Linguistics 101; Learning Basic Linguistics

7/29/2019 Linguistics 101; Learning Basic Linguistics

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FrenchLinguistics 101: An Introduction to the Study of Language

(Source: An Introduction to Languageby Victoria Fromkin andRobert Rodman, 6th Ed.)

Part One:Introduction to Linguistics

Every human knows at least one language, spoken orsigned.Linguisticsis the science of language, including thesounds, words, and grammar rules. Words in languages arefinite, but sentences are not. It is this creative aspect of humanlanguage that sets it apart from animal languages, which areessentially responses to stimuli.

The rules of a language, also called grammar, are learned asone acquires a language. These rules includephonology, the

sound system,morphology, the structure of words,syntax,the combination of words into sentences,semantics,thewaysin which sounds andmeaningsare related, andthelexicon, or mentaldictionary of words. When you know alanguage, you know words in that language, i.e. sound unitsthat are related to specificmeanings. However, the soundsandmeanings of wordsare arbitrary. For the most part, there isno relationship between the way a word is pronounced (orsigned) and its meaning.

Knowing a language encompasses this entire system, but thisknowledge (calledcompetence) is different from behavior

(calledperformance.) You may know a language, but you mayalso choose to not speak it. Although you are not speaking thelanguage, you still have the knowledge of it. However, if youdon't know a language, you cannot speak it at all.

There are two types of grammars: descriptive andprescriptive.Descriptive grammarsrepresent the unconsciousknowledge of a language. English speakers, for example, knowthat "me likes apples" is incorrect and "I like apples" is correct,although the speaker may not be able to explain why.Descriptive grammars do not teach the rules of a language, butrather describe rules that are already known. In

contrast,prescriptive grammarsdictate what a speaker'sgrammar should be and they include teaching grammars, whichare written to help teach a foreign language.

There are about 5,000 languages in the world right now (give ortake a few thousand), andlinguistshave discovered that theselanguages are more alike than different from each other. Thereare universal concepts and properties that are shared by all
http://www.ielanguages.com/french.htmlhttp://www.ielanguages.com/french.html


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languages, and these principles are contained in theUniversalGrammar, which forms the basis of all possible humanlanguages.

Part Two:Morphologyand Syntax

Morphemesare the minimal units of words that have ameaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two maintypes: free and bound. Free morphemes can occur alone andbound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. Anexample of a free morpheme is "bad", and an example of abound morpheme is "ly." It is bound because although it hasmeaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to anothermorpheme to produce a word.

Free morpheme: badBound morpheme: ly

Word: badly

When we talk about words, there are two groups:lexical(orcontent) andfunction(or grammatical) words. Lexical wordsare called open class words and include nouns, verbs,adjectives andadverbs. New words can regularly be added tothis group. Function words, or closed class words, areconjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns; and newwords cannot be (or are very rarely) added to this class.

Affixesare often the bound morpheme. This groupincludesprefixes, suffixes, infixes,andcircumfixes. Prefixes

are added to the beginning of another morpheme, suffixes areadded to the end, infixes are inserted into other morphemes,and circumfixes are attached to another morpheme at thebeginning and end. Following are examples of each of these:

Prefix: re- added todoproducesredoSuffix: -or added toeditproduceseditorInfix: -um- added tofikas(strong) producesfumikas(to bestrong) in BontocCircumfix: ge- and -t tolieb(love) producesgeliebt(loved) inGerman

There are two categories of affixes:derivational andinflectional. The main difference between the two is thatderivational affixes are added to morphemes to form newwords that may or may not be the same part of speech andinflectional affixes are added to the end of an existing word forpurely grammatical reasons. In English there are only eighttotal inflectional affixes:


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-s 3rd person singular present she waits

-ed past tense she waited

-ing progressive she's eating

-en past participle she has eaten

-s plural three apples

-'s possessive Lori's son

-er comparative you are taller

-est superlative you are the shortest

The other type of bound morphemes are called bound roots.These are morphemes (and not affixes) that must be attachedto another morpheme and do not have a meaning of their own.Some examples areceivein perceive andmitin submit.

English Morphemes

A. Free1. Open Class2. Closed Class

B. Bound1. Affix

a. Derivationalb. Inflectional

2. Root

There are six ways to form new words. Compoundsare acombination of words,acronymsare derived from the initials ofwords,back-formationsare created from removing what ismistakenly considered to be an affix,abbreviations orclippingsare shortening longer words,eponymsare createdfrom proper nouns (names), andblendingis combining parts ofwords into one.

Compound:doghouseAcronym:NBA(National Basketball Association)orscuba(self-contained underwater breathing apparatus)Back-formation:editfromeditor

Abbreviation:phonefromtelephoneEponym:sandwichfromEarl of SandwichBlending:smogfromsmoke and fog

Grammar is learned unconsciously at a young age. Ask anyfive year old, and he will tell you that "I eat" and "you eat," buthis "dog eats." But a human's syntactical knowledge goes


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farther than what is grammatical and what is not. It alsoaccounts for ambiguity, in which a sentence could havetwomeanings, and enables us to determine grammaticalrelationships such as subject and direct object. Although wemay not consciously be able to define the terms, we

unconsciously know how to use them in sentences.Syntax, of course, depends on lexical categories (parts ofspeech.) You probably learned that there are 8 main parts ofspeech in grammar school.Linguisticstakes a differentapproach to these categories and separates words intomorphological and syntactic groups.Linguisticsanalyzes wordsaccording to their affixes and the words that follow or precedethem. Hopefully, the following definitions of the parts of speechwill make more sense and be of more use than the olddefinitions of grammar school books.

