Linguistics 4to

1. UNIVERSIDAD NACIONAL DE
CHIMBORAZO
LINGUISTICS (GRAMMAR PHONOLOGY,
MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX) A
EDUARDO HEREDIA ARBOLEDA
MAYO 2020-OCTUBRE 2020

2. In the beginning: The origin of language
Nothing, no doubt, would be more interesting than to know from historical
documents the exact process by which the first man began to lisp his first
words, and thus to be rid forever of all the theories on the origin of speech.
MAX MÜLLER, Lectures on the Science of Language, 1874, German
Philologist.

4. Scientific information per se does not entirely
provide accurate explanations, however, we can
use hermeneutic tool to interpret scientific facts;
these tool are associated to a philosophical, and
metaphysical order. Ex: the universe was created by
chance.

6. What do you understand by Evolution
and Adaptation?

9. • The idea that the earliest form of language was imitative, or echoic, was
proposed up to the twentieth century.
• A parallel view states that language at first consisted of emotional
ejaculations of pain, fear, surprise, pleasure, anger, and so on.
• French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed that the earliest
manifestations of language were “cries of nature.”
• Other hypotheses suggested that language arose out of the rhythmical
grunts of men and women working together, or more charming, that
language originated from song as an expressive rather than a
communicative need. Just as with the beliefs in a divine origin of language,
these proposed origins are not verifiable by scientific means.

10. Language most likely evolved with the human
species, possibly in stages, possibly in one giant leap.
Research by linguists, evolutionary biologists, and
neurologists support this view and the view that from
the outset the human animal was genetically
equipped to learn language.

11. Is language a divine creation
or a product of million years
of evolution?

12. “There is no way to prove or disprove the
divine origin of language, just as one cannot
argue scientifically for or against the
existence of deities” (Fromkin, Rodman &
Hyams, 2018, p. 28).

16. Linguistic determinism

19. • Languages break up the color spectrum at different points. In Navaho, blue and green are one word. Russian
has different words for dark blue (siniy) and light blue (goluboy), while in English we need to use the additional
words dark and light to express the difference.
• The American Indian language Zuni does not distinguish between the colors yellow and orange. Languages
also differ in how they express locations. For example, in Italian you ride “in” a bicycle and you go “in” a
country while in English you ride “on” a bicycle and you go “to” a country. In English we say that a ring is
placed “on” a finger and a finger is placed “in” the ring. Korean, on the other hand, has one word for both
situations, kitta, which expresses the idea of a tight-fitting relation between the two objects.
• Spanish has two different words for the inside of a corner (esquina) and the outside of a corner (rincon).

20. The language and matter!

24. If we perceive reality differently
depending on the worldviews of cultures,
Is it pertinent to say that laws of thoughts
are multilateral for such cultures?

27. • Traditional grammar refers to the type of grammar study done prior to the beginnings of modern
linguistics.
• In a more recent perspective, Grammar is the study of the entire interrelated system of structures—
sounds, words, meanings, sentences—within a language.
• Traditional grammar can be traced back over 2,000 years and includes grammars from the classical
period of Greece, India, and Rome; the Middle Ages; the Renaissance; the eighteenth and
nineteenth century; and more modern times.
• Traditional grammars include prescriptive rules that are to be followed and proscriptive rules (of a
law or rule) of usage to be avoided. Ex. What are we waiting for? For what are we waiting?

28. • The analytical study of language began around 500 BC in Greece and India. The work of Greek scholar
Dionysius Thrax is the model for all grammars of European languages that follow. To Thrax, grammar
was the technical knowledge necessary to produce the prestige language of poets, orators, and writers.
• Around the same time, the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro produced the 25 volumes of his De
lingua latina (c. 100, About the Latin Language). Varro contrasted Latin with Greek, changed Greek
grammatical terms into Latin, and formed his grammar of Latin by adapting Greek rules.
• Other Latin grammars, influenced by the works of Thrax and Varro, were produced in the Middle Ages.
Aelius Donatus published Ars Grammatica (c. fourth century, Art of Letters), and Donat Priscianus
Caesariensis (Priscian) wrote Institutiones grammaticae(c. sixth century, Grammatical Foundations),
which is the only complete surviving Latin grammar.
• As printing became more widely available in the Renaissance, European grammarians began the mass
production of grammars of their languages by mirroring the Latin grammars of Varro, Donatus, and that
the grammatical descriptions of Latin could be routinely applied to their own languages; this
perception, however, was not accurate and resulted in many artificial prescriptive and proscriptive rules.

