Unit 3 Language Subsystems

Overview
This unit introduces you to the four subsystems of language and their relationship to
language acquisition. Your understanding of these subsystems will help to enrich your
literacy classroom.

Unit Objectives
Upon completion of this session you will be able to:
1. Describe the features of the four language subsystems
2. Apply your knowledge of these four features to your literacy classroom

Readings

Tompkins, G. E. (1998). Language Arts: Content and Teaching Strategies. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 146–154; 186–190; 433–440; 511–527.

Bromley, Karen. (2002). Stretching Students’ Vocabulary: Best Practices for Building
the Rich Vocabulary Students Need to Achieve in Reading, Writing, and the Content
Areas. New York: Scholastic Professional Books. 6–42.
Session 3.1 The Phonological or Sound System of Language

Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this session you will be able to:
1. Describe the phonological system of language
2. Explain the teaching of phonics in the classroom

Introduction
The language system has four features or subsystems: phonology, syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics. Learning about language and how it functions involves developing implicit
knowledge of these four language subsystems. As you would remember from your
readings for ED26K many linguists ascribe language learning to an innate biological
function for which we are pre-wired. However theorists such as Piaget, Vygotsky, and
Bruner place much emphasis on the role of the environment in language learning. As
children develop, the interplay between biology and environment support their
understanding and use of the four language features. They learn to use language in a
variety of contexts and for a variety of purposes. In this session we will look at
phonology and in session 3.2 continue with syntax, semantics and pragmatics.

Phonology
Phonology refers to the sound system of a language or the underlying rules that govern
pronunciation of words. English has approximately 44 speech sounds, referred to as
phonemes. Children learn to articulate these sounds as they learn to talk, and they learn to
associate the sounds with words as they learn to read and write. We write phonemes
inside diagonal lines (/ a /, / sh /). The letter or combination of letters that represents a
phoneme is called a grapheme. In some instances one phoneme may be represented by
more than one grapheme. For example the ai in paint and the a in gate, and the ea in
steak are all graphemes that represent the phoneme / a /.
Many children have to a large extent mastered the phonological system before they enter
school. According to Wood (1999) most children do not master /v/, /th/, /ch/, and /sh/
until after age five or six. In our Caribbean school situation we often encounter
phonological dialect differences. These are differences in pronunciation which are
attributed to differences in dialect. One of the phonological dialect differences in Jamaica
is de for the. This will be explored more fully in a later unit.

When children have knowledge of the phonology of English it gives them a head start to
reading and writing. Children in the primary grades use their understanding of the
phonological system to generate invented spelling. The spelling reflects the way they
pronounce words. It is important that we consider that English is not a purely phonetic
language and so there is not a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. If
that were so it would be very simple to teach children to sound out words. Instead, we
must bear in mind that the 26 letters are represented by approximately 44 phonemes
which means that there are many ways to combine letters to spell some sounds, especially
vowels. Consider how the long e is spelt in these words: deep, heat, people, he, Pete.
Added to this, the patterns used to spell long e do not always work as in head and great.

Activity 3.1
Observe the oral and written language production of a child in a primary grade.
Identify examples of ways that you think the child’s understanding of phonology
has influenced his/her language.

Post your findings so that your colleagues can share your response and offer
feedback.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonetic awareness is the understanding that words can be divided into smaller units of
sounds (phonemes). It is an intuitive, explicit insight. To be phonemically aware means
being able to identify where a particular sound occurs in a word (i.e., beginning, middle
or end). Besides being helpful in decoding new words, phonemic awareness plays a
critical role in helping you to make educated guesses when spelling unknown words.
Children who have poorly developed phonemic awareness skills will not only experience
slower reading progress, but will become severely frustrated when trying to spell words
while writing sentences, paragraphs or stories.

Most words are derived from blending phonemes. Remember that the English language
has only 26 symbols or letters of the alphabet yet produces about 44 sounds, which means
that the symbols as well as a combination of symbols produce all the phonemes of
English language speech. It is important that children become sufficiently familiar with
phonemes to recognize them in spoken words. Once they are able to recognize the
phonemes they can map them with letters and then translate them back to phonemes.

Phonics
Phonics is the set of relationships between the sounds in speech (phonology) and the
spelling patterns of words (orthography). It explains the relationships between phonemes
and graphemes. This suggests that it is more than sounding out words. It is a process of
decoding words by recognizing spelling patterns in known words. That is, the reader
creates an analogy between old words and new ones. The analogy is aided by the
knowledge of symbol-sound relationship. Successful phonics instruction provides
opportunities for our children to manipulate speech sounds of Standard English through
listening and speaking activities. As children repeatedly listen to and produce the sounds
of the standard form of language, the more likely they are to get over the problem of
substituting Creole pronunciation for Standard English words. As was said earlier,
phonics helps reader tackle new words independently. It also helps the Creole-speaking
child to be more efficient at pronouncing and spelling Standard English words.
Teaching phonics
It is important that we teach phonics through words in the child's vocabulary and in
conjunction with other approaches. You model the use of phonics as a decoding strategy
when you:
1. Visually recognize known patterns of letters
2. Translate those patterns into the sounds they represent, and
3. Blend the patterns together to see if they form a sensible, recognizable word.