Open Class Words

Nouns_____ + plural endings

"dogs"

Det. Adj. _____ (this is called a Noun Phrase)

"the big dog"

Verbs____ + tense endings"speaks"

Aux. ____ (this is called a Verb Phrase)"have spoken"

Adjectives____ + er / est"small"

Det. ____ Noun"the smaller child"

AdverbsAdj. + ly"quickly"

____ Adj. or Verb or Adv."quickly ran"

Closed Class Words

Determinersa, an, the, this, that, these,those, pronouns, quantities

____ Adj. Noun"this blue book"

Auxiliary Verbsforms of be, have, may,can, shall

NP ____ VP"the girl is swimming"

Prepositions at, in, on, under, over, of____ NP (this is called a Prepositional Phrase)"in the room"

Conjunctions and, but, orN or V or Adj. ____ N or V or Adj."apples and oranges"

Subcategorizationdefines the restrictions on which syntacticcategories (parts of speech) can or cannot occur within alexical item. These additional specifications of words areincluded in our mental lexicon. Verbs are the most commoncategories that are subcategorized. Verbs can either betransitive or intransitive.Transitive verbstake a direct object,


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whileintransitive verbstake an indirect object (usually theyneed a preposition before the noun).

Transitive verb: to eat I ate an apple. (direct object)

Intransitive: to sleep I was sleeping in the bed. (indirect object)

Individual nouns can also be subcategorized. For example, thenounideacan be followed by aPrepositional Phraseorthatanda sentence. But the nouncompassioncan only be followed byaPrepositional Phraseand not a sentence. (Ungrammaticalsentences are marked with asterisks.)

the idea of stricter laws his compassion for the animals

the idea that stricter laws are necessary *his compassion that the animals are hurt

Phrase structure rulesdescribe how phrases are formed andin what order. These rules define the following:

Noun Phrase (NP) (Det.) (Adj.) Noun (PP)

Verb Phrase (VP) Verb (NP) (PP)

Prepositional Phrase (PP) Prep. NP

Sentence (S) NP VP

The parentheses indicate the categories are optional. Verbsdon't always have to be followed by prepositional phrases andnouns don't always have to be preceded by adjectives.

Passive SentencesThe difference between the two sentences "Mary hired Bill" and

"Bill was hired by Mary" is that the first is active and the secondis passive. In order to change an active sentence into a passiveone, the object of the active must become the subject of thepassive. The verb in the passive sentence becomes a form of"be" plus the participle form of the main verb. And the subjectof the active becomes the object of the passive preceded bythe word "by."

Active Passive

Mary hired Bill. Bill was hired by Mary.

Subject + Verb + Object Object + "be" + Verb + by + Subject

Part Three: Phonetics and Phonology

There are three types of the study of the sounds oflanguage.Acoustic Phoneticsis the study of the physicalproperties of sounds.Auditory Phoneticsis the study of theway listeners perceive sounds.Articulatory Phonetics(the


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type this lesson is concerned with) is the study of how the vocaltracts produce the sounds.

The orthography (spelling) of words in misleading, especially inEnglish. One sound can be represented by several differentcombinations of letters. For example, all of the following words

contain the same vowel sound: he, believe, Lee, Caesar, key,amoeba, loudly, machine, people, and sea. The following poemillustrates this fact of English humorously (note thepronunciation of the bold words):

I take it youalreadyknowoftoughandboughandcoughanddough?Some may stumble, but notyou,onhiccough,thorough,slough, andthrough?So now you are ready, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps?Beware ofheard, a dreadfulword, that looks likebeard, butsounds likebird.

Anddead, it'ssaidlikebed, notbead; for goodness' sake,don't call itdeed!Watch out formeatandgreatandthreat. (They rhymewithsuiteandstraightanddebt.)

Amothis not a moth inmother,norbothinbother,brothinbrother.

Andhereis not a match forthere, nordearandfear,forbearandpear.

And then there'sdoseandroseandlose- just look them up -andgooseandchoose

Andcorkandworkandcardandwardandfontandfrontand

wordandswordAnddoandgo, thenthwartandcart, come, come! I've hardlymade a start.

A dreadful language? Why man alive! I've learned to talk itwhen I was five.

And yet to write it, the more I tried, I hadn't learned it at fifty-five.- Author Unknown

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds led to theformation of theInternational Phonetics Alphabet(IPA.) The

symbols used in this alphabet can be used to represent allsounds of all human languages. The following is the EnglishPhonetic alphabet. You might want to memorize all of thesesymbols, as most foreign language dictionaries use the IPA.

Phonetic Alphabet for English Pronunciation

p pill d dill h heal but


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b bill n neal l leaf aj light

m mill s seal r reef j boy

f feel z zeal j you bit

v veal chill w witch bet

thigh Jill i beet foot

thy which e bait awe

shill k kill u boot a bar

azure g gill o boat sofa

t till ring bat aw cow

Some speakers of English pronounce the words which and

witch differently, but if you pronounce both words identically,just use w for both words. And the sounds // and // arepronounced the same, but the former is used in stressedsyllables, while the latter is used in unstressed syllables. Thislist does not even begin to include all of the phonetic symbolsthough. One other symbol is the glottal stop, which issomewhat rare in English. Some linguists in the United Statestraditionally use different symbols than the IPA symbols. Theseare listed below.

U.S. IPA

t

d

U

The production of any speech sound involves the movement ofair. Air is pushed through the lungs, larynx (vocal folds) andvocal tract (the oral and nasal cavities.) Sounds produced byusing air from the lungs are calledpulmonicsounds. If the air

is pushed out, it is calledegressive. If the air is sucked in, it iscalledingressive. Sounds produced by ingressive airstreamsare ejectives, implosives, and clicks. These sounds arecommon among African and American Indian languages. Themajority of languages in the world use pulmonic egressiveairstream mechanisms, and I will present only these types ofsounds in this lesson.


