Week 8: Levels of Stylistic Analysis

-Levels cont...

In studying language which is the subject-matter of linguistics, we mark or sub-divide the area in order to study it in an analytical and systematic way. Language has a hierarchical structure. This means that it is made up of units which are themselves made up of smaller units which are made of still smaller units till we have the smallest indivisible unit, i.e. a single distinguishable sound, called a phoneme. Or we can put it the other way round, and say that single sounds or phonemes combine together to make larger units of sounds, these combine into a larger meaningful unit called a morpheme; morphemes combine to form larger units of words, and words combine to form a large unit or sentence and several sentences combine or interconnect to make a unified piece of speech or writing, which we call a text or discourse.

 

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