Eng502 Short Handouts Notes Final Term File 3 Compiled by Sir Zahid
Eng502 Short Handouts Notes Final Term File 3 Compiled by Sir Zahid
Eng502 Short Handouts Notes Final Term File 3 Compiled by Sir Zahid
Lesson-31
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS I
Topic 176: Definition
Big favors involve longer expressions, such as "Could you do me a favor" with
extended pauses.
What do interesting observations in discourse analysis focus on?
Observations focus on how language is used, including aspects like pauses and
language interpretation.
What questions does discourse analysis address?
Zelling Harris first used the term to describe a method for analyzing connected
speech or writing beyond a single sentence.
How is "discourse" typically defined?
CDA studies written and spoken texts to reveal sources of power, dominance,
inequality, and bias in social, political, and historical contexts.
According to Fairclough (1993), how does CDA explore relationships?
Rather than rejecting them, users try to make sense of such texts based on their
linguistic knowledge and interpretation skills.
Topic 180: Cohesion
Cohesion is the grammatical and lexical linking within a text or sentence that gives
it meaning.
Provide examples of cohesive ties in a given text.
Lesson-32
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS II
Topic 182: Discourse Typology: Spoken and Written, Formal and Informal
Language teaching divides discourse into two major categories: spoken and
written.
Subcategories include speaking and listening for spoken discourse and reading
and writing for written discourse.
How is spoken discourse different from written discourse?
Spoken discourse is less planned and more open to intervention, while written
discourse, especially formal, is often more structured.
Topic 183: Discourse and the Sentence
A clause has a bi-partite structure, dividing information into given and new
information.
How is the ordering of information determined in discourse?
The sender's hypotheses about what the receiver knows or doesn't know dictate
the ordering of information in discourse.
Topic 187: Knowledge in Discourse: Schemata
Lesson-33
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS III
Conversation is less formal talk that occurs primarily for participants' benefit,
characterized by short turns and a small number of participants.
What are some defining criteria for talk to be considered as conversation?
Factors include eye contact, body position, movement, gaze, intonation, volume,
relative status, and the role of speakers.
Topic 191: Conversational Principles: Cooperative
According to Paul Grice, what are the four maxims under the Cooperative
Principle?
Receivers use the maxims to reason from the literal, semantic meaning to the
pragmatic meaning and infer the sender's intentions.
Topic 192: Flouting the Cooperative Principle
Metaphor, irony, sarcasm, and exaggeration like "I have millions of books in my
college library."
Topic 193: Conversational Principles: Politeness
What are the maxims formulated by Robin Lakoff under the Politeness
Principle?
The maxims are "Don't impose," "Give options," and "Make your receiver feel
good."
How are the principles of politeness and truth sometimes conflicting?
Lesson-34
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
When did the CDA group emerge, and who were some key scholars?
The CDA group emerged in the early 1990s, with a symposium in Amsterdam in
January 1991. Key scholars included Dijk, Norman Fairclough, Gunther, and
others.
What characterizes CDA as a school or paradigm?
There are diverse approaches and methods within CDA, often connected to a
coherent theory of the social world and language. Analysts apply theoretical
frames to research topics, and methods vary, including fieldwork, text collection,
linguistic focus, context analysis, micro-level or global issue emphasis.
Name influential traditions and scholars in critical approaches to discourse
analysis.
A: James Gee, Norman Fairclough, and Gunther Kress are influential scholars,
each embracing methodological hybridity and drawing from a wide range of
scholarship.
Topic-199: Different Approaches to CDA
James Gee's integrated approach analyzes spoken and written language to enact
social and cultural perspectives and identities. He presents both a theory of
language-in-use and a research method.
What is Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework in CDA?
Gee, Fairclough, and Kress offer tools for understanding social events and
practices that researchers can apply contextually, designing new ones as needed
for their work.
Lesson-35
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Topic-200: Introduction
Lesson-36
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS I
Topic-204: Introduction
What does psycholinguistics study, and where is the ability to use language
located?
Define Neurolinguistics.
A: Neurolinguistics is the study of the relationship between language and the
brain, focusing on the psychological and neurobiological processes underlying
language acquisition, use, comprehension, and production.
Topic-206: Language Areas in Brain
Broca's area, located in the frontal lobe, is linked to speech production. Damage
to Broca's area results in difficulty producing speech. This supports the idea that
language ability is located in the left hemisphere.
Explain Wernicke's area and its role in language comprehension.
Wernicke's area, in the cortex of the dominant temporal lobe, is associated with
language comprehension. Damage leads to Wernicke's aphasia, characterized by
fluent but incomprehensible speech. This supports the left hemisphere's crucial
role in understanding speech.