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ConsonantsConsonants are produced as air from the lungs is pushedthrough the glottis (the opening between the vocal cords) andout the mouth. They are classified according to voicing,aspiration, nasal/oral sounds, places of articulation and

manners of articulation.Voicingis whether the vocal foldsvibrate or not. The sound /s/ is called voiceless because thereis no vibration, and the sound /z/ is called voiced because thevocal folds do vibrate (you can feel on your neck if there isvibration.) Only three sounds in English have aspiration, thesounds /b/, /p/ and /t/. An extra puff of air is pushed out whenthese sounds begin a word or stressed syllable. Hold a piece ofpaper close to your mouth when saying the words pin and spin.You should notice extra air when you say pin. Aspiration isindicated in writing with a superscript h, as in /p/. Nasalsounds are produced when the velum (the soft palate located in

the back of the roof of the mouth) is lowered and air is passedthrough the nose and mouth. Oral sounds are produced whenthe velum is raised and air passes only through the mouth.

Places of ArticulationBilabial: lips togetherLabiodental: lower lip against front teethInterdental: tongue between teeth

Alveolar: tongue near alveolar ridge on roof of mouth (inbetween teeth and hard palate)Palatal: tongue on hard palateVelar: tongue near velum

Glottal: space between vocal foldsThe following sound is not found in the English language,although it is common in languages such as French and Arabic:Uvular: raise back of tongue to uvula (the appendage hangingdown from the velum)

Manners of ArticulationStop: obstruct airstream completelyFricative: partial obstruction with friction

Affricate: stop airstream, then releaseLiquids: partial obstruction, no friction

Glides: little or no obstruction, must occur with a vowelYou should practice saying the sounds of the English alphabetto see if you can identify the places of articulation in the mouth.The sounds are described by voicing, place and then mannerof articulation, so the sound /j/ would be called a voiced palatalglide and the sound /s/ would be called a voiceless alveolarfricative.


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Bilabial Labiodental Interdental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal

Stop (oral)p

b

t

d

k

g

Nasal (stop) m n

Fricativef

v

s

z

h

Affricate

Glidew j

w

h

Liquid l r

For rows that have two consonants, the top consonant isvoiceless and the bottom consonant is voiced. Nasal stops areall voiced, as are liquids. The sound /j/ is also voiced. If soundsare in two places on the chart, that means they can bepronounced either way.

VowelsVowels are produced by a continuous airstream and all arevoiced. They are classified according to height of the tongue,part of tongue involved, and position of the lips. The tongue can

be high, mid, or low; and the part of the tongue used can befront, central or back. Only four vowels are produced withrounded lips and only four vowels are considered tense insteadof lax. The sound /a/ would be written as a low back laxunrounded vowel. Many languages also have vowels calleddiphthongs, a sequence of two sounds, vowel + glide.Examples in English includeoyin boy andowin cow. Inaddition, vowels can be nasalized when they occur beforenasal consonants. A diacritic mark [~] is placed over the vowelto show this. The vowel sounds inbeeandbeanare considereddifferent because the sound in bean is nasalized.

Part of Tongue

Front Central Back

Tongue

Height

Highi

u

Mid e o


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Low a

The bold vowels are tense, and the italic vowels are rounded.

English also includes the diphthongs: [aj] as in bite, [aw] as incow, and [oj] as in boy.

For the complete IPA chart with symbols for the sounds ofevery human language, please visit theInternational PhoneticAssociation's website. And you're looking for a way to typeEnglish IPA symbols online, please visitipa.typeit.org

Major Classes of Sounds (Distinctive Features)All of the classes of sounds described above can be put intomore general classes that include the patterning of sounds inthe world's languages.Continuantsounds indicate a

continuous airflow, whilenon-continuantsounds indicate totalobstruction of the airstream.Obstruentsounds do not allow airto escape through the nose, whilesonorantsounds have arelatively free airflow through the mouth or nose. The followingtable summarizes this information:

Obstruent Sonorant

Continuant fricatives liquids, glides, vowels

Non-Continuant oral stops, affricates nasal stops

Major Class Features[+ Consonantal] consonants[- Consonantal] vowels

[+Sonorant] nasals, liquids, glides, vowels[- Sonorant] stops, fricatives, affricates (obstruents)

[+ Approximant] glides [j, w][- Approximant] everything else

Voice Features[+ Voice] voiced[- Voice] voiceless

[+ Spread Glottis] aspirated [p, t, k][- Spread Glottis] unaspirated

[+ Constricted Glottis] ejectives, implosives[- Constricted Glottis] everything else

Manner Features[+ Continuant] fricatives [f, v, s, z, , , , ][- Continuant] stops [p, b, t, d, k, g, ]
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.htmlhttp://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.htmlhttp://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.htmlhttp://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.htmlhttp://ipa.typeit.org/http://ipa.typeit.org/http://ipa.typeit.org/http://ipa.typeit.org/http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.htmlhttp://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html


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[+ Nasal] nasal consonants [m, n, ][- Nasal] all oral consonants

[+ Lateral] [l][- Lateral] [r]

[+ Delayed Release] affricates [, ][- Delayed Release] stops [p, b, t, d, k, g, ]

[+ Strident] noisy fricatives [f, v, s, z, , ][- Strident] [?, , h]

Place Featur es[Labial] involves lips [f, v, p, b, w]

[Coronal] alveolar ridge to palate [, , s, z, t, d, , , n, r, l][+ Anterior] interdentals and true alveolars[-Anterior] retroflex and palatals [, , , , j]

[Dorsal] from velum back [k, g, ]

[Glottal] in larynx [h, ]VowelsHeight [ high] [ low]Backness [ back]Lip Rounding [ round]Tenseness [ tense]

Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concernedwith the production, audition and perception of of speechsounds (called phones),phonologydescribes the way soundsfunction within a given language and operates at the level of

sound systems and abstract sound units. Knowing the soundsof a language is only a small part of phonology. Thisimportance is shown by the fact that you can change one wordinto another by simply changing one sound. Consider thedifferences between the words time and dime. The words areidentical except for the first sound. [t] and [d] can thereforedistinguish words, and are calledcontrasting sounds. Theyare distinctive sounds in English, and all distinctive sounds areclassified asphonemes.

