1.

1 Introduction

What do you know when you know a language?

Many people may say that when you know a language, you can communicate a message or perhaps hold
a conversation in the language. You might be

able to exchange information, greet someone, ask someone for directions, read

a menu, or write a letter. These are certainly important language functions and

tasks that we want our students to learn—and you might feel like you know

the language when you can accomplish these tasks—but it still doesn’t quite

describe what language is. To use an analogy, we know the human body has

important functions for survival, like breathing, blood circulation, and digestion. However, these
functions do not exactly describe what the human body

consists of or how it uses its components to accomplish those tasks. Similarly,

to answer the question What do you know when you know a language?, we

need to know what language consists of and how it uses its components to

accomplish language functions. That’s where linguistics steps in.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Linguists aim to look at language objectively, observing how
it functions “in the wild”, how it grows,

how it changes, and how it is used. Language is studied scientifically like any

natural phenomenon, as a botanist would study a plant or a microbiologist

would study bacteria. This is different from what grammar books sometimes

do, which is to prescribe how it should be used and what constitutes proper language. Linguists analyze
language for what it is and how it is actually used by

its speakers. They study everything from the smallest components (e.g., how

much air is needed to make a /p/ sound like a /p/) to the largest components

(e.g., how people apologize politely in text messages). They study everyone

from newborn babies to elderly people. They study spoken and signed languages. They study languages
spoken by billions of people and languages spoken by ten people. They study how language changes
over hundreds of years

and how language changes over a couple of months. They study languages

with social power and languages that are forbidden and spoken in secret. There

are entire books written on the syntax and pragmatics of profanity. The sky’s
the limit.

1 The Components

of LanguageThe Components of LanguageThe Components of Language

2 The Components of Language

1.2 Linguistics and Language Teachers

Language teachers are linguists. While you may believe that teaching students

how to speak a language is a different job description than analyzing language,

the two are inextricably linked. In order to develop the best way to approach

a new lesson, address a pattern of errors across a student’s work, or explain a

concept in the target language that simply does not exist in the students’ first

language, teachers have to first identify and understand the inner workings

of the language. A doctor would not begin a treatment without understanding

how the human body works; a mechanic would not begin to fix a car without

understanding how the machinery functions. It’s important for language teachers to be able to recognize
and understand the parts, as well as the relationships

between those parts.

Related to this, language teachers are more than just users of the language

themselves. Simply being able to speak the language does not mean you can

necessarily teach it; we certainly would not expect that someone can be a doctor simply because they
have been sick before, or that they can be a mechanic

because they drive a car regularly. To teach a language, it’s helpful to not only

be able to speak the language but understand what it is you are using when you

speak it. Additionally, if you are to be a language teacher, you need to know

how to analyze and consider language metalinguistically. When students ask

you “why is it X but not Y?” and if your answer to their question is, “I don’t

know, that’s just how it is”, then they’re not learning much from the experience. Or, if a student in your
class makes the same error time after time, it’s

not enough that we say, “let’s practice not making that error”. The language

teacher has to identify the error and recognize the pattern of occurrence. That’s

a main part of what linguistics is: patterns and tendencies and characteristics
of language. But we don’t stop there. Not only is it important for teachers to

recognize the pattern, but then try to explain it. That is where linguistics—and

specifically linguistic theories—comes into play. Theories help us make sense

of what is going on with our students, and from there we have solutions that

we can bring back to the classroom. Language teachers are linguists because

they need to be aware of what is going on in the language they speak and teach,

analyze these patterns, and make sense of them.

However, there is a problem. Linguists are trained to do these things, but language teachers are not. This
is a grave error and a gap in our teacher training.

Much of the focus of language teacher training is on methods and the teacher’s

own language proficiency, both of which are certainly important and necessary.

However, language teachers do not receive much linguistics training; they are

not often explicitly taught the structure of their language, or how to analyze

linguistic data. Consequently, being less knowledgeable about the target language means teachers often
rely on the textbook to learn about the language,

which takes away from the autonomy of the teacher. Many language teacher

candidates have sheepishly confessed that they “don’t really get grammar” or

that they feel intimidated by linguistics and wished it was part of their training.

