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In linguistic theory several levels of language and speech are discriminated. They are the phoneme, the morpheme, the word, and the sentence. The phoneme is the smallest distinctive unit. The morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit. The word is the smallest naming unit. The sentence is the smallest communication unit. The phoneme, the morpheme, the word, and the sentence are units of different levels of language structure.
The phoneme is a unit of the lowest level, the sentence - of the highest.
The units of each level can be analyzed as to their inner structure, the classes they belong to in the language system (their paradigmatic relations), and the combinations they form in speech (their syntagmatic relations).
We must also discriminate the terms language and speech. The structure of various units and the classes they form (paradigmatic relations) are the domain of language, while the combinations they form in the process of communication (syntagmatic relations) are the sphere of speech. Language and speech are interdependent and interpenetrating.
The structure, classification and combinability of phonemes is studied by a branch of linguistics called phonology.
The structure, classification and combinability of words is the object of morphology.
Syntax deals with the structure, classification and combinability of
sentences.
The 1st level is formed by phonemes, the smallest material lingual elements, or segments. They have form, but they have no meaning. Phonemes differentiate the meanings of morphemes and words. E.g.: man – men.
The 2nd level is composed of morphemes, the smallest meaningful elements built up by phonemes. The shortest morpheme can consist of one phoneme, e.g.: step-s; -s renders the meaning of the 3rd person singular form of the verb, or, the plural form of the noun. The meaning of the morpheme is abstract and significative: it does not name the referent, but only signifies it.
The 3rd level consists of words, or lexemes, nominative lingual units, which express direct, nominative meanings: they name, or nominate various referents. The words consist of morphemes, and the shortest word can include only one morpheme, e.g.: cat. The difference is in the quality of the meaning.
The 4th le vel is formed by word-combinations, or phrasemes, the combinations of two or more notional words, which represent complex nominations of various referents (things, actions, qualities, and even situations) in a sentence, e.g.: a beautiful girl, their sudden departure. In a more advanced treatment, phrases along with separate words can be seen as the constituents of sentences, notional parts of the sentence, which make the fourth language level and can be called “denotemes”.
The 5th level is the level of sentences, or proposemes, lingual units which name certain situations, or events, and at the same time express predication, i.e. they show the relations of the event named to reality - whether the event is real or unreal, desirable or obligatory, stated as a fact or asked about, affirmed or negated, etc., e.g.: Their departure was sudden (a real event, which took place in the past, stated as a fact, etc.). Thus, the sentence is often defined as a predicative lingual unit. The minimal sentence can consist of just one word, e.g.: Fire!
The 6th level is formed by sentences in a text or in actual speech. Textual units are traditionally called supra-phrasal unities; we will call such supra-sentential constructions, which are produced in speech, dictemes (from Latin ‘dicto’ ‘I speak’). Dictemes are characterized by a number of features, the main one of which is the unity of topic. As with all lingual units, dictemes are reducible to one unit of the lower level; e.g., the text of an advertisement slogan can consist of just one sentence: Just do it!; or, a paragraph in a written text can be formed by a single independent sentence, being topically significant.
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