Topic-208: The Motor Cortex and the Arcuate Fasciculus
The motor cortex is the part of the cerebral cortex that initiates voluntary muscular
activity. It controls articulatory muscles, and the part near Broca's area manages
face, jaw, tongue, and larynx movement, essential for speech.
What does the localization view propose regarding language processing in the
brain?
The localization view suggests specific aspects of language ability have specific
locations in the brain. It envisions a pattern involving Wernicke’s area
comprehending a word, transferring it via the arcuate fasciculus to Broca’s area
for preparation, and then signaling the motor cortex for articulation. However, this
is a metaphorical representation as our understanding evolves.
Lesson-37
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS II
The 'tip of the tongue phenomenon' occurs when a person knows a word but
struggles to recall it. Speakers typically have an accurate phonological outline, can
get the initial sound correct, and often know the number of syllables in the word.
What are 'malapropisms,' and can you provide examples?
'Malapropisms' are errors in speech where words are mistakenly substituted with
similar-sounding ones. Examples include "fire distinguisher" instead of
'extinguisher' and "transcendental medication" instead of 'meditation.'
Topic-211: Slips of the Ear
Lesson-38
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Topic-216: Introduction
Explain the concepts of accent and dialect. How are they different?
Differences include pronunciation (e.g., "whit" for "what," "aboot" for "about"),
vocabulary (e.g., "ken" for "know," "havering" for "talking"), and grammatical
(e.g., "dinnae" for "don't").
Topic-219: Pidgin and Creole
Examples of English pidgins include Tok Pisin. Creoles include Hawai'i Creole
English, Jamaican English Creole, and Sierra Leone Krio.
Topic-220: Diglossia and Polyglossia
Lesson-39
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION I
Cooing involves vowel-like sounds, particularly high vowels, around four months.
Babbling, occurring between six to eight months, includes various vowels and
consonants, evolving into recognizable patterns and combinations by nine to ten
months. Parents often interpret babbling as early attempts at social interaction.
What is the significance of babbling in the language development of a child?
Between twelve and eighteen months, children produce single-unit utterances for
everyday objects. These utterances, often referred to as holophrastic, may serve as
phrases or sentences, although they are single terms.
How does holophrastic speech function during the one-word stage?
When does the two-word stage begin, and what characterizes it?
The two-word stage typically begins around eighteen to twenty months, and
children's vocabulary extends beyond fifty words. During this stage, children
combine two distinct words, and the interpretation depends on the context.
How does the adult interpretation of two-word combinations depend on
context?
Between two and two-and-a-half years old, children enter a stage marked by
multiple-word speech. Utterances become more complex, with variations in word
forms and the appearance of grammatical inflections and prepositions.
What changes occur in the child's language development by the age of three?
Lesson-40
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION II
Children generate expressions not commonly used by adults. For instance, they
may use unconventional expressions like "Woodstock me" or employ irregular
verb forms such as "holded" instead of "held."
Overgeneralization occurs when a child applies a rule too broadly. For instance,
using -s to form plurals leads to overgeneralizations like "foots" and "mans."
Topic-230: Developing Syntax
Explain the strategies used by a child in the first stage to form negatives.
In the first stage, the child uses simple strategies like putting "No" or "Not" at the
beginning of the sentence, as in "no mitten" or "not a teddy bear."
Describe the incorporation of other auxiliary forms in the third stage of
forming negatives.
The third stage involves using additional auxiliary forms like "didn’t" and
"won’t." Late acquisition includes the negative form "isn’t," leading to continued
use of Stage 2 forms.
Topic-233: Developing Semantics
Lesson-41:
SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION/LEARNING
In either case, individuals are attempting to learn another language. The term
"second language learning" is used more generally to describe both situations,
whether it's English as a foreign language (EFL) or English as a second language
(ESL).
Define the terms "acquisition" and "learning" in the context of language
development.
The critical period, around puberty, suggests that it becomes very difficult to fully
acquire another language after this stage. The optimum age for learning is
considered to be between ten to sixteen, when inherent language flexibility has
not been completely lost.
Topic-236: Affective Factors
Transfer involves using sounds, expressions, or structures from the learner's native
language (L1) when performing in the second language (L2). It can be positive if
the L1 and L2 share similar features and negative if they differ significantly.
What is "Interlanguage," and how does it manifest in second language
learners?
Topic-240: Introduction
How did scholars like Jones contribute to the development of language family
trees?
Scholars like Jones, observing commonalities in Sanskrit and other languages, led
to the discovery of language ancestors. The Proto-Indo-European language family
emerged, and scholars traced modern languages' lineage, establishing thirty
language families with over 6,000 individual languages.
Topic-242: Grimm’s Law
What is the Wave Model in historical linguistics, and why has it gained
popularity?
