Stratificational ordering

The name stratificational ordering is intended to suggest that a language has several layers of structure. These may be thought of as existing on top of one another, as it were. In a stratificational framework one views the entire structure as present at one time, and one encounters different structural layers or levels instead of different derivational periods in a fictional time span. We speak of these various levels as differing from one another in height. Higher levels are closer to meaning, lower levels are closer to expression.