Levels of Analysis: Phonetic, Syntactic, Semantic, Pragmatic

Levels of analysis

1. Phonetics: This is considered to be the level of sounds. One must be able to distinguish between the set of possible human sound which constitutes the area of proper phonetics and the set of system sound which is used in a given human language which constitutes the area of phonology. The phenomenon termed as Phonology is concerned with classifying the sound of language and along with saying how the subset used in a particular language is utilized for instance what distinctions in meaning can be made on the basis of what sounds.
   
   
   
2. Morphology: This is named as the level of words and endings whose task is to put it in the simplified terms. It is what one normally understands by grammar along with the syntax. The term morphology refers to the analysis of minimal forms in the language which are however comprised of the sound itself and which are used to construct words which have either a grammatical or a lexical function
   
   
3. Syntax: This is referred to as the level of sentences. It is concerned with the meanings of words in combination with each other in order to form phrases or sentences. In particular, it involves the differences in meaning which are arrived at by the changes in word order, the addition or subtraction of words from sentences or changes in the form of sentences. Furthermore, it deals with the relatedness of different types of sentences and with the analysis of ambiguous sentences.
   
   
4. Semantics: This is said to be the area of meaning. It might be thought that semantics is covered by the areas of morphology and syntax but it is quickly visible that this level needs to be studied on its own to have a proper perspective on meaning in the language. Here one touches however on every other level of language practically as well as there exists lexical, grammatical, sentence and utterance meaning.
   
   
5. Pragmatics: The concern here is with the use of language in specific situations. The meaning of sentences does not need to be the same in an abstract form and in practical use. In the latter case, one speaks of an utterance meaning. The area of pragmatics relies strongly for its analyses on the notion of speech act which is concerned with the actual performance of language. This involves the notion of the proposition which is roughly the content of a sentence and the intent and effect of an utterance.

References:

1. Elaine Rich, Kevin Knight 1991, "Artificial Intelligence".
2. Nilsson, Nils J. Principles of Artificial Intelligence, Narosa Publishing House New Delhi, 1998.
3. Norvig, Peter & Russel, Stuart Artificial Intelligence: A modern Approach, Prentice Hall, NJ, 1995
4. Patterson, Dan W. Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, Prentice Hall of India Private Limited New Delhi, 1998.