The Components of Language 3

Language teachers also benefit from linguistics training because there is an

entire world of research and resources out there about language acquisition,

bilingualism, heritage languages, classroom language learning, and how the

specifics of your target language work (e.g., how German speakers determine

which pronoun to use to mean you, what sound changes are occurring in contemporary Quechua). The
problem is, these academic sources are written for

linguists, not practitioners. Like many scientific fields, linguistics has a complex set of jargon that is not
transparent for the majority of the population,

even language teachers who really have an invested interest in language. Theta

roles, sister nodes, and voiceless alveolar fricatives have no meaning for people outside of the linguistic
subfields. Not to mention the array of acronyms
that we must muddle through: NOM, ACC, NP, VP. Accessibility for teachers

means that when they read a linguistics article, book, or academic resource,

they can understand what they mean and use these resources to expand their

knowledge base. It is not acceptable that language teachers are simply cut off

from these resources that can help them continue to learn or to find helpful

guidance about a particular aspect of the language they are teaching (or the

language(s) their students are coming to school with). Are teachers supposed to

twiddle their thumbs and wait for an “easy-to-read” version of the research—

which could take years—or should teachers be given the tools and skills from

the start so they can access the latest, most up-to-date research and resources?

We will let you guess what we think.

1.3 The Layers

Language consists of multiple layers, much like a layered cake. Each layer

serves an important function, but to get the full experience, you need all of

these components in order for a language to be a language. When you serve a

piece of cake, you slice your knife downward so that you get a little of every

layer. Language works the same way: when you know a language, you have

to know a portion of all of those layers. Let’s inspect each layer briefly here.

The first layer is phonetics, which is the smallest unit of language. Phonetics is the study of the sounds of
languages, which come together to form syllables, words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. It is
analogous to the cells

in our bodies: they are the building blocks. Every language and dialect has a

unique set of sounds, or phonetic inventory, that is used to build the language.

As language teachers and learners, we know that there are sounds in the target

language that might be different from the languages we already know, and one

of the many challenges is to learn how to make these sounds that are new to us.

Perhaps you have struggled with rolling your r sounds when learning Spanish

or making the th sound in English, as in the word think. What can be even more

difficult is learning how to hear and distinguish sounds that are not in the languages you speak, like the
distinction between tal (moon), ttal (daughter), and
t

al (mask) in Korean, which is very difficult to distinguish if you are a native

English speaker. This is because we tend to hear and produce sounds that are

4 The Components of Language

most familiar to us. Another important aspect of phonetics is the acoustics of

sound, like pitch, length, or amplitude, which can change how we hear the

sound. Thus, knowing the phonetics layer of a language means you know how

to use, hear, and differentiate sounds in the language.

The next layer of the language cake is phonology. Many people use phonology interchangeably with
phonetics, but there is an important distinction.

While phonetics is the study of sounds, phonology is the study of the relationship between these
sounds. For example, think of a string of numbers as in a

phone number: 754–6794. When you say each individual number in isolation,

it will sound like it does in (1). But when you say the numbers together in a

string, which is what most people do, you glide from one sound to another.

Some of the sounds even change. See (2).

(1) seven five four, six seven nine four

(2) sevem fife four, sik seven nime four

You will notice that when you say the string of numbers naturally at normal

speed, the /n/ in seven changes to something that sounds more like /m/ before

the /f/ in five, so that you end up saying sevem instead of seven. Similarly, the

/n/ in nine changes to /m/ before /f/ in four, so it sounds more like nime than

nine. These changes occur to make the transition from one number to the next

sound more natural. The /n/ literally changes shape to be more like the following consonant. When you
use paint, two colors next to each other may blend

and create a natural transition. This kind of blending happens between sounds

in language, too. Phonological processes like the one just described occur to

make them easier to pronounce and seem more natural. When a computer automated voice reads a
string of numbers or a sentence aloud, it might sound
awkward and choppy because it is pronouncing every sound in isolation. When

a human speaks a series of numbers or a sentence aloud, however, that person

draws from their phonology layer to make those subtle changes that help them

sound more natural. Thus, for language learners to sound more natural and less

choppy, we as teachers can help learners understand phonological processes

that help them to blend sounds from one to another.

