The Dutch language consists of a huge number of words, letters, sounds and sound pieces. Each word has its own spelling. All sounds, letters and many words should be offered to primary school students. For them it is a challenge to understand Dutch grammar. The teachers give the lessons on the basis of the components of linguistics and therefore also the language levels. The different parts of linguistics are: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics and orthography.
Phonology – Phonological level
Phonology revolves around phonetics and the pronunciation of words. This concerns the word accent, the intonation and the rules for the order of the words in a sentence.
Phonemes are very important in phonology. A phoneme is a speech sound with a difference in meaning. For example, the phonemes ‘h’ and ‘g’ make the difference in the words ‘here’ and ‘vulture’. Phonemes are also called the smallest elements of the language.
Morphology – Morphological level
Morphology is mainly about the structure of the words. Words are made up of small pieces, also called morphemes. One morpheme is a small excerpt from a word that has a meaning in itself. For example, the word “enraged” has two morphemes: “envy” and “ig”. The language distinguishes between free and bound morphemes. A free morpheme is a morpheme that you can use as a word without any other morphemes. Thus the words horse, house, flour and small are free morphemes. A bound morpheme is a morpheme where something must always come before or after. It is not a word in itself. For example, be-, ver, and the -t in bicycles are bound morphemes.
Some words can be divided in free morphemes in two ways. For example, you can read the word bomb threat as ‘bomb thing’ or as ‘bomb message’. You can also divide ‘pilslicker’ into two free morphemes, ‘pill swallow’ or ‘pilslicker’.
Syntax – Syntax level
Syntax is about sentence structure. This involves looking at the grammatical way of constructing a sentence. Before you write down ‘you / your’, you need to know if it is about someone’s possession or if it is about someone. So you need the rest of the sentence to know how to write it. This also applies to the verb spelling of the word ‘finds’, for example.
Semantics – Semantic level
Semantics is about the meaning of the words. So it is not about the building blocks of the language, but more about the meaning behind the words. There are several concepts that indicate the relationship between words:
- Antonyms: two words with opposite meanings, for example: dead – alive, big – small and sister – brother
- Synonyms: two words with the same meaning, for example bicycle – bicycle.
- Hyponyms: word whose meaning is also covered by another word with a broader meaning. You also use the word ‘fruit’ for ‘mango’.
Pragmatics – Pragmatic level
The pragmatic level is about the use of words in a given situation. Some words cannot be used in certain situations and other words you can. If all goes well, you don’t just use ‘Get out’, but the word ‘I’ is used in almost every conversation. The pragmatic level is therefore about the rules of conversation. For example, you often say ‘you’ to the elderly.
Orthography – Orthographic level
Orthography mainly revolves around the spelling of the written language. For example, the spoken language that is displayed in characters is looked at. You look at the different language levels. When writing the word ‘closet + je’, you first look at the morphological level. You know that the word consists of ‘closet’ and ‘you’.
You use the semantic level when you want to write down the words ‘May’ and ‘Suffering’. You must first know the meaning before you know how to write it. The syntactic level is also used for the orthographic level. Do you write ‘your’ or ‘you’ and ‘find’ or ‘find’?
At the orthographic level, you have to consider homophones and homographs:
- Homophones: Words sound the same but you write them differently (May – me and she – said).
- Homographs: spelling of words the same but different pronunciation (regent, walk through).