Minimal PairsMinimal pairs are words with different meanings that have the

same sounds except for one. These contrasting sounds caneither be consonants or vowels. The words pin and bin areminimal pairs because they are exactly the same except for thefirst sound. The words read and rude are also exactly the sameexcept for the vowel sound. The examples from above, timeand dime, are also minimal pairs. In effect, words with onecontrastive sound are minimal pairs. Another feature of minimalpairs is overlapping distribution. Sounds that occur in phonetic


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environments that are identical are said to be in overlappingdistribution. The sounds of [n] from pin and bin are inoverlapping distribution because they occur in both words. Thesame is true for three and through. The sounds of [r] is inoverlapping distribution because they occur in both words as

well.Free VariationSome words in English are pronounced differently by differentspeakers. This is most noticeable among American Englishspeakers and British English speakers, as well as dialectaldifferences. This is evidenced in the ways neither, for example,can be pronounced. American English pronunciation is [nir],while British English pronunciation is [najr].

Phones and AllophonesPhonemesare not physical sounds. They are abstract mentalrepresentations of the phonological units of alanguage.Phonesare considered to be any single speechsound of which phonemes are made. Phonemes are a family ofphones regarded as a single sound and represented by thesame symbol. The different phones that are the realization of aphoneme are calledallophonesof that phoneme. The use ofallophones is not random, but rule-governed. No one is taughtthese rules as they are learned subconsciously when the nativelanguage is acquired. To distinguish between a phoneme andits allophones, I will use slashes // to enclose phonemes andbrackets [] to enclose allophones or phones. For example, [i]and [] are allophones of the phoneme /i/ [] and [] are

allophones of the phoneme //.

Complementary DistributionIf two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, they aresaid to be in complementary distribution. These sounds cannotoccur in minimal pairs and they cannot change the meaning ofotherwise identical words. If you interchange the sounds, youwill only change the pronunciation of the words, not themeaning. Native speakers of the language regard the twoallophones as variations of the same sound. To hear this, startto say the word cool (your lips should be pursed in anticipation

of /u/ sound), but then say kill instead (with your lips stillpursed.) Your pronunciation of kill should sound strangebecause cool and kill are pronounced with different allophonesof the phoneme /k/.

Nasalized vowels are allophones of the same phoneme inEnglish. Take, for example, the sounds in bad and ban. Thephoneme is //, however the allophones are [] and [ ]. etin French, nasalized vowels are not allophones of the same


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phonemes. They are separate phonemes. The words beau [bo]and bon [b] are not in complementary distribution becausethey are minimal pairs and have contrasting sounds. Changingthe sounds changes the meaning of the words. This is just oneexample of differences between languages.

Phonological RulesAssimilation: sounds become more like neighboring sounds,allowing for ease of articulation or pronunciation; such asvowels are nasalized before nasal consonants- Harmony: non-adjacent vowels become more similar bysharing a feature or set of features (common in Finnish)- Gemination: sound becomes identical to an adjacent sound- Regressive Assimilation: sound on left is the target, andsound on right is the trigger

Dissimilation: sounds become less like neighboring sounds;these rules are quite rare, but one example in English is [ff]becoming [fft] (/f/ and // are both fricatives, but /t/ is a stop)

Epenthesis: insertion of a sound, e.g. Latin "homre" becameSpanish "hombre"- Prothesis: insertion of vowel sound at beginning of word- Anaptyxis: vowel sound with predictable quality is insertedword-internally- Paragoge: insertion of vowel sound at end of word- Excrescence: consonant sound inserted between otherconsonants (also called stop-intrusion)

Deletion: deletion of a sound; e.g. French word-final

consonants are deleted when the next word begins with aconsonant (but are retained when the following word beginswith a vowel)- Aphaeresis: vowel sound deleted at beginning of word- Syncope: vowel sound is deleted word-internally- Apocope: vowel sound deleted at end of word

Metathesis: reordering of phonemes; in some dialects ofEnglish, the word asked is pronounced [ks]; children's speechshows many cases of metathesis such as aminal for animal

Lenition: consonant changes to a weaker manner of

articulation; voiced stop becomes a fricative, fricative becomesa glide, etc.

Palatalization: sound becomes palatal when adjacent to a frontvowel Compensatory Lengthening: sound becomes long as aresult of sound loss, e.g. Latin "octo" became Italian "otto"

Assimilation in EnglishAn interesting observation of assimilation rules is evidenced inthe formation of plurals and the past tense in English. When


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pluralizing nouns, the last letter is pronounced as either [s], [z],or [z]. When forming past tenses of verbs, the -ed ending ispronounced as either [t], [d], [d]. If you were to sort words intothree columns, you would be able to tell why certain words arefollowed by certain sounds:

Plural nouns

Hopefully, you can determine which consonants produce whichsounds. In the nouns, /s/ is added after voiceless consonants, and /z/

is added after voiced consonants. /z/ is added after sibilants. For

the verbs, /t/ is added after voiceless consonants, and /d/ is added

after voiced consonants. /d/ is added after alveolar stops. The greatthing about this is that no one ever taught you this in school. But

thanks to linguistics, you now know why there are different sounds

(because of assimiliation rules, the consonants become more like

their neighboring consonants.)

/s/ /z/ /z/

cats dads churches

tips bibs kisses

laughs dogs judges

Past Tense

/t/ /d/ /d/

kissed loved patted

washed jogged waded

coughed teased seeded

Writing RulesA general phonological rule is A B / D __ E (said: Abecomes B when it occurs between D and E) Other symbols inrule writing include: C = any obstruent, V = any vowel, =nothing, # = word boundary, ( ) = optional, and { } = either/or. Adeletion rule is A / E __ (A is deleted when it occurs afterE) and an insertion rule is A / E __ (A is inserted when itoccurs after E).

