How the Language Is Made Up

A language is not just a conglomeration of words. It is a complex system of mental organisation, with structures and systems flowing one into the other. Each section of the organisation depends upon other sections, and is in part determined by them. Grammar provides the infrastructure, and lexical words fill grammatical slots. The resulting product enables people to communicate – to work together, to compose songs and stories, to construct scientific argumentation, to express their emotions, and many things besides. It is a little like a physical organisation. There will be sectors for purchasing raw materials, for manufacturing, for packaging, for sales, for advertising, and so on. Each sector is linked to the others. The salespeople provide feedback to packaging on what appeals most to customers. Advertising extols the purity of the raw materials used. Within the organisation there are people – filling roles, doing jobs, checking, and planning. It would not be informative to say that the company consists essentially of a set of people, with an organisation being built around them. It is the organisation that is prior, and suitable people are chosen to make it work. Similarly for language. It would not be informative to state that a story, say, consists of a collection of words with grammar being wrapped around them. The story has a structure. Connected paragraphs are made up of coordinated sentences, each with predicate and subject; the latter will have a central element (the head) and an optional set of modifiers. Lexical words are chosen to fill slots in the structure (a bit like people in the manufacturing company). As an illustration, there are two basic grammatical frames in which adjectives may occur: after the copula verb be (this is called ‘copula complement’ function) and modifying a noun within a noun phrase. Happy and content are adjectives with similar meanings. But to know how to use them properly, one must be aware of how they operate within the overall grammatical organisation of the language. Happy is used in both frames: The manager was happy with the decision reached She was a happy manager In contrast, content occurs as copula complement: The manager was content with the decision reached But content may not be used to modify a noun; that is, it is not acceptable to say ♦ She was a content manager .