Morphology is the next layer. Morphology is the study of word formation,

where morphemes, or the smallest unit of language with meaning or function,

come together to form words, new and old. Think about a word like disembarkation. Although it is one
word, it has a lot of parts: first, you have the root

word embark (verb), then it takes on the prefix dis- to change the meaning to

the opposite. Then you add the suffix -ation to change the part of speech from

verb to noun. Roots and affixes, or add-on morphemes, allow us to come up

with an infinite number of new words from preexisting words, like unfriending

or friendzone. The morphology layer also tells you that while you can make

a word like unturtlelike (to be not like a turtle), a word like disturtlely breaks

the rules somehow. Language learners have to be aware of the word-formation

The Components of Language 5

rules of the target language, which not only helps them use and understand

existing words and meanings, but also use and understand new ones that come

into the vocabulary.

The next layer of the cake is syntax, which often turns people off because

they think it is either computer language or grammar. A less intimidating way

to think about syntax is simply how words come together. There are not a lot

of languages that allow you to just put words together however you want and

it would still be considered grammatical. Some languages are more permissive

than others about word order, but even those have word orders that are more

common, or canonical, than others. Syntax is an important layer for language

learners because, as many of us know from experience, you cannot just translate a sentence word for
word from one language to another. You have to follow the rules of the target language, which can be
difficult to learn. In German,

for instance, verbs have to go in second position, while in Japanese, the verbs

go at the end of a sentence. When you know a language, you know these rules

without even realizing you know them, such that when you hear a phrase like

the big red leather cowboy boots, you know that’s right, but there is something

odd about the red cowboy leather big boots. You might not be able to explain

it, but your intuition tells you something has gone awry.

Semantics is the next layer of language. Semantics deals with meaning. Not

just the kind of meaning you look up in a dictionary, but really understanding

the nuance behind the word, phrase, or sentence. For example, look around you

right now and find objects that are red. You might find objects that are redder

than others, some of which may just barely pass as red. Now, what if you were

asked to identify something that is red-red. As in, really truly red. Suddenly,

the field narrows, and you might find yourself excluding some objects because

they are too light or too dark or too orangey. Red-red isn’t an entry you are

going to find in a dictionary, nor is the definition consistent from person to

person. However, you have a certain intuition about it, and the semantics layer

of your language competence tells you that.

Pragmatics is the last layer of language, the layer that deals with how

language is used. Pragmatics gives you information about what is appropriate, what is permissible, what
makes sense to say given known information,

and how you use language to achieve certain acts, like apologizing, thanking,

insinuating, or insulting. For instance, pragmatics tells us why the following

conversation is perfectly acceptable:

Steve: Hey, Coco, what’s up?

Coco: Not too much.

But why this conversation below does not quite work:

Steve: Hey, Coco, what’s up?

Coco: Fine, thank you.

6 The Components of Language

And why this conversation is kind of rude or, at least, eye-roll inducing:

Steve: Hey, Coco, what’s up?

Coco: The sky.

Pragmatics tends to be more difficult to teach and learn because not only does

it utilize the sounds and words and sentences you build from knowledge of the

other layers, but you have to understand context and nuance.

These six layers—phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics,

and pragmatics—exist in all human languages, dialects, and creoles. Every language, however “primitive”
it may be considered by society or how frownedupon it might be by people in power, has a full-fledged
system containing all

these layers. Signed languages have phonetics and phonology too, as we will

later discuss. There is no such thing as a language that simply does not have

one of these layers. If you look closely, it will be there.

1.4 Linguistic Competence

Now, let’s circle back to the original question: what do you know when you

know a language? Knowing a language means you need to know all of these

components of language. As a learner, you cannot learn just the phonetics layer

but ignore the syntax layer. In other words, you might have excellent pronunciation in Arabic, but if you
have no idea how to string words together,

you cannot really communicate. Similarly, you may know how to string words

together in Arabic, but if you don’t know what they mean, then it’s empty and

useless. Or you might have excellent semantic and pragmatic skills, but if your

pronunciation is so nontargetlike that people cannot understand you, then you

cannot communicate either. When you know a language, you need to have

at least some competence in every layer. You do not need to have mastery of

every layer to communicate, of course, but you cannot get by without some of

each component.

This knowledge of the components is what we call linguistic competence.