29. • Continuing with this tradition, grammarians in the eighteenth century studied English, along with many other
European languages, by using the prescriptive approach in traditional grammar; during this time alone, over
270 grammars of English were published.
• One of the most influential grammars of the eighteenth century was Lindley Murray’s English grammar (1794),
which was updated in new editions for decades. Murray’s rules were taught for many years throughout school
systems in England and the United States and helped to create modern attitudes about the existence of a
correct or standard variety of English.
• Even though linguists today view traditional grammar as an unscientific way to study language and grammar,
many of the basic Latin-based notions of grammar can still be found in all levels of the classroom and in
textbooks and usage guides available to educators and the public.
• Linguists, along with many English faculty, would rather have students study language with a descriptive
approach that includes the analysis of real samples of a mixture of English dialect varieties, not just the
prescribed, and sometimes inconsistent, prestige forms.
• Linguists also believe that the rules of traditional grammar are inadequate because many of the rules are
oversimplified, inconsistent, or not consistently conformed to.

30. What is recursion in language?
Recursion. Characteristic of human language that stipulates that the
repeated combination of elements can give rise to an unlimited
number of sentences.

32. How was the human language
developed?

33. The Development of Language in the Species
As the voice was used more and more, the vocal organs would have been strengthened and
perfected through the principle of the inherited effects of use; and this would have reacted
on the power of speech. But the relation between the continued use of language and the
development of the brain has no doubt been far more important. The mental powers in
some early progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing
ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use.
CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man, 1871

34. The linguistics expert Dan Everett, who spent many years among the Pirahã, tells of
a group of men killing a very sick baby by pouring copious amounts of alcohol in its
mouth.1 He explained: “They felt certain that this baby was going to die. They felt
it was suffering terribly [. . .] So they euthanized the child.”

35. • Speech could not have developed in nonhuman primates because their
vocal tracts were anatomically incapable of producing a large enough
inventory of speech sounds.
• Evolutionarily, human rationality arose from a set of brain mechanisms that
allowed more complex behaviors based on perception, memory, and the
efficient processing of new information in order to favor the survival of
individuals.
• “Not only the man is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to
man" (John Weehler)
• But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the
convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind
of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy (To William
Graham 3 July 1881 written by Charles Darwin)

36. • One evolutionary step must have resulted in the development of a vocal tract capable of producing the
wide variety of sounds of human language, as well as the mechanism for perceiving and distinguishing
them. However, the existence of mynah birds and parrots is evidence that this step is insufficient to
explain the origin of language, because these creatures have the ability to imitate human speech, but
not the ability to acquire language.

37. • It could be that when the brain reached a certain level of complexity it simply automatically had
certain properties because that’s what happens when you pack 1010 neurons into something the
size of a basketball (Noam Chomsky)
• The Darwinist model would say that language, like other complex organic systems, evolved step
by step, each step being an adaptive solution. Yet language is such an integrated “all or none”
system, it is hard to imagine it evolving that way. Perhaps the brain grew in size and became
capable of all kinds of things which were not part of the original properties. (Stephen Jay Gould)
• Another point that is not yet clear is what role, if any, hemispheric lateralization played in
language evolution. Lateralization certainly makes greater specialization possible. Research
conducted with birds and monkeys, however, shows that lateralization is not unique to the
human brain.
• We do not yet have definitive answers to the origin of language in the human brain.

38. What do you think is greater: the
number of languages in the world,
or the number of speech sounds
in all those languages?

39. The Pronunciation of Morphemes
• The sounds form different patterns in different languages. English has
nasalized vowels, but only in syllables with nasal consonants. French puts nasal
vowels anywhere it pleases, with or without nasal consonants.
• The study of how speech sounds form patterns is phonology, and the parts of
words we call morphemes.
• The smallest unit of language that has its own meaning, either a word or a part
of a word: "Worker" contains two morphemes: "work" and "-er".

42. Bilabials [p] [b] [m] When we produce a [p], [b], or [m] we articulate by bringing both lips together.
Labiodentals [f] [v] We also use our lips to form [f] and [v]. We articulate these sounds by touching the
bottom lip to the upper teeth.
Interdentals [θ] [ð] These sounds, both spelled th, are pronounced by inserting the tip of the tongue
between the teeth. However, for some speakers the tongue merely touches behind the teeth, making
a sound more correctly called dental.
Alveolars [t] [d] [n] [s] [z] [l] [r] All seven of these sounds are pronounced with the tongue raised in
various ways to the alveolar ridge.
• For [t,d,n] the tongue tip is raised and touches the ridge, or slightly in front of it.
• For [s,z] the sides of the front of the tongue are raised, but the tip is lowered so that air escapes
over it.
• For [l] the tongue tip is raised while the rest of the tongue remains down, permitting air to escape
over its sides. Hence, [l] is called a lateral sound. You can feel this in the “l’s” of Lolita.
• For [r] [IPA ɹ] most English speakers either curl the tip of the tongue back behind the alveolar ridge,
or bunch up the top of the tongue behind the ridge. As opposed to [l], air escapes through the
central part of the mouth when [r] is articulated. It is a central liquid.