Alpha notation is used to collapse similar assimilation rules intoone. C [ voice] / __ [ voice] (An obstruent becomesvoiced when it occurs before a voiced obstruent AND anobstruent becomes voiceless when it occurs before a voicelessobstruent.) Similarly, it can be used for dissimilation rules too.C [- voice] / __ [ voice] (An obstruent becomes voicedwhen it occurs before a voiceless obstruent AND an obstruentbecomes voiceless when it occurs before a voiced obstruent.)Gemination rules are written as C1C2 C2C2 (for example,pd dd)

Syllable StructureThere are three peaks to asyllable:nucleus(vowel),onset(consonant before nucleus)andcoda(consonant after nucleus.) The onset and coda areboth optional, meaning that a syllable could contain a voweland nothing else. The nucleus is required in every syllable bydefinition. The order of the peaks is always onset - nucleus -coda. All languages permit open syllables (Consonant +


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phrases and verbs. Sentences contain truth conditions if thecircumstances in the sentence are true. Paraphrases are twosentences with the same truth conditions, despite subtledifferences in structure and emphasis. The ball was kicked bythe boy is a paraphrase of the sentence the boy kicked the ball,

but they have the same truth conditions - that a boy kicked aball. Sometimes the truth of one sentence entails or implies thetruth of another sentence. This is called entailment and theopposite of this is called contradiction, where one sentenceimplies the falseness of another.He was assassinatedentailsthat he is dead.He was assassinatedcontradicts with thestatementhe is alive.

PragmaticsPragmatics is the interpretation of linguistic meaning in context.Linguistic context is discourse that precedes a sentence to beinterpreted and situational context is knowledge about the

world. In the following sentences,the kids have eatenalreadyandsurprisingly, they are hungry, the linguistic contexthelps to interpret the second sentence depending on what thefirst sentence says. The situational context helps to interpretthe second sentence because it is common knowledge thathumans are not usually hungry after eating.

Maxims of ConversationGrice's maxims for conversation are conventions of speechsuch as themaxim of quantitythat states a speaker should beas informative as is required and neither more nor less.Themaxim of relevanceessentially states a speaker should

stay on the topic, and themaxim of mannerstates the speakershould be brief and orderly, and avoid ambiguity. The fourthmaxim, themaxim of quality, states that a speaker should notlie or make any unsupported claims.

Performative SentencesIn these types of sentences, the speaker is the subject who, byuttering the sentence, is accomplishing some additional action,such as daring, resigning, or nominating. These sentences areall affirmative, declarative and in the present tense. An informaltest to see whether a sentence is performative or not is to insert

the wordsI herebybefore the verb.I hereby challenge you to amatchorI hereby fine you $500are both performative, butIhereby know that girlis not. Other performative verbs are bet,promise, pronounce, bequeath, swear, testify, and dismiss.

PresuppositionsThese are implicit assumptions required to make a sentencemeaningful. Sentences that contain presuppositions are notallowed in court because accepting the validity of the statement


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mean accepting the presuppositions as well.Have you stoppedstealing cars?is not admissible in court because no matter howthe defendant answers, the presupposition that he steals carsalready will be acknowledged.Have you stoppedsmoking?implies that you smoke already, andWould you like

another piece?implies that you've already had one piece.DeixisDeixis is reference to a person, object, or event which relies onthe situational context. First and second person pronouns suchas my, mine, you, your, yours, we, ours and us are alwaysdeictic because their reference is entirely dependent oncontext. Demonstrative articles like this, that, these and thoseand expressions of time and place are always deictic as well. Inorder to understand what specific times or places suchexpressions refer to, we also need to know when or where theutterance was said. If someone says "I'm over here!" you would

need to know who "I" referred to, as well as where "here" is.Deixis marks one of the boundaries of semantics andpragmatics.

Part Five: Neurolinguistics

The human brain consists of 10 billion nerve cells (neurons)and billions of fibers that connect them. These neurons or graymatter form thecortex, the surface of the brain, and theconnecting fibers or white matter form the interior of the brain.The brain is divided into two hemispheres, the left and right

cerebral hemispheres. These hemispheres are connected bythecorpus callosum. In general, the left hemisphere of thebrain controls the right side of the body and vice versa.

Theauditory cortexreceives and interprets auditory stimuli,while thevisual cortexreceives and interprets visual stimuli.Theangular gyrusconverts the auditory stimuli to visualstimuli and vice versa. Themotor cortexsignals the musclesto move when we want to talk and is directed by Broca's area.The nerve fiber connecting Wernicke's and Broca's area iscalled thearcuate fasciculus.

Lateralizationrefers to any cognitive functions that arelocalized to one side of the brain or the other. Language is saidto be lateralized and processed in the left hemisphere of thebrain. Paul Broca first related language to the left side of thebrain when he noted that damage to the front part of the lefthemisphere (now calledBroca's area) resulted in a loss of


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speech, while damage to the right side did not. He determinedthis through autopsies of patients who had acquired languagedeficits following brain injuries. A language disorder that followsa brain lesion is calledaphasia, and patients with damage toBroca's area have slow and labored speech, loss of function

words, and poor word order, yet good comprehension.Carl Wernicke also used studies of autopsies to describeanother type of aphasia that resulted from lesions in the backportion of the left hemisphere (now calledWernicke's area.)Unlike Broca's patients, Wernicke's spoke fluently and withgood pronunciation, but with many lexical errors and a difficultyin comprehension. Broca's and Wernicke's area are the twomain regions of the cortex of the brain related to languageprocessing.

