Page 15 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 1: Introduction to Linguistics: Its Aspects

From the points of view of expression, The bachelor gave birth to a baby, (a nonsense sentence), Notes
is a well-formed utterance. The content plane deals with semantics, the study of meaning. The
study of expression-level is less complex than the study of content level. So the expression plane
of a language is usually analysed before the content plane.
On the content level substance means the whole mass of thoughts, emotions, feelings, ideas,
concept without reference to language or languages people use; and form means the abstract
structure of relationships which a particular language imposes on that underlying substance.
Language has, as stated above, two forms spoken and written. The substance of the spoken form
of language is sounds produced by human organs of speech. Since the spoken form of language
comes before its written form of language, the sounds are transferred into the shape of the visual
marks on paper, or wood, or stone, or metal, and these visible marks or graphs are the substance
of the written form of language. The former is the primary substance of language; the latter the
secondary substance.

Substance and form can be analysed on two planes: content plane and expression plane.
On the expression plane, linguistics deals with the form or shape of linguistic elements
without necessarily taking their meaning into account.

The form and substance distinction is the distinction between the system and the actual data,
between the theory and the actual utterance. By form we mean the various components of language
such as phonology, grammar, morphology and syntax. By substance we mean the elements that
fill these components, the elements such as phonemes, morphemes, graphemes. More explicitly,
for example, if nouns, phonemes, and imperatives and so on are the substances;
boy, John, /p/, /t/,/k/ and Get up are the instances of form. In other words, units of a language are
its form; systems of a language are substance.
‘Any meaningful utterance carried by a single intonation contour is termed a linguistic form.’ The
form is a network of the associations between sound and meaning. In its broadest sense, linguistic
form can refer to any meaningful sequence of phonemes, from the shortest prefix or suffix to the
longest sentence. The ‘substance’ of the content-plane is the whole mass of thoughts and emotions
common to mankind independently of the language they speak. It is a kind of vague conceptual
medium out of which meanings are formed in particular languages by convention.
1.4.5 Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic
The structure of a language, according to Saussure, can be segmented into two kinds of
relationships—the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic. “Combinations supported by linearity are
syntagms”. Words become a sentence because they are chained together. So syntagmatic relationship
is the combinatorial or chain relationship. For example, We can come tomorrow is a sentence
because in this linear arrangement of words we is correlated with can, can with come and so on.
The relationship is that of Pronoun + Auxiliary Verb + Main Verb + Temporal Adverb. This
relationship is restricted to certain orders. That is why come can tomorrow we is not a sentence.
“In the syntagm a term acquires its value because it stands in opposition to everything that
precedes or follows it, or to both.”. In the sentence cited above we is not what can is, can is not
what come is, and come is not what tomorrow is. Each of these words differ from all others.
The paradigmatic relationships are contrastive or choice relationships. Words that have something
in common, are associated in the memory, resulting in groups marked by diverse relations. For
example, the English word learning will unconsciously call to mind a host of other words—study,

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