2. Part One: Introduction to Linguistics
LINGUISTICS is the science of
language, including the sounds,
words, and grammar rules. Words in
languages are finite, but sentences
are not. It is this creative aspect of
human language that sets it apart
from animal languages, which are
essentially responses to stimuli.
3. Characteristics and Features of Language
Language is Arbitrary: Language is arbitrary in
the sense that there is no inherent relation
between the words of a language and their
meanings or the ideas conveyed by them. There
is no reason why a female adult human being
be called a woman in English, aurat in Urdu, Zen
in Persian and Femine in French. The choice of a
word selected to mean a particular thing or
idea is purely arbitrary but once a word is
selected for a particular referent, it comes to
stay as such. It may be noted that had language
not been arbitrary, there would have been only
one language in the world.
4. Language is Social: Language is a set of
conventional communicative signals used
by humans for communication in a
community. Language in this sense is a
possession of a social group, comprising
an indispensable set of rules which
permits its members to relate to each
other, to interact with each other, to co-
operate with each other; it is a social
institution. Language exists in society; it is
a means of nourishing and developing
culture and establishing human relations.
5. Language is Symbolic: Language consists of
various sound symbols and their
graphological counterparts that are
employed to denote some objects,
occurrences or meaning. These symbols are
arbitrarily chosen and conventionally
accepted and employed. Words in a language
are not mere signs or figures, but symbols of
meaning. The intelligibility of a language
depends on a correct interpretation of these
symbols.
6. Language is Systematic: Although language is
symbolic, yet its symbols are arranged in a
particular system. All languages have their
system of arrangements. Every language is a
system of systems. All languages have
phonological and grammatical systems, and
within a system there are several sub-systems.
For example, within the grammatical system
we have morphological and syntactic systems,
and within these two sub-systems we have
systems such as those of plural, of mood, of
aspect, of tense, etc.
7. Language is Vocal: Language is primarily
made up of vocal sounds only produced by a
physiological articulatory mechanism in the
human body. In the beginning, it appeared
as vocal sounds only. Writing came much
later, as an intelligent attempt to represent
vocal sounds. Writing is only the graphic
representation of the sounds of the
language. So the linguists say that speech is
primary.
8. Language is Non-instinctive, Conventional: No
language was created in a day out of a
mutually agreed upon formula by a group of
humans. Language is the outcome of evolution
and convention. Each generation transmits this
convention on to the next. Like all human
institutions languages also change and die,
grow and expand. Every language then is a
convention in a community. It is non-instinctive
because it is acquired by human beings. No
body gets a language in heritage; he acquires it
because he an innate ability.
9. Language is Productive and Creative:
Language has creativity and
productivity. The structural elements of
human language can be combined to
produce new utterances, which neither
the speaker nor his hearers may ever
have made or heard before any,
listener, yet which both sides
understand without difficulty. Language
changes according to the needs of
society.
10. Finally, language has other characteristics such
as Duality referring to the two systems of
sound and meaning, Displacement which
means the ability to talk across time and
space, Humanness which means that animals
cannot acquire it, Universality which refers to
the equilibrium across humanity on linguistic
grounds, Competence and Performance which
means that language is innate and produced is
society and furthermore, language is culturally
transmitted.
11. It is learnt by an individual from
his elders, and is transmitted
from one generation to
another. Thus using J. Firth’s
term, language is a
‘polysystematic’. It is also open to
be studied from multifaceted
angles.
12. The rules of a language, also called
grammar, are learned as one acquires a
language.
These rules include:
• Phonology - the sound system,
• Morphology - the structure of words,
• Syntax - the combination of words into
sentences,
• Semantics - the ways in which sounds and
meanings are related, and the
• Lexicon - mental dictionary of words.
However, the sounds and meanings of
words are arbitrary. For the most part, there is
no relationship between the way a word is
pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.
13. Knowing a language
encompasses this entire system,
but this knowledge (called
competence) is different from
behavior (called performance.)
You may know a language, but you
may also choose to not speak it.
Although you are not speaking the
language, you still have the
knowledge of it. However, if you
don't know a language, you cannot
speak it at all.
14. There are two types of grammars:
descriptive and prescriptive.
Descriptive grammars represent the
unconscious knowledge of a language.
English speakers, for example, know that
"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, but rather describe
rules that are already known.
Prescriptive grammars dictate what a
speaker's grammar should be and they
include teaching grammars, which are
written to help teach a foreign language.
16. Phonetics and Phonology
There are three types of the
study of the sounds of language.
Acoustic Phonetics is the study of
the physical properties of sounds.
Auditory Phonetics is the study of
the way listeners perceive sounds.
Articulatory Phonetics (the type this
lesson is concerned with) is the
study of how the vocal tracts
produce the sounds.