Aphasics can suffer fromanomia, jargonaphasia,andacquired dyslexia. Anomia is commonly referredto as "tip of the tongue" phenomenon and many aphasicsexperience word finding difficulty on a regular basis. Jargonaphasia results in the substitution of one word or sound foranother. Some aphasics may substitute similar words for eachother, such as table for chair, or they may substitute completelyunrelated words, such as chair for engine. Others maypronounce table as sable, substituting an s sound for a t sound.

Aphasics who became dyslexic after brain damage are calledacquired dyslexics. When reading aloud words printed oncards, the patients produced the following substitutions:

Stimuli Response One Response TwoAct Play Play

South East West

Heal Pain Medicine

The substitution of phonologically similar words, such as pooland tool, also provides evidence that a human's mental lexiconis organized by both phonology and semantics.

Broca's aphasics and some acquired dyslexics are unable toread function words, and when presented with them on the

cards, the patients say no, as shown in the following example:Stimuli One Response Stimuli Two Response

Witch Witch Which no!

Hour Time Our no!

Wood Wood Would no!


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The patient's errors suggest our mental dictionary is furtherorganized into parts consisting of major content words (firststimuli) and grammatical words (second stimuli.)

In addition, split-brain patients (those who have had theircorpus callosum severed) provide evidence for language

lateralization. If an object is placed in the left hand of split-brainpatient whose vision is cut off, the person cannot name theobject, but will know how to use it. The information is sent tothe right side of the brain, but cannot be relayed to the left sidefor linguistic naming. However, if the object is placed in theperson's right hand, the person can immediately name itbecause the information is sent directly to the left hemisphere.

Dichotic listeningis another experimental technique, usingauditory signals. Subjects hear a different sound in each ear,such as boy in the left ear and girl in the right ear or waterrushing in the left ear and a horn honking in the right ear. Whenasked to state what they heard in each ear, subjects are morefrequently correct in reporting linguistic stimuli in the right ear(girl) and nonverbal stimuli in the left ear (water rushing.) Thisis because the left side of the brain is specialized for languageand a word heard in the right ear will transfer directly to the leftside of the body because of the contralateralization of the brain.Furthermore, the right side of the brain is specialized fornonverbal stimuli, such as music and environmental sounds,and a noise heard in the left ear will transfer directly to the rightside of the brain.

Part Six: Child Language Acquisition and SecondLanguage Acquisition

Linguistic competence develops in stages, from babbling to oneword to two word, then telegraphic speech. Babbling is nowconsidered the earliest form of language acquisition becauseinfants will produce sounds based on what language input theyreceive. One word sentences (holophrastic speech) aregenerally monosyllabic in consonant-vowel clusters. During twoword stage, there are no syntactic or morphological markers,no inflections for plural or past tense, and pronouns are rare,but the intonation contour extends over the whole utterance.Telegraphic speech lacks function words and only carries theopen class content words, so that the sentences sound like atelegram.

Three theoriesThe three theories of language acquisition:imitation,reinforcementandanalogy, do not explain very well how


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children acquire language. Imitation does not work becausechildren produce sentences never heard before, such as "catstand up table." Even when they try to imitate adult speech,children cannot generate the same sentences because of theirlimited grammar. And children who are unable to speak still

learn and understand the language, so that when theyovercome their speech impairment they immediately beginspeaking the language. Reinforcement also does not workbecause it actually seldomly occurs and when it does, thereinforcement is correcting pronunciation or truthfulness, andnot grammar. A sentence such as "apples are purple" would becorrected more often because it is not true, as compared to asentence such as "apples is red" regardless of the grammar.

Analogy also cannot explain language acquisition. Analogyinvolves the formation of sentences or phrases by using othersentences as samples. If a child hears the sentence, "I painted

a red barn," he can say, by analogy, "I painted a blue barn." Yetif he hears the sentence, "I painted a barn red," he cannot say"I saw a barn red." The analogy did not work this time, and thisis not a sentence of English.

AcquisitionsPhonology: A child's error in pronunciation is not random, butrule-governed. Typical phonological rules include: consonantcluster simplification (spoon becomes poon), devoicing of finalconsonants (dog becomes dok), voicing of initial consonants(truck becomes druck), and consonant harmony (doggybecomes goggy, or big becomes gig.)

Morphology: An overgeneralization of constructed rules isshown when children treat irregular verbs and nouns asregular. Instead of went as the past tense of go, childrenusegoedbecause the regular verbs add an -ed ending to formthe past tense. Similarly, children use gooses as the plural ofgoose instead of geese, because regular nouns add an -s inthe plural.

The"Innateness Hypothesis"of child language acquisition,proposed by Noam Chomsky, states that the human species isprewired to acquire language, and that the kind of language is

also determined. Many factors have led to this hypothesis suchas the ease and rapidity of language acquisition despiteimpoverished input as well as the uniformity of languages. Allchildren will learn a language, and children will also learn morethan one language if they are exposed to it. Children follow thesame general stages when learning a language, although thelinguistic input is widely varied.


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Thepoverty of the stimulusstates that children seem to learnor know the aspects of grammar for which they receive noinformation. In addition, children do not produce sentences thatcould not be sentences in some human language. Theprinciples of Universal Grammar underlie the specific

grammars of all languages and determine the class oflanguages that can be acquired unconsciously withoutinstruction. It is the genetically determined faculty of the lefthemisphere, and there is little doubt that the brain is speciallyequipped for acquisition of human language.

The"Critical Age Hypothesis"suggests that there is a criticalage for language acquisition without the need for specialteaching or learning. During this critical period, languagelearning proceeds quickly and easily. After this period, theacquisition of grammar is difficult, and for some people, neverfully achieved. Cases of children reared in social isolation have

been used for testing the critical age hypothesis. None of thechildren who had little human contact were able to speak anylanguage once reintroduced into society. Even the children whoreceived linguistic input after being reintroduced to society wereunable to fully develop language skills. These cases of isolatedchildren, and of deaf children, show that humans cannot fullyacquire any language to which they are exposed unless theyare within the critical age. Beyond this age, humans are unableto acquire much of syntax and inflectional morphology. At leastfor humans, this critical age does not pertain to all of language,but to specific parts of the grammar.

