Final answer:
The spelling system in languages like English represents both phonemes and morphemes, meaning that it corresponds to sounds as well as units of meaning. This is true because words are made from letters that reflect specific sounds and morphemes carrying semantic content within the language. Option a) True is the correct answer.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that its spelling system represents meaningful parts (morphemes) as well as sounds could be considered true. In the English language system, and many others, words are constructed using a combination of phonetic sounds, known as phonemes, and meaningful units called morphemes. The English alphabet, for example, is made up of twenty-six letters, which come together to form over 600,000 recognized words. Each letter or combination of letters corresponds to specific sounds and can also reflect various morphemes, which are the smallest units of meaning within a language. However, while some languages like English have a relatively straightforward correlation between sounds and letters, others, such as Mandarin Chinese, rely heavily on tone and inflection to convey different meanings.
Furthermore, written language is not only a direct representation of spoken language but also includes semantic and syntactic rules that help to convey meaning, such as the ordering of words in a sentence and the use of specific word forms to signal grammatical relationships. While the primary role of a spelling system is to represent sounds, it unavoidably also represents morphemes because it is the morphemes that carry semantic content. Therefore, the spelling of a word provides clues to both its pronunciation and its meaning.