Fundamentals of language structure and use

Abstract

This article provides an overview of some fundamental aspects of language structure and use. The aim is to set the stage for subsequent articles that discuss what has been learned so far about how these and other aspects of language are implemented in the brain. The scope, however, is restricted to spoken languages, since sign languages and writing systems are addressed in other articles. Human languages have unparalleled expressive power because they involved the following structural-combinatorial systems: phonology, which deals with categories of speech sounds; morphology, which deals with the structure of words; syntax, which deals with the structure of phrases and sentences; and semantics, which deals with the meanings of morphemes, words, phrases, and sentences. Another important branch of linguistics is pragmatics, which deals with language use in real interactive situations. The article concludes by briefly describing constructions, which are essentially form-meaning pairs, with each level of structure varying in both complexity and schematicity. Constructionist approaches to language now dominate the field, but so far they have largely been neglected by researchers in neurolinguistics. Hopefully, they will attract more attention in the future.