Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis is defined in three ways language beyond the level of a sentence, behaviors to social practices and as a system of thought. 

 For example language above the level of a sentence, ‘one day her mother said to her, “come, Little Red Cap, take this piece of cake and bottle of wine and bring them your grandmother.”(Little Red Riding Hood. By J. and W. Grimm). Discourse as a social practice, discourses of peace, food, medical, etc. Additionally written, spoken example are abbreviations in modern language.

Original text	Modern text
Thanks, I’m doing great!	Thx, I’m doin gr8!
It’s going to be a great night.	It’s gonna b a greaaat nite. J

Discourse in a visual context 

sources:

 http://www.slideshare.net/guestfca522/how-to-do-a-discourse-analysis

http://thesubsystemsoflanguage.tumblr.com/

http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/discourse-analysis-what-speakers-do-conversation

http://waucondastore.com/discourse-analysis-z-harris/

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers such as words, phrases, sign and symbols and what they stand for, their denotation. For example ‘a water pill could be a pill with water in it, but it is understood to be a diuretic that causes a person to lose water from his body.  Another example is ‘some see the glass half empty and other see the glass half full’. 

Semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition and of language change. Key in the study, of understanding language in social contexts.

The area of study semantics includes the study of how meaning is constructed, interpreted, clarified, obscured, illustrated, simplified, negotiated, contradicted and paraphrased.

sources:
http://www.semanticsarchive.net/
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/semantic
http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/semantics.htm

Syntax

Syntax the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. The term syntax is also used to refer to the rules that make up the sentence structure of an individual language. Some key terms to comprehend are deep and surface structure. Surface structure is the syntactic form words can take as actual sentences. It is forms of sentences resulted from modification and transformation.

For example

 1. You close the door

2. The door is closed by you.

 3. Close the door!

The first sentence is active, second is passive, and the last is imperative. However if u take a closer look, you will find that they are very closely related. They have the same underlying representation that is called deep structure. 

describes constituency in depth and phrases - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOLYcO-So_c

Symbols used in syntactic description

Sources:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/syntax
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook/
http://www.slideshare.net/

Lexicology

Lexicology is the study of the form, meaning and behavior of words, stock of words (the lexicon). Lexicology works with simple as well as complex words in all their aspects. Some key terms are lexicon(stock of words), lexeme(basic unit of the lexicon),  lexicography(process of compiling a dictionary), lexicographer(author or editor of a dictionary). An example of a lexeme dealing with words is the words eat, eats, eating, ate, eaten are forms of the lexeme EAT. An issue that sometimes arises is whether bring and brought are two separate words. We shall say that they are two separate word-forms, but that they represent one lexeme.

Since these units must be analysed in their form and meaning, lexicology relies on derived information from morphology, and semantics and phonology. This directly correlates with the process of representing the existence of a word, orthographic method, morphological method, lexical method and semantic method.

Each lexicon includes other information such as whether it is a noun a pronoun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, a preposition, or a conjunction. According to the way they function words are normally classified into two classes, Open-class words and Close-class words.

check out for more info -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LppcFSF3Iq0

    sources:
http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicologyterm.htm
http://www.ciil-ebooks.net/html/lexico/link4.htm
http://grammar.about.com/od/il/g/lexicologyterm.htm
http://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elltankw/history/Vocab/A.htm

Morphology

In linguistics, Morphology is the identification, analyses and description of the structure of given language morphemes, as well as other linguistic units such a root words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation and stresses or implied context. The aim of morphology is the describe the form of words in language, it pins down the principles for relating the form and meaning of morphological expressions.

 The two main branches of morphology are lexical or derivational morphology, these studies the way in which new items of vocabulary can be built up out of combinations of elements (as in the case of in-destruct-able). inflectional morphology studies the ways words vary in their form in order to express a grammatical contrast (as in the case of horses, where the ending marks plurality)." The study of morphology helps speakers to acquire the skills of using them creatively, and consequently express their emotions and thoughts with fluency.

Great information! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syjbhT45J14

Phonology

Phonology is a system of contrastive relationships among the speech sounds that constitute the basic components of a language. Phonology includes an assortment of sounds and their features, and rules which specify how sounds interact with each other. Analyses of the sound patterns of a certain language by figuring out which phonetic sounds are important and explaining how these sounds are actually heard by native speakers. There are two major branches of phonology, phonemics and phonetics. Phonemics is the narrow study of sounds for example the 'P' in 'speak' where as phonetics is the broader study of sounds for example the ‘P’ in ‘speak’ and ‘peak’.

Some of the essential terms in Phonology are Phonemes, allophones, minimal pairs, distinctive features, syllable structure, phonotactics, morphophonemics. These terms describe distinctive or contrastive sounds, difference between pairs of words and their phonetic properties and meanings.

Loudness
volume of speech can determine emotions.
a) GO AWAY!
b) I think, we should leave them alone.
tone is indirectly affected. 

Stress

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence.

1. The hot dogs run to the lake. (adjective - stress is on the  second syllable)
2. Dogs will run when frightened. (verb - stress is on the first syllable) 

 Phonology allows us to make up new words that "sound right" and also allows us to add sounds to make plurals, paste tense, etc. Additionally allows us to know what is and what is not a sounds in our own language.

Further information-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_69ATDAomLc




sources:
http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsPhonology.htm
http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/phonology.htm
http://www.dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Phonetics_and_Phonology/
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/linguistics-and-philosophy/24-910-topics-in-linguistic-theory-laboratory-phonology-spring-2007/24-910s07.jpg