Always walk towards the light.
LICENSURE EXAMINATION REVIEWER  Intonation – the rise and fall of pitch which
ENGLISH MAJORSHIP
I. INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS
Scope of Linguistic Studies
1. Phonology – studies the combination of
sounds into organized units of speech, the
combination of syllables and larger units. It
describes the sound system of a particular
language and distribution of sounds which
occur in that language.
2. Phonetics – studies language at the level of
sounds: how sounds are articulated by the
human speech mechanism and received by
the auditory mechanism, as well as how
sounds can be distinguished and
characterized by the manner in which they
are produced.
3. Morphology – studies the patterns of forming
words by combining sounds into minimal
distinctive units of meaning called
morphemes.
4. Syntax – deals with how words combine to
form phrases, phrases to form clauses, and
clauses conjoin to make sentences.
5. Semantics – deals with the level of meaning in
language
6. Pragmatics – deals with the contextual
aspects of meaning in particular situations
7. Discourse – study of chunks of language
which are bigger than a single sentence
PHONOLOGY
 Phoneme – a distinctive, contrasted sound
unit
 Allophones – variants or other ways of
producing a phoneme
 Consonant Sounds – produced with some
restriction or closure in the vocal tract as the
air from the lungs is pushed through the
glottis out the mouth
 Vowels – produced with little obstruction in
the vocal tract and are generally voiced
 Suprasegmentals – prosodic properties that
form part of the makeup of sounds no matter
what their place or manner of articulation is
 Stress – a property of a syllable rather than a
segment. It is a cover term for a combined
effect of pitch, loudness and length --- the
result of which is vowel prominence; hence, it
refers to the relative prominence of syllables.
 Pitch – the auditory property of a sound that
enables us to place it on a scale that ranges
from low to high
Compiled and Prepared by GERALDINE S. BALUYAN
may contrast meanings of sentences.
 Juncture – the pauses or breaks between
syllables. It refers to the transition between
sounds.
MORPHOLOGY
 Morpheme – a short segment of language
that meets three criteria
a. A word or part of a word that has
meaning
b. Cannot be divided into smaller
meaningful parts without violation of
its meaning or without meaningless
remainders
c. Recurs in different words with a
relatively stable meaning
 Allomorphs – morphs which belong to the
same morpheme
 Free morphemes – those that can stand
on their own as independent words
 Bound morphemes – those that cannot
stand on their own as independent words
 Inflectional morphemes – those that
never change the form class of the words
or morphemes to which they are attached
 Derivational morphemes – those that are
added to root morphemes or stems to
derive new words
 Word-Formation Processes
o Derivation – involves the addition
of a derivational affix, changing
the syntactic category of the item
to which it is attached (e.g.,
discern (V) – discernment (N)
o Category extension – involves the
extension of a morpheme from
one syntactic category to another.
This involves creating a new word
by combining two free
morphemes (e.g., sunset;
drugstore)
o Root Creation - a brand new word
based on no pre-existing
morphemes (e.g., Colgate; Xerox)
o Blend – a combination of parts of
two pre-existing forms (e.g., smog
<smoke + fog)
o Clipped Form – a shortened form
of a pre-existing forms (e.g., gym
<gymnasium)
o Acronym – formed from the first
letter(s) of each word in a phrase
 Always walk towards the light.
(e.g., NASA <National Aeronautics
and Space Administration)
o Proper Name – forms a word from
a proper name (e.g., hamburger
<Hamburg (Germany)
o Compounding – creating new
word by combining two free
morphemes (e.g., sunset;
drugstore)
 Morphophonemic Processes – produce a
great deal of linguistic variability
o Assimilation - process that results
from a sound becoming more like
another nearby sound in terms of
one or more of its phonetic
characteristics; a process in which
segments take on the
characteristics of neighboring
sounds
o Dissimilation – a process that
results in two sounds becoming
less alike in articulatory or
acoustic terms; a process in which
units which occur in some
contexts are ‘lost’ in others
o Deletion – a process that removes
a segment from certain phonetic
contexts
o Epenthesis – a process that inserts
a syllable or a nonsyllabic
segment within an existing string
of segment
o Metathesis – a process that
reorders or reverses a sequence
of segments; it occurs when two
segments in a series switch places

Compiled and Prepared by GERALDINE S. BALUYAN