The Wave Model, proposed by Johannes Schmidt, presents language change as
concentric circles spreading like waves. The circles represent stable dialects
innovated for socio-political reasons. This model has gained popularity as an
alternative to the Tree model for its ability to address the shortcomings of the latter.
Topic-245: Language Change
Lesson-42:
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
Topic-240: Introduction
How did scholars like Jones contribute to the development of language family
trees?
Scholars like Jones, observing commonalities in Sanskrit and other languages, led
to the discovery of language ancestors. The Proto-Indo-European language family
emerged, and scholars traced modern languages' lineage, establishing thirty
language families with over 6,000 individual languages.
Topic-242: Grimm’s Law
What is the Wave Model in historical linguistics, and why has it gained
popularity?
The Wave Model, proposed by Johannes Schmidt, presents language change as
concentric circles spreading like waves. The circles represent stable dialects
Lesson-43:
COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
Topic-246: What is Computational Linguistics?
Explain the role of computational morphology, and what tasks does it involve,
such as tokenization and morphological analysis/synthesis?
Computational morphology deals with processing words in written (graphemic)
and spoken (phonemic) forms. Automatic morphological analyzers break down
words into stems and affixes. Tokenization, identifying separate words, is the
initial step. Morphological analysis involves recognizing word forms, and a
simple stemming algorithm may be used to strip suffixes.
Topic-249: Syntactic Processing
How does a computer characterize the grammatical structure of a sentence,
and what challenges exist in syntactic parsing?
Syntactic parsers analyze sentence grammatical structures. The Toy grammar,
using context-free grammars, categorizes sentence elements. Parsing involves
constructing parse trees, and top-down parsers build trees from the top down.
Syntactic ambiguity, as seen in sentences like "I can fish," poses challenges in
generating accurate parse trees.
Topic-250: Semantic Processing
Lesson-44:
LEXICOGRAPHY
What are the key features of a prototypical dictionary, and what purposes
does it serve?
A prototypical dictionary, whether in book or e-dictionary form, has an inter-
structure establishing links between components and is alphabetically structured.
It serves as a reference book, records a language's lexicon, provides quick
information retrieval, and acts as a guardian of language purity. Dictionaries can
be categorized as general or specialized, with the oldest known dictionary dating
back to 2600 BC in Akkadian or Babylonian on clay tablets.
Topic-253: Source Materials for Dictionaries
What are the primary sources of words for English dictionaries, and what are
the two basic methods by which a language increases its vocabulary?
English vocabulary sources are diverse due to historical influences. The
substratum is Anglo-Saxon, with an overlay of Latinate vocabulary. Germanic
tribes also contributed. Vocabulary increases through the use of available material
and importing words from other languages. New words belong to word classes,
primarily nouns. Different ways of forming words include compounding,
derivatives, acronyms, and loanwords. Lexicographers use primary (archives,
corpus) and secondary (fieldwork, other dictionaries, encyclopedia, etc.) sources.
Topic-254: Uses and Users of Dictionaries
What role does a corpus play in lexicography, and what factors determine the
adequacy of a corpus?
A corpus, an electronic collection of texts, is essential in lexicography to provide
evidence of language choices. The adequacy of a corpus depends on its size,
diversity, and the skill of those assembling it. It forms the core of a dictionary
project, and lexicographers must formulate policies on its use.
Topic-256: Developments in Electronic Dictionary Design
What characterizes an electronic dictionary, and how have digital media
opportunities been explored in dictionary design?
An electronic dictionary exists in digital form, accessible through various media
like handheld devices, apps, software, and E-readers. CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs
often accompany printed dictionaries. Early electronic dictionaries mirrored
printed versions but offered enhanced search functions. Digital media led to new
opportunities like interactive features, extensive databases, and API/SDK tools for
language-based functions.
Topic-257: Linguistic Corpora and the Compilation of Dictionaries
Lesson-45:
LATEST TRENDS OF RESEARCH IN LINGUISTICS
What has been the main thrust of research in Second Language Acquisition
(SLA) and applied linguistics, and how has the focus evolved over time?
How did Young, Lichun, and Jun (2001) compare research trends in China
with those in the West in Applied Linguistics?
The study analyzed contents of four Chinese and Western Applied Linguistics
journals, focusing on research methodologies. China showed a dominance of non-
empirical studies with a gradual decrease, while the West preferred qualitative and
empirical research. China experienced a significant shift in research trends
between the first and second decades of the study period.
Topic-262: Research Trends in Linguistics in Japan
What were the findings of Jha's (2003) study on current trends in linguistics
in India?
Jha highlighted over a thousand languages in India, with progress in information
technology aiding linguistic purposes. Organizations in India work on creating
and analyzing corpora, integrating language technology into curricula, and
developing various speech-related programs. Funding issues, particularly from
private sector organizations, were noted.