A quotation from Noam Chomsky is “When we study human language, we are approaching what

some might call the “human essence,” the distinctive qualities of mind that are, so far as we

know, unique to man” (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998). I find this quote contains a reflective truth

within. Language is a human quality. We all acquire it, in some way or the other; we use it to

function in society, to barter, to move from place to place and sometimes simply to entertain at

times.

We are all intimately familiar with at least one language however we rarely consider what

we know when we know a language. This paper will attempt to explain how language is

organized. According to (Tompkins, 2005) “the four language systems, sometimes called cueing

systems, are: the phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic systems.” We all incorporate

information from these four systems whether knowingly or not in order to communicate.

The phonological system which plays a prominent place in early education deals with the

sound system of language. In the English language there are approximately forty-four (44)

speech sounds. According to authors (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998) “phonological knowledge

permits a speaker to produce sounds that form meaningful utterances, to recognize a foreign

“accent”, to make up new words etc. We learn to make the sounds for our language (phonemes)

then we associate those sounds with letters in the alphabet (graphemes) and so on until we

become competent with the language.

Teachers at the early literacy stage regularly focus on Phonics instruction (instruction

about phoneme-grapheme correspondences and spelling rules) because once this is mastered the

other systems of language are easier to understand. Phonological awareness refers to one’s

knowledge of the sound structure and phonological awareness is usually coupled with or closely

followed phonemic awareness which is the ability to manipulate sounds orally.

 Another system which is present in language is the Syntactic or structural system. This

focuses on the organization of the language e.g. word order in sentence. “Speakers of a language

recognize the grammatical sentences of their language and know how the words in a grammatical

sentence must be ordered and grouped (Fromkin & Rodman, 1998).” We see or rather hear

examples of this almost every day when sometimes we are corrected by others for our bad

grammar when the corrector themselves is using incorrect grammar. Many times we correct our

own grammatical errors simply because we say something and it “sounds wrong”. It sounds

wrong because we are familiar with the grammatical rules that govern the language.

“Another component of syntax is word forms” (Tompkins, 2005). The smallest unit of

meaning is called a morpheme e.g. play. A word can have more than one morphemes e.g. plan-

ing. The addition of “ing” changes the meaning of the word. Some morphemes can stand on their

own e.g. in the word playing the morpheme play can stand on its own as a word, this makes it a

free morpheme. The morpheme “ing” is considered a bound morpheme because it must be used

with another word as it cannot stand on its own. When students are in the elementary level they

will learn about affixes, prefixes and suffixes which are added to the beginning or ending of a

word respectively to create a word with new meaning. They are learning about bound

morphemes but with less complexity.

The third language system is the semantic or meaning system. “To understand a language

we need to know the meaning of words and the morphemes that compose them” according to

(Fromkin & Rodman, 1998). Some of this vocabulary is developed from exposure to the

language from early language development e.g. we learn what a car, dog is etc. As a matter of

fact “researchers estimate that children have a vocabulary of approximately 5000 words by the

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time they enter school and will acquire approximately 3000 words every year through

elementary school” (Tompkins, 2005).

The fourth system of language is the pragmatic system which deals with the social and

cultural use of language. According to author (Tompkins, 2005)“people use language for many

different purposes, and how they talk or write may vary according to purpose and audience. We

all use language but this use may vary among different social classes, cultural and ethnic groups

and geographic regions.” Each person also has their own way of speaking; authors (Fromkin &

Rodman, 1998) define this as an idiolect.

The language used by a group of speakers may also show systematic differences which is

called a dialect. The English language alone has a vast variety of dialects, even within one

country or island e.g. Trinidad is a small island where the main language is a dialect of English

however within the island itself there are also many varieties of this dialect which can be found

in different geographic locations e.g. Matelot, La Brea, etc. These dialects differ systematically

in some ways from each other however they are mutually intelligible forms of the main language

which is English.

“Before children enter elementary school they learn the language of their community”

(Tompkins, 2005). They can understand and communicate with others, members of their family,

strangers even. They use language without knowing formally the rules that govern it or how it is

structured, its qualities and its systems. The importance of the knowledge and comprehension of

these aspects plays a more pivotal role in the life of a teacher. Students must learnt the rules that

govern the system of language however the role of the teacher is to ensure that they can gain

these skills through the lessons taught and without becoming overwhelmed by trying to actually

identify the structures in complex ways.

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 References
Fromkin, V., & Rodman, R. (1998). An Introduction to Language,sixth edition. Philadelphia:

Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

Tompkins, G. E. (2005). Language Arts:Patterns of Practice. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

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