THINKING
LIKE A
LINGUIST
Chirbet C. Ayunon, Ph.D.
OBJECTIVES
At the end of the lesson, students are expected to:
1. recall concepts about language and linguistics;
2. differentiate between prescriptive and descriptive ways of
thinking about language;
3. identify five components of mental grammar; and
4. recognize common misconceptions about language.
O W E M E A N B Y
WHAT D
LANGUAGE?
1 The system of human communication, using arbitrary signs (e.g.
voice sounds, hand gestures or written symbols) in combination,
according to established principles/rules.
2 Such a system as used by a nation, people or other distinct
community/social group.
Language is a tool for expressing meaning. We think, we feel, we
perceive – and we want to express our thoughts and feelings, our
perceptions. Usually we want to express them because we want to
share them with other people, but this is not always the case. We also
need language to record our thoughts and to organise them. We write
diaries, we write notes to ourselves, we make entries in our desk
calendars, and so on. We also swear and exclaim – sometimes even
when there is no one to hear us. The common denominator of all these
different uses of language is not communication but meaning.
(Anna Wierzbicka, 1992, p. 3)
WHAT DO WE MEAN
BY GRAMMAR?
the grammar of a language comprises a set of signs
(its sounds and words) and the principles, or rules,
for combining these into meaningful utterances.
LET US CORRECT OUR
MISCONCEPTIONS!
1. The first is that linguistics is
the study of language with the goal
of learning to speak well.
LET US CORRECT OUR
MISCONCEPTIONS!
A second common misconception about
linguistics is that it prescribes how
people ought to speak, when, in fact, it
describes how people actually speak.
DESCRIPTIVE VS. PRESCRIPTIVE
APPROACH TO LANGUAGE
Prescriptive rules make a value judgment about the
correctness of certain utterances and generally try to
enforce a single standard.
DESCRIPTIVE VS. PRESCRIPTIVE
APPROACH TO LANGUAGE
With the descriptive approach, linguists attempt to
describe the grammar of the language that exists in the
minds of its speakers, i.e. to create a model of speakers’
mental grammar.
MENTAL
GRAMMAR
All speakers of all languages have a
mental grammar: the shared
system that lets speakers of a
language understand each other.
WHAT
COMPETENCES
DO LANGUAGE
USERS HAVE?
1. Grammatical competence refers to
language users’ knowledge of the sounds and
words of their language and how to combine
these into well-formed utterances with the
desired meaning.
WHAT
COMPETENCES
DO LANGUAGE
USERS HAVE?
2. Communicative competence in turn
refers to language users’ knowledge of how to
use language appropriately in order to carry out
specific tasks and achieve the desired effects in
specific communicative situations.
WHAT ARE SOME 1. ARBITRARINESS
OF THE
PROPERTIES OF
LANGUAGE? Arbitrariness means there is no natural connection between a
linguistic form and its meaning. There is no natural relation
between the word and what the word designates.
2. DISCRETENESS
Discreteness means sounds are meaningfully distinct. For example,
the pronunciation of pack and back leads to distinction of meaning
and that is only due to the difference between p and b sounds in
English.
3. PRODUCTIVITY / CREATIVITY
WHAT ARE SOME
OF THE
It is an aspect of a language which is linked to the fact that the
PROPERTIES OF
LANGUAGE? potential number of utterances in any human language is infinite.
This means that the potential unique sentences/word
combinations/sounds is infinite.
4. DISPLACEMENT
Displacement allows language users to refer to past and future
time and to other locations which allows us to talk about things and
events not present in the immediate environment
5. DUALITY
WHAT ARE SOME
OF THE
At one level of language there are discrete sounds, and at
PROPERTIES OF
LANGUAGE? another, there are discrete meanings.
6. CULTURAL TRANSMISSION
Language is acquired through culture. Language is passed
on from one generation to the next, acquiring the
language from other speakers and not from parental
genes.
The simplest definition of
Linguistics is that it’s the
science of language.
The scientific way of thinking
about language involves
making systematic, empirical
observations.
Linguists have a descriptive
approach to language, not a
prescriptive approach. We describe
what people do with their
language, but we don’t prescribe
how they should or shouldn’t do it.
A. Which of the following are scientific statements? Explain
your reasoning.
(a) English is a difficult language to learn.
(b) English is a global language.
(c) English is a beautiful language.
(d) It is impossible for an adult to learn a new language
Learning properly.
(e) Children acquire language very fast.
Task (f) The majority of the world’s population is multilingual.
B. The descriptive approach to language favored by
linguists is sometimes confused with a willingness to
encourage “incorrect” or “non-standard” uses of language.
How would you, as a budding linguist, argue against this
position?
C. The three texts below, all of which appeared in printed
media, are examples of language play:
(a) Be Younique!
(Advertisement promoting the individuality of offered
goods.)
Learning (b) Meet the fizzicists
(Newspaper headline announcing a study of why
Task champagne bubbles.)
(c) Xtraordinary!
(Advertisement promoting the special quality of offered
goods.)
Can you find shared ways through which language play
is achieved, in all three texts? Explain your answer
concisely.
