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. One part of grammar, known as syntax , consists of rules for word order in sentences.
Syntax is important because rearranging words almost alwyas changes the meaning of a sentence.
Linguist Noam Chomsky argues that we do not learn all athe sentences we might ever say. The man was bitten by the dog. Productive, meaningful arrangement . The third, perhaps most essential charactaeristic of language is that it is productive . The great strength of any true language is that it can produce new thoughts or ideas.