How To Survive The Language Structure and Linguistics Section Of The CSET

If you are studying for the CSET Multiple Subjects exam you need to know a little about language structure and linguistics. If you are studying for the CSET English, I think you should review this lesson as well. There will be no CSET practice test on this lesson. Instead, you will spend extra time watching language structure and linguistics videos at the end of this lesson. I recommend that you have a notepad and pencil handy to take notes from the videos.

Phonology

Phonology is the field of linguistics that deals with the sound systems of languages. Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages. Put simple, Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in languages.

The phonological system of a language includes: 1) an inventory of sounds and their features, and 2) rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.

Phonology identifies distinctive units within a language. For example, the words gin and bin consist of three segments, with only the first differing. Phonologists may refer to these first units as different phonemes, and the contrast between /g/ and /b/ as phonemic – the two words are a minimal pair differing by only one phoneme. A minimal pair is a pair of words from the same language, that differ by only a single sound, and that are recognized by speakers as being two different words.

If two similar sounds do not belong to separate phonemes, they are called allophones of the same underlying phoneme. For instance, voiceless stops (/p/, /t/, /k/) can be aspirated. In English, voiceless stops at the beginning of a stressed syllable (but not after /s/) are aspirated, whereas after /s/ they are not aspirated. This can be seen by putting the fingers right in front of the lips and noticing the difference in breathiness in saying ‘pin’ versus ‘spin’.

Morphology

Morphology is the field of linguistics that studies the internal structure of words. For example, English speakers recognize that the words dish, dishes, and dishwasher are closely related because of their knowledge of the rules of word-formation in English. The rules understood by the speaker reflect specific patterns (or regularities) in the way words are formed from smaller