As speakers (or signers) of a language, you have this knowledge of the layers to some extent. Language
acquisition, therefore, is the gaining of this linguistic competence. We have mentioned several times as
we went over the

layers the importance of intuition when analyzing language. Your linguistic

competence is what allows you to form your language and also what tells

you whether something sounds off or not. However, there is an important distinction between
knowledge and awareness. Having the knowledge does not

necessarily mean that you are aware of these components and their intricacies.

People use very complex linguistic processes all day every day, but most people are not aware of what
those processes are or even that they are using them.

This is especially true if you learned a language as a child. No one sits down a

baby, hands her a notebook, and explains the word order rules of her language.

Because language learning tends to happen in natural environments—most

The Components of Language 7

often in the home—when you are a baby or small child, you are not aware that

you are using the subjunctive mood, labiodental fricative, or nasal assimilation. You just do it because it
sounds good and your gut tells you whether

something sounds off or not. You know it when you hear it. This is similar to

learning to walk. You don’t have to know what gravity is or how the human

muscular system works in order to walk. You might have excellent competence in forming noun phrases
but not know how to describe it or even put a

name to it.

This is where teachers who are native speakers of the target language struggle a bit. If you are a native
Italian speaker and you are teaching Italian to

English-speaking students, it could be somewhat difficult to put yourself into

your students’ shoes because you don’t remember the process of learning to

speak Italian: you probably learned it at home with your family as a small

child. You did not learn Italian sitting in a classroom like your students. Same

goes for many ESL teachers who did not have to learn English in a classroom,

but rather at home with their family. You might not have thought about how

few and a few can have quite different meanings: Few people showed up to the
meeting versus A few people showed up to the meeting. However, by studying

your language objectively like a linguist, you become aware of the structure

and components of the language, making it that much easier and more helpful

when you teach it.

It is also important to mention that even if a person is not a fluent speaker

of a language—say, an intermediate student of ESL—they still have linguistic competence, and therefore
some intuition about the language. As language

learners become more and more proficient in the language, they develop more

targetlike intuitions that tell them that something sounds right or wrong in the

target language. This is important because it gives a lot of credit to the language learner. Your
intermediate student might not have the complexity that

your advanced students have in their language, but they have some linguistic

competence—knowledge about the layers of language—that allows them to

then build on it.

1.5 Myths and Truths About Human Language

Before we delve further into the layers of language, it is important for teachers

to be aware of the common myths and misconceptions of language. Because

language is such a pervasive part of human life, it is easy for these myths and

misconceptions to start, spread, and become ingrained in our systems of belief.

Next we discuss a few that are especially relevant for language teachers.

Myth 1: Some languages are not as developed as others. Myths like this

one stem from people’s lack of understanding of the complexity of languages.

People usually make this kind of comment regarding languages that are spoken

by minority groups or indigenous peoples. The fact is, all languages have all

of the layers of languages we discussed, but some of these languages that are

less powerful in society are not studied as often, and therefore misunderstood

8 The Components of Language

to be less developed. By claiming that a language (or dialect or creole) is not as

developed as another language, we fail to recognize the systematic complexities that the language has. It
not only belittles the language but it also belittles
the people who speak it. As an objective study of language, linguistics shows

us that despite social hierarchies amongst languages, every single one has a

system of rules governing its sounds, structure, meaning, and use.

Myth 2: We need to preserve language to keep it from changing. You may

have heard (or said!) such statements as “young people are ruining the language” or “people don’t speak
correctly anymore”. There tends to be negative

reactions to languages changing. However, all languages change over time.

What we know as modern-day English is nothing like Old English or Middle

English; if you went back in time and found people that speak Middle English,

you would not be able to understand them at all. The fact is, all languages

change over time. Why? Language is human behavior, and human behavior—

as we well know—changes all the time. People sometimes feel threatened by

changes in their language and believe that it is our job to maintain that “integrity”. Try as we may,
language change is a natural process that has been ongoing since the beginning of human language. The
only time that a language does

not change is when there are no speakers left.

Myth 3: We need to teach students the correct way to speak and write. While

there are some varieties of languages that are more accepted by academic and

professional communities, there is no such thing as one correct way to speak

and write. Even the so-called newscaster dialect varies regionally. In fact, language variation—or
different people saying things differently—is as normal

as people who have different skin color or different hair types. Of course, it is

important to demonstrate to students that there are certain varieties or styles

that are more expected for academic purposes, but it is equally important for

students to learn that using that same variety and style could ostracize them in

social situations. You would not greet a friend the same way you would write

an email to your boss’s boss. Rather than teaching students the idea of correctness, it is more in their
best interest to expose them to a wide variety of the

ways that people actually use language.

