ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by observing that all human languages have two co-existing structures: a phonological structure and a morphosyntactic structure. It discusses how languages vary in the extent to which they allow particular kinds of structure to be 'seen', or observed. The chapter explains what is meant by morphosyntactic structure and then moves on to a thought experiment in which students are invited to imagine a world without phonological structure, a mental exercise that is intended to make them see more clearly what it is. Its independence from the morphosyntactic structure is brought out by another thought experiment, in which it imagines a world where all languages have the same phonological structure. The chapter makes the point that all languages have phonological structures, but that sign languages express their phonological elements visually, as manual and facial gestures, rather than acoustically.