Second Language Acquisition Teaching MethodsGrammar-translation: the student memorizes words, inflectedwords, and syntactic rules and uses them to translate fromnative to target language and vice versa; most commonly usedmethod in schools because it does not require teacher to befluent; however, least effective method of teachingDirect method:the native language is not used at all in theclassroom, and the student must learn the new languagewithout formal instruction; based on theories of first languageacquisition

Audio-lingual:heavy use of dialogs and audio, based on the

assumption that language learning is acquired mainly throughimitation, repetition, and reinforcement; influenced bypsychologyNatural Approach:emphasis on vocabulary and not grammar;focus on meaning, not form; use of authentic materials insteadof textbookSilent Way:teachers remain passive observers while studentslearn, which is a process of personal growth; no grammatical


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explanation or modeling by the teacherTotal Physical Response:students play active role as listenerand performer, must respond to imperative drills with physicalactionSuggestopedia:students always remain comfortable and

relaxed and learn through memorization of meaningful texts,although the goal is understandingCommunity Language Learning:materials are developed ascourse progresses and teacher understands what studentsneed and want to learn; learning involves the whole person andlanguage is seen as more than just communicationCommunity Language Teaching:incorporates all componentsof language and helps students with various learning styles;use of communication-based activities with authentic materials,needs of learner are taken into consideration when planningtopics and objectives

Four skill areasThe four skill areas of learning a foreign language need to beaddressed consistently and continually. Good lesson plansincorporate all four:Listening, Speaking, Reading (andVocabulary), and Writing (and Grammar). Native speakersdo not learn the skill areas separately, nor do they use themseparately, so they shouldnt be taught separately. However, itis easy to fall into the trap of teaching about the language,instead of actually teaching the language. Most textbooksresort to teaching grammar and vocabulary lists and nothingmore.

Part Seven: Sociolinguistics

Adialectis a variety of language that is systematically differentfrom other varieties of the same language. The dialects of asingle language are mutually intelligible, but when the speakerscan no longer understand each other, the dialects becomelanguages. Geographical regions are also considered whendialects become languages. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danishare all considered separate languages because of regulardifferences in grammar and the countries in which they are

spoken, yet Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes can allunderstand one another. Hindi and Urdu are consideredmutually intelligible languages when spoken, yet the writingsystems are different. On the other hand, Mandarin andCantonese are mutually unintelligible languages when spoken,yet the writing systems are the same.

A dialect is considered standard if it is used by the upper class,political leaders, in literature and is taught in schools as the


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correct form of the language. Overt prestige refers to thisdominant dialect. A non-standard dialect is associated withcovert prestige and is an ethnic or regional dialect of alanguage. These non-standard dialects are just as linguisticallysophisticated as the standard dialect, and judgments to the

inferiority of them are based on social or racist judgments.African-American English contains many regular differences ofthe standard dialect. These differences are the same as thedifferences among many of the world's dialects. Phonologicaldifferences include r and l deletion of words like poor (pa) andall (awe.) Consonant cluster simplification also occurs (passedpronounced like pass), as well as a loss of interdentalfricatives. Syntactic differences include the double negative andthe loss of and habitual use of the verb "be."He latemeans heis late now, buthe be latemeans he is always late.

Alingua francais a major language used in an area where

speakers of more than one language live that permitscommunication and commerce among them. English is calledthe lingua franca of the whole world, while French used to bethe lingua franca of diplomacy.

Apidginis a rudimentary language of few lexical items andless complex grammatical rules based on another language.No one learns a pidgin as a native language, but children dolearn creoles as a first language.Creolesare defined aspidgins that are adopted by a community as its native tongue.

Besides dialects, speakers may use differentstylesor registers

(such as contractions) depending on the context.Slangmayalso be used in speech, but is not often used in formalsituations or writing.Jargonrefers to the unique vocabularypertaining to a certain area, such as computers or medicine.Words or expressions referring to certain acts that areforbidden or frowned upon are consideredtaboo. These taboowords produceeuphemisms, words or phrases that replacethe expressions that are being avoided.

The use of words may indicate a society's attitude toward sex,bodily functions or religious beliefs, and they may also reflectracism or sexism in a society. Language itself is not racist or

sexist, but the society may be. Such insulting words mayreinforce biased views, and changes in society may bereflected in the changes in language.

Part Eight: Historical Linguistics


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Languages that evolve from a common source are geneticallyrelated. These languages were once dialects of the samelanguage. Earlier forms of Germanic languages, such asGerman, English, and Swedish were dialects of Proto-Germanic, while earlier forms of Romance languages, such as

Spanish, French, and Italian were dialects of Latin.Furthermore, earlier forms of Proto-Germanic and Latin wereonce dialects of Indo-European.

Linguistic changes like sound shift is found in the history of alllanguages, as evidenced by the regular soundcorrespondences that exist between different stages of thesame language, different dialects, and different languages.Words, morphemes, and phonemes may be altered, added orlost. The meaning of words may broaden, narrow or shift. Newwords may be introduced into a language by borrowing, or bycoinage, blends and acronyms. The lexicon may also shrink as

older words become obsolete.Change comes about as a result of the restructuring ofgrammar by children learning the language. Grammars seem tobecome simple and regular, but these simplifications may becompensated for by more complexities. Sound changes canoccur because ofassimilation, a process of ease ofarticulation. Some grammatical changes areanalogicchanges, generalizations that lead to more regularity, such assweeped instead of swept.

The study of linguistic change is called historical and

comparative linguistics. Linguists identify regular soundcorrespondences using the comparative method among thecognates (words that developed from the same ancestrallanguage) of related languages. They can restructure an earlierprotolanguage and this allows linguists to determine the historyof a language family.

