Question

Discuss lexicons, phonology, grammar and syntax as they relate to dialects.

Answer 1

Lexicon is the vocabulary of the person language and a complete set of meaningful units in a language.

Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages. Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics.

Grammar is the set of structural rules governing the composition of clauses, phrases and words in a natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules and this field includes phonology, morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, semantics and pragmatics.

syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences (sentence structure) in a given language, usually including word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes.

Dialect, a variety of a language that signals where a person comes from. The notion is usually interpreted geographically (regional dialect), but it also has some application in relation to a person’s social background (class dialect) or occupation (occupational dialect). The word dialect comes from the Ancient Greek dialektos “discourse, language, dialect,” which is derived from dialegesthai “to discourse, talk.” A dialect is chiefly distinguished from other dialects of the same language by features of linguistic structure—i.e., grammar(specifically morphology and syntax) and vocabulary. In morphology (word formation), various dialects in the Atlantic states have clim, clum, clome, or cloome instead of climbed, and, in syntax (sentence structure), there are “sick to his stomach,” “sick at his stomach,” “sick in,” “sick on,” and “sick with.” On the level of vocabulary, examples of dialectal differences include American Englishsubway, contrasting with British English underground; and corn, which means “maize” in the United States, Canada, and Australia, “wheat” in England, and “oats” in Scotland. Nevertheless, while dialects of the same language differ, they still possess a common core of features.