The Structure of Language . Introduction to Psychology, Exploration and Application. 1. Symbols . First, a language must provide symbols that can stand for objects and ideas. Basic speech sounds.
Speech sounds collected into meaningful units, such as syllables or words.
The sounds m, b, w, and a cannot form a syllable mbwa in English, but in Swahili they can. The units of speech can be arranged in countless ways. Consider the possibilities with just four morphemes reach, to, able, and un. From these, we can make able to, unable to, reach to, to reach, able to reach, unable to reach, reachable, unreachable, reachable to, unreachable to , unto, unto Able. 2. Secondly, a language must have a grammar, or set of rules, for making sounds into words and words into sentences.