1. Phonology: This is the study of sounds in language. It covers things like:
* Phonetics: The physical production and perception of sounds.
* Phonemes: The smallest units of sound that can distinguish meaning (e.g., /b/ vs. /p/ in "bat" vs. "pat").
* Prosody: The rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech.
2. Morphology: This focuses on word formation. It deals with:
* Morphemes: The smallest meaningful units of language (e.g., "un-", "-ing", "cat").
* Inflection: Adding suffixes or prefixes to change a word's tense, number, or other grammatical features (e.g., "walk" to "walking", "cat" to "cats").
* Derivation: Creating new words from existing ones (e.g., "happy" to "unhappy").
3. Syntax: This concerns the rules of sentence structure. It examines:
* Word order: How words are arranged in a sentence (e.g., Subject-Verb-Object in English).
* Phrases and Clauses: How words combine into larger units of meaning.
* Grammatical relations: How words relate to each other in a sentence (e.g., subject, object, verb).
4. Semantics: This is the study of meaning in language. It covers:
* Lexical meaning: The literal meaning of words.
* Sentence meaning: The meaning of a complete sentence.
* Figurative language: Metaphors, idioms, and other non-literal language.
Important Note: These four components are interrelated and work together to create a coherent and meaningful language system. Some grammarians might include other components like Pragmatics (the study of language in context) or Discourse Analysis (the study of larger units of language, like conversations and texts) as well.