17. The orthography (spelling) of
words is misleading, especially in
English. One sound can be
represented by several different
combinations 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.
18. I take it you already know of tough and bough
and cough and dough?
Some may stumble, but not you, on hiccough,
thorough, slough, and through?
So now you are ready, perhaps, to learn of less
familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word, that looks like
beard, but sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead; for
goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat. (They
rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
19. A moth is not a moth in mother, nor both in bother, broth in
brother.
And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear, for bear and
pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose - just look them up -
and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward and font and front and
word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart, come, come! I've hardly
made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive! I've learned to talk it when
I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried, I hadn't learned it at fifty-
five.
- Author Unknown
20. The discrepancy between spelling
and sounds led to the formation
of the International Phonetics
Alphabet (IPA.) The symbols used
in this alphabet can be used to
represent all sounds of all human
languages.
21. ð thy ʍ which e bait
ɔ awe
š shill k kill u boot
a bar
ž azure g gill o boat
ə sofa
t till ŋ ring æ bat
aw cow
22. p pill d dill h heal
ʌ but
b bill n neal l leaf
aj light
m mill s seal r reef
ɔj boy
f feel z zeal j you
ɪ bit
v veal č chill w witch
ɛ bet
θ thigh ǰ Jill i beet
ʊ foot
24. The production of any speech sound involves
the movement of air. Air is pushed through
the lungs, larynx (vocal folds) and vocal tract
(the oral and nasal cavities.)
• Sounds produced by using air from the
lungs are called pulmonic sounds.
• If the air is pushed out, it is called
egressive.
• If the air is sucked in, it is called
ingressive.
25. Morphology
Morphemes are the minimal units
of words that have a meaning and
cannot be subdivided further.
There are two main types: free
and bound. Free morphemes can
occur alone and bound
morphemes must occur with
another morpheme.
27. WORDS
When we talk about words, there are two
groups: lexical (or content) and function (or
grammatical) words.
• Lexical words are called open class words
and include nouns, verbs, adjectives and
adverbs. New words can regularly be added
to this group.
• Function words, or closed class words, are
conjunctions, prepositions, articles and
pronouns; and new words cannot be (or are
very rarely) added to this class.
28. AFFIXES are often the bound morpheme.
This group includes prefixes, suffixes,
infixes, and circumfixes.
• Prefixes are added to the beginning of
another morpheme
• Suffixes are added to the end
• Infixes are inserted into other
morphemes
• Circumfixes are attached to another
morpheme at the beginning and end.
29. • Prefix: re- added to do produces redo
• Suffix: -or added to edit produces editor
• Infix: -um- added to fikas (strong) produces fumikas
(to be strong) in Bontoc
• Circumfix: un- and -able to believe produces
unbelievable
30. There are two categories of
affixes: derivational and
inflectional.
The main difference between the
two is that derivational affixes
are added to morphemes to form
new words that may or may not
be the same part of speech and
inflectional affixes are added to
the end of an existing word for
purely grammatical reasons. In
31. In English there are only eight total inflectional affixes:
-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
32. The other type of bound
morphemes are called bound
roots. These are morphemes
(and not affixes) that must be
attached to another morpheme
and do not have a meaning of
their own. Some examples are
ceive in perceive and mit in
submit.
34. WORD FORMATION PROCESSES
• Derivation
• Category Extension
• Compounding
• Root Creation
• Clipped form
• Blending
• Acronym
• Proper name
• Back formation
35. Derivation
This involves the addition of a
derivational affix, changing the
syntactic category of the item to
which it is attached.
Beauty (noun) – Beautiful (Adj)
Discern (V) – Discernment (Noun)
38. Root Creation
It is a brand new word based
on no pre-existing morphemes.
Colgate
Xerox
Palmolive
Pantene
39. Clipped Form
It is a shortened form of pre-
existing forms.
Gym – gymnasium
Mike – microphone
TV – television
Phone – cellular phone
40. Acronym
It is a word formed from the
first letter(s) of each word in a
phrase.
NASA
PAGASA
SC
SARS
ADHD
41. Blending
It is a combination of parts of
two pre-existing words.
Smoke + fog = smog
Motor + hotel = motel
Breakfast + lunch =
42. Proper Name
This process forms a word
from a proper name.
Hamburger - Hamburg, Germany
Sandwich – Earl of Sandwich
Einsteinium
FH Building
43. Back Formation
This process forms a word by
removing what is mistaken for an
affix.
Editor – edit
Beggar – beg
44. Semantics
Lexical semantics is
concerned with the meanings of
words and the meaning of
relationships among words,
while phrasal semantics is
concerned with the meaning of
syntactic units larger than the
word.
46. 2. Syntactic Ambiguity – refers to a
characteristic of a phrase that has
more than one meaning.