1.6 Descriptive Linguistics

This brings us to descriptive linguistics. We have said before that linguists

study languages scientifically and objectively—or essentially, describe the language as it is. This is what
descriptive linguistics is: a scientific and objective

description of language. In contrast, prescriptive linguistics tells people what

is proper or improper language and how they should use the language—they

prescribe what people should be doing. Some examples of prescriptive rules

you may have heard are as follows:

Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.

Use nominative pronouns after the verb to be.

The Components of Language 9

Prescriptive grammar rules are like social etiquette rules. They have the tenor

of proper rules for society, like Don’t put your elbows on the table or Dishes

should be passed counterclockwise. The problem with these prescriptive grammar rules (and maybe
etiquette rules as well) is that they do not describe what

people actually do. People end sentences with prepositions all the time, and not

ending the sentences with a preposition might make you sound overly formal

or stilted.

What are you looking for? vs. For what are you looking?

Who’d you talk to? vs. To whom did you talk?

Using nominative pronouns after the verb to be makes you sound overly

grandiose.

It’s me. vs. It is I.

If we encourage our students to follow the prescriptive rules, they will quickly

realize that other speakers of the target language do not use it except in the

most formal cases. If they use a sentence like To whom did you talk? to a

friend or knock on the door and announce It is I, they will likely fall victim to

some light mocking. That is the danger of prescriptive rules and prescriptivism. Instead, by describing the
way people actually use language—in informal,

neutral, and formal contexts—students are able to learn the complex nature of

how their target language functions in real life.

1.7 How to Use This Book

What will this book do for you? At its core, this book is an introduction to

linguistics. But unlike many intro books, this one is specifically written and

tailored for language teachers, especially ESL, bilingual, world language, and

heritage language educators. Because this book is designed for teachers, the

lens through which we look at linguistics is through that of language acquisition and teaching. As we
delve further into each layer of language, we will

highlight areas that are especially pertinent for language learning and teaching,

as well as areas that learners might struggle with in each layer.

This book is not a how-to for teaching language. Rather, this book trains language teachers to be linguists
themselves. This entails two major skills. The first

is to train language teachers to observe language objectively, looking at it “in

the wild” as it is used by actual speakers. As we explore the topics of each chapter, the exercises and
activities at the end of each chapter may ask you to think

of examples from the language(s) you speak and/or teach, and also examples

from students learning the target language. Secondly, the book will train you to

analyze language. It is quite helpful for teachers to be able to identify patterns

in language and use them to help students understand how the language works,

as well as identify patterns in the students’ errors so teachers can address them

10 The Components of Language

and use them to inform their teaching. With these two skills—objective observation and language
analysis—the linguist-teacher can really get at the heart

of what makes the target language tick, and how to get their students to the

next level.

Additionally, this book is not a description of one single language. It considers all languages, and the
concepts and skills you learn are meant to serve as

a gateway. If you want to study the phonetics of Nahuatl, the syntax of Greek,

or the pragmatics of Inuktitut, you will be able to do that. This book will have

given you the basic tools to pursue further study into the topics you are interested in. If you get a
student in your class who speaks a language you have

never heard of (don’t be embarrassed, this is very common), you will have the
skills to read academic texts and learn more about how that language works. If

you are not sure why your French students are having trouble with grammatical gender and want to read
about how you can help them, this book will have

prepared you to crack that literature.

And if you are a language lover at heart—you love how meaning is created, you love new sounds, you
love diagramming sentences—then this book

will open your eyes to patterns in the languages you hear all around you that

you may have never noticed before. This book can be used as a main text or

as a supplementary text in linguistics courses in teacher education programs.

At the end of each chapter, Further Reading will direct readers to additional

resources, and Exercises will reinforce the concepts reviewed. In addition,

the Voices From the Classroom boxes found in every chapter feature firsthand accounts of teachers who
have used their knowledge of linguistics to help

language learners. The Glossary at the end of the book lists key words and

phrases, which are bolded the first time they are used in the text