Old English, Middle English, Modern English

Old English 499-1066 CE Beowulf

Middle English 1066-1500 CE Canterbury Tales

Modern English 1500-present Shakespeare

Phonological change:Between 1400 and 1600 CE, the GreatVowel Shift took place. The seven long vowels of MiddleEnglish underwent changes. The high vowels [i] and [u]became the diphthongs [aj] and [aw]. The long vowelsincreased tongue height and shifted upward, and [a] wasfronted. Many of the spelling inconsistencies of English arebecause of the Great Vowel Shift. Our spelling system still


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reflects the way words were pronounced before the shift tookplace.

Morphological change:Many Indo-European languages hadextensive case endings that governed word order, but theseare no longer found in Romance languages or English.

Although pronouns still show a trace of the case system (he vs.him), English uses prepositions to show the case. Instead ofthe dative case (indirect objects), English usually thewordstoorfor. Instead of the genitive case, English uses thewordofor'safter a noun to show possession. Other casesinclude the nominative (subject pronouns), accusative (directobjects), and vocative.

Syntactic change:Because of the lack of the case system,word order has become more rigid and strict in Modern English.Now it is strictly Subject - Verb - Object order.

Orthographic change:Consonant clusters have becomesimplified, such as hlaf becoming loaf and hnecca becomingneck. However, some of these clusters are still written, but areno longer pronounced, such as gnaw, write, and dumb.

Lexical change:Old English borrowed place names from Celtic,army, religious and educational words from Latin, and everydaywords from Scandinavian. Angle and Saxon (German dialects)form the basis of Old English phonology, morphology, syntaxand lexicon. Middle English borrowed many words from Frenchin the areas of government, law, religion, literature andeducation because of the Norman Conquest in 1066 CE.

Modern English borrowed words from Latin and Greek becauseof the influence of the classics, with much scientificterminology.

For more information, read theHistory of Englishpage.

Part Nine: Classification of Languages

Indo-Europeanfamily of languages

Italic (Latin)

o Romance Catalan French Italian Occitan (Provenal) Portuguese Rhaeto-Romansch
http://ielanguages.com/enghist.htmlhttp://ielanguages.com/enghist.htmlhttp://ielanguages.com/enghist.htmlhttp://ielanguages.com/enghist.html


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Romanian Spanish

Germanico North Germanic

Danish Faroese Icelandic Norwegian Swedish

o East Germanic Gothic (extinct)

o West Germanic Afrikaans Dutch English Flemish Frisian German Yiddish

Slavico Western

Czech Polish Slovak

Sorbiano Eastern

Belarusian Russian Ukrainian

o Southern Bulgarian Croatian Macedonian Old Church Slavonic Serbian Slovene

Baltico Latviano Lithuaniano Old Prussian (extinct)

Celtic


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o Brythonic Breton Cornish (extinct) Gaulish (extinct) Welsh

o Goidelic Irish Manx Gaelic (extinct) Scots Gaelic

Hellenic (Greek) Albanian Armenian Anatolian (extinct) Tocharian (extinct) Indo-Iranian

o Indo-Aryan (Indic) Assamese Bengali Bihari Gujarati Hindi-Urdu Marathi Punjabi Romani

Sanskrit Sindhi Singhalese

o Iranian Avestan Balochi Farsi (Persian) Kurdish Pashtu (Afghan) Sogdian

Uralic(or Finno-Ugric) is the other major family of languagesspoken on the European continent. Finnish, Estonian andHungarian are examples.

Afro-Asiaticlanguages are spoken in Northern Africa and theMiddle East. They include Berber, Egyptian, Omotic andCushitic languages (Somali, Iraqw) as well as the modernSemitic languages of Hebrew, Arabic and Amharic, in addition


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to languages spoken in biblical times, such as Aramaic,Akkadian, Babylonian, Canaanite, and Phoenician.

TheAltaiclanguages are classified as Japanese and Korean,though some linguists separate these languages into their owngroups.

Sino-Tibetanlanguages include Mandarin, Hakka, Wu,Burmese, Tibetan, and all of the Chinese "dialects."

Austro-tailanguages include Indonesian, Javanese and Thai;while theAsiaticgroup includes Vietnamese.

TheDravidianlanguages of Tamil and Telugu are spoken insoutheastern India and Sri Lanka.

TheCaucasianlanguage family consists of 40 differentlanguages, and is divided into Cartvelian (south Caucasian),North-West Caucasian and North-East Caucasian languagegroups. Some languages are Georgian, Megrelian, Chechen,Ingush Avarian, Lezgian and Dargin. These languages aremostly spoken in Georgia, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Jordan and partsof the Russian federation.

TheNiger-Congofamily includes most of the Africanlanguages. About 1,500 languages belong to this group,including the Bantu languages of Swahili, Tswana, Xhosa,Zulu, Kikuyu, and Shona. Other languages are Ewe, Mina,Yoruba, Igbo, Wolof, Kordofanian and Fulfulde.

Other African language groups areNilo-Saharan, whichincludes 200 languages spoken in Central and Eastern Africa;

andKhoisan, the click languages of southern Africa. TheKhoisan group only contains about 30 languages, most ofwhich are spoken in Namibia and Botswana.

TheAustronesianfamily also contains about 900 languages,spoken all over the globe. Hawaiian, Maori, Tagalog, andMalay are all representatives of this language family.

Many languages are, or were, spoken in North and SouthAmerica by the native peoples before the European conquests.Knowledge of these languages is limited, and because many ofthe languages are approaching extinction, linguists have little

hope of achieving a complete understanding oftheAmerindianlanguage families.

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1997 - 2013 Jennifer Wagner ielanguages[at]gmail[dot]com
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Linguistics 101; Learning Basic Linguistics

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