Example:
English literature teacher
47. 3. Synonymy – refers to words
having the same sense; that us they
have the same value for all their
semantic features.
Example:
happy, glad
reply, respond
hastily, hurriedly
48. 4. Hyponymy – is a characteristic of
a word that contains the meaning
of another word; the contained
word is known as a superordinate.
Example:
flower
sampaguita
tulips
rose
49. 5. Antonymy – refers to the
characteristics of two words which
are both in form as well as in
meaning.
Example:
rich – poor
happy – sad
Gradable antonym – are words that
describes the opposite ends of a
continuous dimension.
hot – cold
50. 6. Homonymy – refers to a sense
relation with same phonetic form
but different in meaning.
Example:
bat – nocturnal mammal
bat – a wooden equipment
used in baseball
51. 7. Coreference – refers to the sense
relation of two expressions that can
have the same extralinguistic
referent.
Example:
Mercury is the nearest planet from
the sun.
Mercury and nearest planet from
the sun are coreferential because
they refer to one object.
52. 8. Deixis – refers to a characteristic of an expression
that has one meaning but can refer to different
entities within the same context of appearance.
Deictic expressions have a “pointing function”.
Example:
I, she, you, he (personal pronouns)
here, there, right, left
(expressions of place)
this, that, those, these
(demonstratives)
now, yesterday, today
(time expressions)
53. 9. Entailment – is a proposition
expressed in a sentence that follows
necessarily from another sentence.
Also called, “paraphrase”.
Example:
Raul had a fatal accident.
Raul died.
54. 10. Presupposition – refers to a
proposition expressed in a sentence
that is assumed to be true in order
to judge the truth or falsity in
another sentence.
Example:
The King of Canada is dead.
There is a King of Canada.
55. 11. Anaphora – is a linguistic
expression which refers to another
linguistic expression.
Example:
The tsunami killed thousands of
people. It was devastating.
IT on the second sentence was used
anaphorically to refer to THE
TSUNAMI.
56. CONVERSATIONAL MAXIMS
These are rules that are observed
when communication takes place where
people are cooperative.
Maxim of Manner
Maxim of Quantity
Maxim of Quality
Maxim of Relation
57. Maxim of Manner – a participant's contribution
should be direct, not obscure, ambiguous or wordy.
Maxim of Quantity – a participant’s contribution
should be as informative as possible.
Maxim of Quality – a participant should not say
that which is false or that the participant lacks
evidence.
Maxim of Relation – the participant’s contribution
should be related to the subject of the
conversation.
58. PRAGMATICS
Pragmatics is the interpretation of
linguistic meaning in context. Linguistic context is
discourse that precedes a sentence to be
interpreted and situational context is knowledge
about the world. In the following sentences, the
kids have eaten already and surprisingly, they
are hungry, the linguistic context helps to
interpret the second sentence depending on
what the first sentence says. The situational
context helps to interpret the second sentence
because it is common knowledge that humans
are not usually hungry after eating.
59. Neurolinguistics
The human brain consists of 10 billion
nerve cells (neurons) and billions of fibers that
connect them. These neurons or gray matter
form the cortex, the surface of the brain, and
the connecting 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 by the corpus callosum. In general,
the left hemisphere of the brain controls the
right side of the body and vice versa.
60. LATERALIZATION refers to any cognitive functions
that are localized to one side of the brain or the
other. Language is said to be lateralized and
processed in the left hemisphere of the brain.
The left side of the brain is specialized for
language and a word heard in the right ear will
transfer directly to the left side of the body
because of the CONTRALATERALIZATION of the
brain. Furthermore, the right side of the brain is
specialized for nonverbal stimuli, such as music
and environmental sounds, and a noise heard in
the left ear will transfer directly to the right side
of the brain.
61. LATERALIZATION refers to any cognitive functions
that are localized to one side of the brain or the
other. Language is said to be lateralized and
processed in the left hemisphere of the brain.
The left side of the brain is specialized for
language and a word heard in the right ear will
transfer directly to the left side of the body
because of the CONTRALATERALIZATION of the
brain. Furthermore, the right side of the brain is
specialized for nonverbal stimuli, such as music
and environmental sounds, and a noise heard in
the left ear will transfer directly to the right side
of the brain.
62. Child Language Acquisition and Second
Language Acquisition
Linguistic competence develops in
stages, from babbling to one word to two
word, then telegraphic speech. Babbling is
now considered the earliest form of
language acquisition because infants will
produce sounds based on what language
input they receive.
63. One word sentences
(holophrastic speech) are generally
monosyllabic in consonant-vowel
clusters. During two word 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 the open class content words,
so that the sentences sound like a
telegram.
