Date post: | 18-Aug-2015 |
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Three questions that Linguistics tries to
answer.1) What is language?2) How does language work?3) How does human language differ from animal communication?
Three differences between human language and animal
communication.
1) Connection between the signal and the message sent.
2) Creativity3) Patterning
8 design features of language.
1) Use of sound signals2) Arbitrariness3) Need for learning4) Duality5) Displacement6) Creativity7) Patterning8) Structure dependence
Duality is the organization of language in a layer of sounds which combine into a layer of
larger units.
True
Linguistics is different from traditional grammar in the
sense that linguists regard the spoken language as primary,
rather than the written.
True
When animals vocally imitate human utterances, they possess
language.False.Even though animals are capable of faithfully reproduce words and phrases, their expressions carry no meaning to them.
What's the design feature displacement
about?It is about the ability to discuss objects and events that are removed in time and place.
How does Linguistics differ from Traditional
Grammar?• Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
• Linguistics regard the spoken language as primary, rather than the written.
• Linguistics does not force languages into a Latin-based framework.
What's one similarity between human language and animal
communication?
They are both predestined to emerge.
What other branches (besides phonetics, phonology, morpho-
syntax, semantics and pragmatics) does Linguistics
have? Mention at least 3.• Psycholinguistics• Sociolinguistics• Applied linguistics• Computational linguistics• Stylistics• Anthropological linguistics• Philosophical linguistics.
Consider these two statements:
"I learned a new word today.""I learned a new sentence today.“Do you think the two statements are equally probable? If not, why?
A wolf is able to express subtle gradations of emotion by different positions of the ears, the lips and the tails. There are eleven postures of the tail that express self-confidence, lack of tension, depression, defensiveness, etc.Suppose that there were a thousand different emotions that the wolf could express in this way. Would you then say a wolf had a language similar to human's? If not, why not?
Although sounds and meaning of most words in all languages are arbitrarily related, there are some communication systems in which the "signs" unambiguously reveal their "meaning".
Describe different signs that directly show what they mean.
Historical LinguisticsHistorical Linguistics
Diachronic Linguistics
Comparative Linguistics
• Study of phonological, grammatical and semantic changes
• Reconstruction of early stages of language
• Application of methods to find genetic relationships among languages
Sir William JonesSir William Jones
Father of Linguistics1786
Indo-European Languages
Certain languages spoken from India to the European Atlantic shores recognized as belonging to one particular branch of the evolutionary tree of languages Protolanguage
The NeogrammariansThe NeogrammariansJunggrammatiker
1870
Hermann OsthoffAugust Leskien Hermann Paul Karl Brugmann
• Historical linguists
• Classical scholars
• They formulated sound correpondences in the Indo-European languages SOUND LAWS
“A sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception”
Example: in Italian, the phoneme /s/ can be pronounced as /z/ when surrounded by two vowels.
/s/ /z/ V_V casa Fusillo cosa
The Comparative MethodThe Comparative Method
Rasmus Rask Karl Verner Jacob Grimm
Technique for studying the development of languages by comparing feature-by-feature aspects of language to find a common ancestor.
Italian Galician Portuguese Maorinome nome nome
ingoapesce pesce peixeikadue dous dois ruanotte noite noitepo
Closely related
Related, less closely
unrelated
Portuguese
Galician Italian
nearer common ancestorGalaico-
Portuguese
common ancestorVulgar Latin
Language Family Tree
Galaico-Portuguese Latin
ATTESTED LANGUAGES
Surviving records
Documents written in those languages
* If the language can’t be attested, then the process of reconstruction is used.
TaskTask
In pairs, make a chart containing the following information:
Historical Linguistics
Key figures Ideas/thoughts/Major work