different meanings of words puts them in contrasting phoneme
categories.
Similarly, phonemic comparison can help know if the phonemes sounding similar are
different/unique or are allophones of the same phoneme. While allophones are sounds, the
phonemes are a set of those sounds. The comparison is helpful in understanding how a
particular phoneme of the English language can be used to speak two different words having
different sounds. For example, a Spanish person speaking dough and though will not use
different phonemes, but allophones of the same phoneme.
Last, Phoneme manipulation is the ability to move or alter individual phonemes while
retaining in mind their specific roles in constituting a word’s sound is described as phonemic
manipulation. Several activities happen behind a simple act of reading. Learners cognitively
delete, add, substitute, or rearrange sounds to arrive at the correct way of voicing the word.
This process is required to be fluent in reading connected text.
What Phoneme Manipulation leads to?
Phoneme manipulation helps in building an advanced understanding of phonemic
awareness. Through the processes of adding, deleting, and arranging, the learners can find
ways to create new words. For example, removing ‘b’ from ‘blast’ can give ‘last’ (phoneme
subtracting), and replacing ‘p’ in ‘plastic with ‘e’ can help generate the word ‘elastic’. The early
readers can understand how these simple processes can lead to ease of populating the list of
words they know. So, apart from building reading ease, phoneme manipulation helps to develop
vocabulary.
4. SEMANTICS
Semantics is the study of the rules related to the meaning or content of words.
Expanding vocabulary, as well as learning synonyms, antonyms, multiple meaning words, and
figurative language is critical for semantic skills. These semantic features allow for a deeper
understanding of vocabulary.
Semantics is also understanding the relationship between words. Being able to interpret
an entire sentence holds more value than understanding the individual word meanings. This is
because the relationship of the words may change the meaning of individual words.
Semantics can be broken down into the following three subcategories:
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Formal semantics is the study of grammatical meaning in natural language. In other
words, it intends to define the meaning of words and phrases based on its grammatical
structure.
Conceptual semantics is the study of words at their core. It focuses on establishing
universal definitions for words before they are taken into context.
Lexical semantics is the study of word meaning. It establishes meaning to words
based on their relationships to other words in the sentence as well as their compositional
structure.
5. PRAGMATICS
Pragmatics is the study of how we understand and use the social aspects of language.
Pragmatic language is the social skills used in daily interactions, in both verbal and nonverbal
communication. This includes body language, facial expressions, gestures, communicative
intent, and topic maintenance. It means knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to say
it. This includes verbal communication, such as prosody, topic maintenance, making requests
and comments. It also includes nonverbal communication, such as body language, gestures,
and facial expressions. Pragmatics is how we use language, rather than the structure of
language.
What are some examples of pragmatics?
Pragmatics is the study of how we understand and use the social aspects of language.
Pragmatic language is the social skills used in daily interactions, in both verbal and nonverbal
communication. This includes body language, facial expressions, gestures, communicative
intent, and topic maintenance. It means knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to say
it. This includes verbal communication, such as prosody, topic maintenance, making requests
and comments. It also includes nonverbal communication, such as body language, gestures,
and facial expressions. Pragmatics is how we use language, rather than the structure of
language.
Let’s look at some different pragmatic examples, and their contextual meaning, and see
if it starts to make a bit more sense.
Example 1:
Picture this: You and your friend are sitting in your bedroom studying, and she says, ‘It’s hot
in here. Can you crack open a window?’
If we take this literally, your friend is asking you to crack the window – to damage it. However,
taken in context, we can infer that they are actually asking for the window to be opened a little.
Example 2:
Picture this: You’re talking to a neighbour and they look bored. Your neighbour keeps looking
at their watch, and they don’t appear to be paying much attention to what you’re saying.
Suddenly, they say, ‘Gosh, would you look at the time! ‘
The literal meaning is that your neighbour is instructing you to look at the time. However, we
can infer that they are trying to get away from the conversation due to their general body
language.
Example 3:
Picture this: You are walking through college, and you bump into a friend of a friend, who
says, "Hey, how're you doing? "
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In this case, it is unlikely that your friend wants to hear the highs and lows of your entire week.
A common answer would be something like, “Good thanks, and you? “
Why is it important that we know about these 5 components?
These domains of language cover much of what we (speech-language pathologists
[SLPs]) target in language-based therapy and the evidence-based approaches behind our
decision-making. They include how language delays/disorders are defined and diagnosed. They
also indicate how we write different types of goals to address a variety of skills. When creating
goals or giving diagnoses, we examine how an individual uses the different domains of
language, and how that differs from what may be expected. Each of these domains offers
different meanings and contributes to language in different ways.
Understanding the role these five components play in language development is how
goals are written and treated. Having a grasp on them and how they are related, makes it
easier to listen to a language sample and quickly assess missing links in a child’s language.
References:
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