The phrase in the hierarchy of language units Contents Introduction

1.2 A hierarchy of linguistic units
There is a hierarchy of linguistic units: sentences are the top - coherent sequences of words
which express the intended meaning. Morphemes - the smallest language unit that carry
meaning, some standalone other give meaning such as the past-tense morpheme 'ed'.
Phonemes: conveyed by sounds and are the smallest unit of sound that helps distinguish
words in language
The larynx consists of two flaps of muscular tissue, known as the vocal folds (or vocal cords,
despite them not being like chords at all), which open and close rapidly to produce a buzzing
vibration known as voicing.
Different sounds are produced in different ways, the first distinction can be made according
to how the airflow is restricted, which is known as manner of production. Another distinction
is where the airflow is restricted, which is known as the place of articulation.
The first step to identifying the different phonemes is through speech segmentation, which
means to split the stream of speech into appropriate segments.
Another element of speech production is coarticulation which refers to the overlap of
phonemes. For example, we say the letter [s] in ‘soup’, our mouth is already preparing for
the specific vowel following it. This would be different for the word ‘salad’ as there is a
different vowel following the letter [s].
it has been estimated that the 50 most commonly used words in English make up more than
half of the words we actually hear. The perception of speech, like many other perceptions, is supplemented with our own
knowledge. This is demonstrated in the phonemic restoration effect, which occurs when the
context of a word is used in order to deduce the words itself.
Speech perception benefits from categorical perception, which means that we are easier
able to detect differences between [g] and [k] as opposed to [d] and [t]. Language has a high generatively, meaning it has a capacity to create an endless series of
new combinations, all built from the same set of fundamental units.!
There are millions of possible sentences that can be made in the English language and all fit a
certain set of standards. These are the rules of syntax, meaning the rules governing the
sequence of words in a phrase or sentence. We can still create sentences that don't make
sense but are grammatically correct
The phrase structure rules. These suggest the elements that must appear in a sentence and
the designated order. They can be depicted, in a tree structure, with two different phrases:
(1) the noun phrase (NP), and (2) the verb phrase (VP).
Occasionally a sentence can be interpreted in two ways due to its phrase structure
ambiguity. For example: “He wants to discuss sex with Jay Leno.” Or “I saw the gorilla in my
pyjamas.”
We must be able to parse a sentence, meaning to figure out each word’s syntactic role.
Instead of waiting until the full sentence has been formed, we already start parsing the
words as we hear them, figuring out their role the moment they arrive.
When participants’ eye movements are examined whilst reading ambiguous sentences their
eyes backtrack when they incorrectly interpret a word and then they go back to check where
they went wrong.
Another important aspect in the parsing of sentences is the extralinguistic context, which is
the physical and social setting in which we encounter the specific sentences.