43. Palatals [ʃ] [ʒ] [tʃ] [dʒ] [j] For these sounds, which occur in mission [mɪʃən], measure [mɛʒər], cheap [tʃip],
judge [dʒʌdʒ], and yoyo [jojo], the constriction occurs by raising the front part of the tongue to the palate.
Velars [k] [g] [ŋ] Another class of sounds is produced by raising the back of the tongue to the soft palate or
velum. The initial and final sounds of the words kick [kɪk] and gig [gɪg] and the final sounds of the words
back [bӕk], bag [bӕg], and bang [bӕŋ] are all velar sounds.
Uvulars [ʀ] [q] [ɢ] Uvular sounds are produced by raising the back of the tongue to the uvula, the fleshy
protuberance that hangs down in the back of our throats. The r in French is often a uvular trill symbolized
by [ʀ]. The uvular sounds [q] and [ɢ] occur in Arabic. These sounds do not ordinarily occur in English.
Glottals [h] [ʔ] The sound of [h] is from the flow of air through the open glottis, and past the tongue and
lips as they prepare to pronounce a vowel sound, which always follows [h].

45. Voiced and Voiceless Sounds
Sounds are voiceless when the vocal cords are apart so that air flows freely through the glottis into the
oral cavity. [p] and [s] in super [supər] are two of the several voiceless sounds of English. If the vocal cords
are together, the airstream forces its way through and causes them to vibrate. Such sounds are voiced. [b]
and [z] in buzz [bʌz] are two of the many voiced sounds of English.
Sounds produced with the velum up, blocking the air from escaping through the nose, are oral sounds, because
the air can escape only through the oral cavity. Most sounds in all languages are oral sounds. When the velum is
not in its raised position, air escapes through both the nose and the mouth. Sounds
produced this way are nasal sounds.

46. The Pronunciation of Plurals
Nearly all English nouns have a plural form: cat/cats, dog/dogs, fox/foxes. But have you ever paid attention to
how plural forms are pronounced? Listen to a native speaker of English (or yourself if you are one) pronounce
the plurals of the following nouns.

47. Allomorph is any of the versions of a morpheme, such as the plural endings / s / (as in bats ) / , z / (as
in bugs ), and / iz / (as in buses ) for the plural morpheme.
A minimal pair is a pair of words that vary by only a single sound, usually meaning sounds that may
confuse English learners, like the /f/ and /v/ in fan and van, or the /e/ and /ɪ/ in desk and disk, seal
[sil] and zeal [zil]

48. 1. Insert a [ə] before the plural morpheme /z/ when a regular noun ends in a sibilant, giving [əz].
2. Change the plural morpheme /z/ to a voiceless [s] when preceded by a voiceless sound.

49. 1. Insert a [ə] before the past-tense morpheme when a regular verb ends in a non-nasal alveolar stop, giving
[əd].
2. Change the past-tense morpheme to a voiceless [t] when a voiceless sound precedes it.
Like plurals, some irregular past tenses conform to no particular rule and must be learned individually, such as
go/went, sing/sang, and hit/hit.

50. Phonemes are not physical sounds. They are abstract mental representations of the
phonological units of a language, the units used to represent words in our mental lexicon.
To distinguish between a phoneme and its allophones, we use slashes / / to enclose
phonemes and continue to use square brackets [ ] for allophones

52. Distinctive Features of Phonemes
• We are generally not aware of the phonetic properties or features that
distinguish the phonemes of our language
• Phonetics provides the means to describe the phones (sounds) of language,
showing how they are produced and how they vary.
• Phonology tells us how various sounds form patterns to create phonemes and
their allophones.

53. Feature Values
One can think of voicing and voicelessness as the presence or absence of a single feature, voiced. This
single feature may have two values: plus (+), which signifies its presence, and minus (–), which signifies
its absence.

54. Nondistinctive Features
• French has both oral and nasal consonant phonemes and vowel
phonemes.
• English has oral and nasal consonant phonemes, but only oral vowel
phonemes. Besides, English does not have nasalized vowel phonemes.
• Akan (spoken in Ghana) has nasal vowel phonemes.
• Phonologies are different.