64. The three theories of language
acquisition
• imitation
• Reinforcement
• analogy
65. Acquisitions
Phonology: A child's error in
pronunciation is not random, but rule-
governed. Typical phonological rules
include: consonant cluster
simplification (spoon becomes poon),
devoicing of final consonants (dog
becomes dok), voicing of initial
consonants (truck becomes druck), and
consonant harmony (doggy becomes
goggy, or big becomes gig.)
66. The "Innateness Hypothesis" of child
language acquisition, proposed by Noam
Chomsky, states that the human species is
prewired to acquire language, and that the
kind of language is also determined. Many
factors have led to this hypothesis such as the
ease and rapidity of language acquisition
despite impoverished input as well as the
uniformity of languages. All children will learn
a language, and children will also learn more
than one language if they are exposed to it.
Children follow the same general stages when
learning a language, although the linguistic
input is widely varied.
67. The "Critical Age Hypothesis" suggests
that there is a critical age for language
acquisition without the need for special
teaching or learning. During this critical
period, language learning proceeds
quickly and easily. After this period, the
acquisition of grammar is difficult, and
for some people, never fully achieved.
Cases of children reared in social
isolation have been used for testing the
critical age hypothesis. None of the
children who had little human contact
were able to speak any language once
reintroduced into society.
68. Second Language Acquisition Teaching Methods
Grammar-translation: the student memorizes words,
inflected words, and syntactic rules and uses them to
translate from native to target language and vice versa; most
commonly used method in schools because it does not
require teacher to be fluent; however, least effective method
of teaching
Direct method: the native language is not used at all in the
classroom, and the student must learn the new language
without formal instruction; based on theories of first
language acquisition
Audio-lingual: heavy use of dialogs and audio, based on the
assumption that language learning is acquired mainly
through imitation, repetition, and reinforcement; influenced
by psychology
69. Natural Approach: emphasis on vocabulary and not
grammar; focus on meaning, not form; use of authentic
materials instead of textbook
Silent Way: teachers remain passive observers while
students learn, which is a process of personal growth; no
grammatical explanation or modeling by the teacher
Total Physical Response: students play active role as listener
and performer, must respond to imperative drills with
physical action
70. Suggestopedia: students always remain comfortable
and relaxed and learn through memorization of
meaningful texts, although the goal is understanding
Community Language Learning: materials are
developed as course progresses and teacher
understands what students need and want to learn;
learning involves the whole person and language is
seen as more than just communication
Community Language Teaching: incorporates all
components of language and helps students with
various learning styles; use of communication-based
activities with authentic materials, needs of learner are
taken into consideration when planning topics and
objectives
71. Sociolinguistics
- the study of language and how
it affects the society.
A dialect is a variety of language that is
systematically different from other
varieties of the same language. The
dialects of a single language are
mutually intelligible, but when the
speakers can no longer understand
each other, the dialects become
languages.
72. A lingua franca is a major
language used in an area where
speakers of more than one
language live that permits
communication and commerce
among them. English is called the
lingua franca of the whole world,
while French used to be the lingua
franca of diplomacy.
73. Besides dialects, speakers may use
different styles or registers (such as
contractions) depending on the context.
Slang may also be used in speech, but is
not often used in formal situations or
writing. Jargon refers to the unique
vocabulary pertaining to a certain area,
such as computers or medicine. Words or
expressions referring to certain acts that
are forbidden or frowned upon are
considered taboo. These taboo words
produce euphemisms, words or phrases
that replace the expressions that are being
avoided.
74. What are some of the branches of linguistics?
• applied linguistics: application to areas such as speech pathology,
reading, social work, missionary work, translation, dictionary
compilation, language teaching, error analysis, computer language
processing.
• dialectology: investigation of regional variation in language.
• ethnolinguistics (anthropological linguistics): investigation of the
relation between a people's language and culture.
• historical (diachronic) linguistics: study of language change and
evolution.
• morphology: study of word formation and inflection.
• neurolinguistics: research into the specific location of language in the
brain.
• paralinguistics: study of nonverbal (auxiliary) human communication.
• philology: study of how language has been used in literature, especially
in older manuscripts.
75. phonetics: description of how speech sounds are articulated and
heard.
phonology: study of how languages organize the units of speech
into systems.
pragmatics: study of the strategies people use to carry out
communicative business in specific contexts.
psycholinguistics: investigation of language as cognitively-based
behavior; how it is acquired and processed.
second language acquisition (SLA): study of how older learners
acquire language, and of ways to improve it.
sociolinguistics: study of social variation in language: the relation
between social structure and language usage, and of social issues
involving language.
semantics: study of word and sentence meaning.
syntax: study of the structure of sentences and of underlying
principles for generating and processing them.
76. Sociolinguistics
- the study of language and how
it affects the society.
A dialect is a variety of language that is
systematically different from other
varieties of the same language. The
dialects of a single language are
mutually intelligible, but when the
speakers can no longer understand
each other, the dialects become
languages.
