ENG 4339 Lecture 1: introduction-to-english-linguistics-notes
THESTUDYOFLANGUAGE
WhatisLinguistics?
●Language is the idiosyncratic trait of every human.
●Every person has an innate ability to speak a
language.
○Other animals? Bees
●The scientific study of language is carried out in the
field of Linguistics.
●The goal of Linguistics is to describe language.
●Linguists study the structure of language.
Multidisciplinarity
●Linguistics is multidisciplinary, that is, many disciplines study language from their
own expertise:
○Psychology: interest in language as a property of the human mind; language
acquisition PSYCHOLINGUISTICS.
○Anthropology: relationship between language and culture
ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS.
○Sociology: language in society SOCIOLINGUISTICS.
○Computer science: modelling of natural language by
computers COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS.
BasicPrinciples
●Language is part of a larger semiotic system:
○Language is a system of communication but not the
only one. Humans also communicate through
gestures, art, dress and music, for example.
○Semiotics: the study of signs.
○Ferdinand de Saussure A course in General Linguistics
(1916): Meaning in
semiotic systems is expressed by signs, which have a particular form
(SIGNIFIER) and some meaning that the signifier conveys (SIGNIFIED).
●Language has a clear structure (Arbitrariness):
○Saussure argued that one of the main features of the linguistic sign is its
arbitrary nature.
○The word horse
has no direct connection to the meaning it expresses.
○Although most linguistic signs are arbitrary, there are instances of signs that
bear iconic relationships to the meanings they express:
■Imitation: The cow mooed
for hours
■Onomatopoeic words: beep, click
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●The modes of language (how it is transmitted):
○Speech:
■Considered to be primary because all languages are spoken and only a
subject of these are written.
■All children will naturally acquire the spoken version of language if
they are exposed to it in the period of acquisition.
■It is highly interactive and oral, which allows us to use intonation to
emphasize words or phrases and express emotion.
○Writing:
■Considered to be secondary. We should rather say that speech and
writing have different but complementary roles.
■To become literate, a child needs some kind of formal schooling in
reading and writing.
■Writing has punctuation but it can only express a small proportion of
the features that intonation has.
○Signing:
■Sign languages are not gestures equivalents of spoken languages.
They have their own grammar and have to be acquired as a new
language.
○Whether spoken, written or signed, every language has structure, which can
be described by postulating:
■Rules governing the pronunciation of sounds: the way words are put
together; that manner in which phrases, clauses and sentences are
structured; and the ways that meaning is created.
●They are studied in the realm of grammar. Linguistic rules
serve to describe what people know about language: the
unconscious knowledge of language people possess that is
part of what Chomsky defines as our linguistic competence.
■Principles stipulating how the structures that rules create should be
used.
LevelsofGrammar(rulesofgrammar)
●Phonetics/Phonology
○This level focuses on the smallest unit of linguistic analysis: the phoneme.
E.g. /ðɪs/
○Phonological rules describe how sounds are pronounced in various contexts:
assimilation.
●Morphology
○This is the next level whose unit of analysis is the morpheme, the smallest
unit with meaning. E.g. un-think-able.
○Rules focus on how words are structured.
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●Syntax
○The largest level of structure is the clause, which can be analysed into
constituents. They are noun phrases, verb phrases, etc which can have
different clause functions: subject, or educator, object, complement and
adverbial. We can have main clauses and subordinate clauses.
●Semantics
○The study of semantics affects all the other grammatical levels.
○The study of semantics is focused on such topics as the meaning of individual
words (lexical semantics) and the ability of words to refer to points in time or
place or individuals in the external world (deixis).
Grammar
●Grammar has many different meanings:
○Some people think it mainly involves syntax.
○To others, it covers usage: correct and incorrect.
●However, for many linguists, grammar involves the study of linguistic rules that are
part of our linguistic competence: that is, the unconscious knowledge of the rules of
a language that any fluent speaker possesses.
Languageincontext(Pragmatics)
●Rules are part of grammar, whereas principles have to do with the use of the
structures created by linguistic rules.
●How language is structured depends heavily on context: the social context in which
language is used as well as the linguistic context in which a particular structure
occurs.
●The study of this issue is conducted within the domain of pragmatics.
○Pragmatics is less concerned with how grammatical constructions are
structured and more with why they have the structure that they do.
○Grammar deals with structure whereas Pragmatics deals with use.
○One of the issues Pragmatics deals with is politeness.
■Rules of grammar can be presented in fairy absolute terms. Principles
of politeness deal more with tendencies than absolutes: a structure
tends to be polite in context A but not in context B.
■Rules and principles also raise issues of
grammaticality and acceptability.
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Document Summary
Language is the idiosyncratic trait of every human. Every person has an innate ability to speak a language. The scientific study of language is carried out in the field of linguistics. The goal of linguistics is to describe language. Linguistics is multidisciplinary, that is, many disciplines study language from their own expertise: acquisition psycholinguistics. Psychology : interest in language as a property of the human mind; language. Computer science: modelling of natural language by. Language is part of a larger semiotic system: Language is a system of communication but not the only one. Humans also communicate through gestures, art, dress and music, for example. Ferdinand de saussure a course in general linguistics (1916): meaning in semiotic systems is expressed by signs, which have a particular form ( signifier ) and some meaning that the signifier conveys ( signified ). Saussure argued that one of the main features of the linguistic sign is its.