55. The vowel nasalization rule is an assimilation rule

65. Prosodic Phonology
Syllable Structure
• Words are composed of one or more syllables. A syllable is a phonological unit composed of one or
more phonemes. Every syllable has a nucleus, which is usually a vowel (but which may be a syllabic
liquid or nasal). The nucleus may be preceded and/or followed by one or more phonemes called the
syllable onset and coda. From a very early age, children learn that certain words rhyme. In rhyming
words, the nucleus and the coda of the final syllable of both words are identical
• A syllable thus has a hierarchical structure. Using the IPA symbol σ for the phonological syllable, the
hierarchical structure of the monosyllabic word splints can be shown:

69. Morphemes: The Minimal Units of Meaning
• The Morphology studies the internal structure of the word. It also teaches the
classification of words according to the role of the sentence.
• Thousands of English adjectives begin with un-.

73. A prefix is a group of letters placed before the root of a word. For example, the
word “unhappy” consists of the prefix “un-” [which means “not”] combined with
the root (or stem) word “happy”; the word “unhappy” means “not happy.”
A suffix is a group of letters placed after the root of a word. For example, the
word flavorless consists of the root word “flavor” combined with the suffix “-less”
[which means “without”]; the word “flavorless” means “having no flavor.”

75. The Quichua Language Meaning in Spanish Meaning in English
Wasi. Casa. House.
Wasi–cha. Casita. Little house.
Wasi-cha–yki. Tu casita. Your little house.
Wasi-cha-yki–kuna. Tus casitas. Your little houses.
Wasi-cha-yki-kuna–manta. Desde tus casitas. From your little houses.
Wasi-cha-yki-kuna–manta-raq.
Desde tus casitas todavía.
From your little houses still.
Table 2
Agglutinative Sequence of the Quichua Language and its Translation into Spanish and English
Note. Adapted from Dos lenguas en contraste: quichua-español. [Two languages in contrast: quichua-
spanish] (p. 78), by Yáñez, C. C. (2007). Quito, Ecuador: Editorial Abya-Yala. Copyright 2007 by
Corporación Educativa Macac.

76. • Root ugly and the affixes -ify and –cation, -ify to the adjective ugly and formed a verb.
• Many verbs in English have been formed in this way: purify, amplify, simplify, falsify. The suffix -ify
conjoined with nouns also forms verbs: objectify, glorify, personify.
• The suffix -cation to uglify and formed a noun, uglification, as in glorification, simplification,
falsification, and purification.
• By using the morphological rules of English, he created a new word.

79. Derivational Morphology
• Derivational morphology is concerned with forming new lexemes, that is, words that
differ either in syntactic category (part of speech) or in meaning from their bases.
• A bound morpheme is a word element that cannot stand alone as a word, including
both prefixes and suffixes.
• Bound morphemes like -ify and -cation are called derivational morphemes. If we
invent an adjective, pouzy, to describe the effect of static electricity on hair, you will
immediately understand the sentences “Walking on that carpet really pouzified my
hair”
• The form that results from the addition of a derivational morpheme is called a derived
word
• Derivational morphemes have clear semantic content. In this sense they are like
content words, except that they are not words.

81. When a new word enters the lexicon by the application of morphological rules, other complex derivations
may be blocked. For example, when Commun + ist entered the language, words such as Commun + ite (as
in Trotsky + ite) or Commun + ian (as in grammar + ian) were not needed; their formation was blocked.
Sometimes, however, alternative forms do coexist: for example, Chomskyan and Chomskyist and perhaps
even Chomskyite (all meaning “follower of Chomsky’s views of linguistics”). Semanticist and semantician
are both used, but the possible word semantite is not.

82. • Finally, derivational affixes appear to come in two classes. In one class, the addition of a suffix
triggers subtle changes in pronunciation. For example, when we affix -ity to specific (pronounced
“specifik” with a k sound), we get specificity (pronounced “specifisity” with an s sound). When
deriving Elizabeth + an from Elizabeth, the fourth vowel sound changes from the vowel in Beth to the
vowel in Pete. Other suffixes such as -y, -ive, and -ize may induce similar changes: sane/sanity,
deduce/deductive, critic/criticize.
• On the other hand, suffixes such as -er, -ful, -ish, -less, -ly, and -ness may be tacked onto a base word
without affecting the pronunciation, as in baker, wishful, boyish, needless, sanely, and fullness.
Moreover, affixes from the first class cannot be attached to a base containing an affix from the
second class: *need + less + ity, *moral + ize + ive; but affixes from the second class may attach to
bases with either kind of affix: moral + iz(e) + er, need + less + ness.