Activity 3.2
1. Identify an activity that you consider appropriate for helping your students
to manipulate the speech sounds of English language that might prove
troublesome for them.
2. Identify the features of the activity that you consider useful and explain
why.
Session 3.2 Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics

Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this session you will be able to:
1. Describe the syntactical structure of language
2. Describe the semantic structure of language
3. Describe the pragmatic structure of language

Syntax
Syntax refers to the structural organization of English, or the rules that dictate how words
are combined to form sentences. All languages are governed by implicit rules which help
the native speakers of the language to produce grammatical sentences. When you produce
a sentence in your native language you do so without thinking about the order of the
words you use because the syntax of the language is embedded in your knowledge of the
language. By the time children start school they would have acquired the basic
grammatical rules of their native language and are capable of generating a wide range of
sentences to accomplish communicative functions. Actually they start to produce
statements, questions, and other types of sentences before they start school.

During the primary years children’s syntactic development continues. They begin to
construct an increased variety of sentence patterns and to produce complex sentences in
which they use a variety of embedded techniques to combine ideas. During this period of
their language development children often use and to connect a series of ideas. A child in
the early primary grade may produce the sentence, “Last Boxing Day I went to the fair
and I saw my friend and we went on the merry-go-round.” An older child would perhaps
say, “Last Boxing Day I saw my friend at the fair and we went on the merry-go-round.”
Research has found that the kinds of sentence constructions that students use in their
speech also appear in their writing.
Children’s knowledge of the syntactic serves a useful function as they read. This
knowledge helps them to anticipate that the words they are reading are arranged into
sentences. It also functions when they come upon an unfamiliar word during reading.
Although they may not know the word, they recognize the function of the word, and
often substitute a word that often fits even if they don’t know the name of the part of
speech for the unfamiliar word. In the sentence, “The dog barked loudly when the boys
approached” a student might not be able to decode the word approached but recognizes
its role in the sentence. Based on that the child might make a reasonable guess and
substitute a word or a phrase that maintains the meaning being constructed. When
children learn about simple, compound, and complex sentences they are learning about
the syntax of the language. In the same way when they learn rules such as the
capitalization and punctuation rules in the primary school it reflects the syntactic system
of language.

The term word forms presents another aspect of the syntactic system of the language.
When children learn to talk, they first begin to use words in their simplest, most basic
forms – as morphemes which are the smallest units of meaning. For example, the word
dog is a morpheme. In quick succession they learn to combine morphemes. If s is added
to dog to form the plural of dog the final s is also a morpheme because it changes the
meaning of the word. When s is added to dog two morphemes are combined. Another
example is a past tense marker such as ed. During the primary grades children learn to
add affixes to words. Affixes added to the beginning of words are called prefixes, and
affixes added to the end of words are called suffixes.

Semantics
The semantic language system is the meaning system of the language. This system
focuses on vocabulary. Children acquire vocabulary as they learn to talk. Their
vocabulary continues to increase during pre-school into the primary grades. This happens
as they rapidly acquire new concepts and learn words to represent those concepts.
Researchers estimate that by the time children enter school they have a vocabulary of
5,000 words and continue to acquire 3,000 words every year during the primary grades
(Lidfors, 1987; Nagy, 1988). At the same time children are learning new words they are
also learning that words have multiple meaning. Meaning is usually based on context. Let
us look at the word head and how the meaning depends on the context in which it is used.
• He got a blow to his head.
• He is the head of the organization.
• He walked to the head of the stream.
• The football players practise to head the ball.

Children do not have the same capacity to fully understand the depth of meaning of
words as adults have. They gradually learn depth of meaning through a process of
refinement which comes from multiple experiences with concepts. They add layers of
meaning as they encounter situations in which the same words are used to label different
objects and concepts. They also develop sophisticated concepts about words such as the
notion that there are shades of meanings. For example, they will understand the
difference in meaning among words such as stagger, stroll, stride, tramp, march. They
also learn about figurative language including idioms, wordplay, antonyms and
synonyms.

Semantics also focuses on phrases and sentences and examines different kinds of
ambiguities. Often one surface structure represents two meanings; however, our intuitive
knowledge of the language enables us to arrive at the correct meaning by relying on the
context of the linguistic utterance.

Activity 3.3
Read Bromley, 2–42 and Tompkins 433–440 for activities to develop vocabulary.
Write your reflections on Bromley’s and Tompkins’ guidelines for teaching
vocabulary.
Pragmatics
The pragmatic language system is not an internal linguistic system as is the case with
phonology, syntax, and semantics. Instead it deals with the social and cultural uses of
language. We use language for a variety of purposes and how we use language, orally
and written, depends on purpose and audience. The way language is used varies among
social classes, cultural and ethnic groups, and geographic regions. These varieties are
called dialects.

One form of language may serve several functions. Let us think of the statement “It is
lunch time.” It could be in response to a question such as “Why are you clearing your
desk?” It could also be a suggestion that it is time to go for lunch. Said in a particular
context it could also be a reminder about a planned lunch time engagement. When a
teacher asks of a child, “Do you want to try again?” it suggests that the child did not get it
right the first time. In a particular context it might be a gentle nudge to encourage the
child. It might also suggest that the teacher wants the child to try again. All native
speakers have an intuitive understanding of the pragmatic systems.
Tompkins (1998) p. 15