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Lecture N1 Linguistics

Linguistics lecture1 for high school studets

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20 views4 pages

Lecture N1 Linguistics

Linguistics lecture1 for high school studets

Uploaded by

patmamammetgulyewa
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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GROUPS: ___________, ____________, ____________, _____________,

___________, ____________, ____________, _____________,


DATE: _____, ______, _____, _____, ______, ______, ______, ______;

LECTURE 1
THEME: Linguistics and Language

1. General properties of language


2. The study of language
3. Linguistic variation and bilingualism
4. Branches of linguistics

1. General properties of language.

Every human knows at least one language, whether spoken or written.


Linguistics is the scientific study of language or it is the science of language
involving sounds, words, and grammatical rules. The words of a language are
finite, but sentences are not. It is the creative aspect that distinguishes human
language from animal language which is naturally stimulus responsive.
In addition, linguistics is the scientific and systematic study of human
language. It analyzed a system that simultaneously combines form, meaning, and
context time. Linguistics is involved in almost every part of human
communication. People can communicate through language. By studying
linguistics, people will be able to know how the language is used and how the
languages are changed and saved.
There are few languages for which descriptions in depth are available, and
only selected aspects of language have been studied with sufficient care and
success to provide support for conclusions of a general nature. Still, it is possible,
with some degree of confidence, to outline certain properties and conditions that
distinguish human languages among arbitrary systems of symbolic manipulation,
communication and self-expression.
Language is an object of education because it is the material out of which
texts are woven and because language itself is the object of study in writing and
speaking courses. We focus on language as we learn to edit our essays and
speeches. We develop our vocabularies and learn the meanings, uses and
conventional spelling of words. Language is also an object of study in so far as we
develop our skills in using it to communicate, to acquire knowledge from lectures
and books, to integrate new information with old, to replace false beliefs with new
true ones, and to increase or decrease our estimates of the likely likelihood that
some belief we hold is true.
2. The study of language.

Language is systematic, basically oral symbol that represents meanings


related to life situations and experiences. It has social functions. It means that
without language society would not exist. In addition, language is asocial aspect of
human life. Language consists of the various words and sounds used in a particular
system and communicated between people through speech, writing and gestures.
Language is understood as the special human ability to receive and use complex
written and phonetic structures as well as motor signals for specific thoughts and
feelings. The problem on earth is that language structures vary greatly from region
to region. The diversity is so great that some people cannot understand the
languages of members from different districts or countries. To overcome such
obstacles, people switch languages and exchange data between audio systems of
different local languages.

Language functions:
Language is the combination of words, clauses, or sentences. There are six
functions of language. They are as follows:
a. Personal function enables the user of a language to express his innermost
thought such as love, hatred, sorrow, desires, etc.
b. Interpersonal function enables him to establish and maintain good social
relations with individuals and groups such as to express praise, sympathy or
joy at another’s success, to apologize, to invite, etc.
c. Directive function enables humans to control the behavior of others through
advice, warnings, orders, persuasion, etc.
d. Referential function enables him to talk about objects or events in the
immediate setting or environmental and to discuss the past, present and future.
e. Metalinguistics – its function enables human to talk about language. For ex.:
“what does ….. mean?”
f. Imaginative function enables humans to use language creatively in composing
poetry, writing or even speaking.

3. Linguistic variation and bilingualism.

All languages vary. That is, there is no language whose speakers all speak in
the same way in all circumstances. Groups of people may speak differently from
each other and still be speaking the same language; that is, a language may exhibit
dialect variation. A simple demonstration of this is to conduct an informal survey
about the words people use for soft drinks, such as soda, pop, and the like, and then
identify where in the country the various expressions are used. Languages vary by
nation, region, ethnicity, gender, age and almost every other grouping of people
that one can imagine.
Languages also vary according to their uses. An individual speaker will vary
his or her style of speech according to contextual factors such as the formality of
the occasion. For ex.: on relatively informal occasions we are likely to use
abbreviations such as can’t and should’ve in our speech and writing; on more
formal occasions we will use the unabbreviated forms cannot and should have.
Most communities and many individuals around the world are bi- or multi-
lingual; that is, they make use of more than one language. People in the United
States make use of many languages. Some languages, like Navajo and Hawaiian,
are native to the US; others, like Spanish, French, German and English, are
longtime residents but were brought by colonists; and still others, such as Thai,
were brought by recent immigrants.
In all communities, some varieties and languages are favored and others
denigrated. Children whose native language is not respected in the community or
the school are at great risk of failing in school. Because language is such an
important component, not just of education, but of an individual’s personal, ethnic
and social identities, teachers must tread a fine line between their responsibility to
teach the standard variety required for social mobility and respecting students’
native varieties as manifestations of their identities.

4. Branches of linguistics.

The study of language in relation to the many areas of knowledge, where it is


relevant, has led to the growth of many branches of linguistics. The major branches
of linguistics are phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics.
Aside from language structure, other perspectives on the language are
represented in specialized or interdisciplinary branches:
Sociolinguistics is the branch of Linguistics that deals with the social and
cultural impacts on language.
Psycholinguistics study of how humans acquire and use language.
Cognitive Linguistics is the area which explores how meanings are
understood by the human brain, how syntax and memory are linked, how messages
are ‘decoded’ and stored.
Geographical Linguistics involves the study of regional variations of speech
forms.
Applied Linguistics is a branch of linguistics which is involved in the
identification, investigation and providing solutions for real life issues relating to
language.
Historical Linguistics studies the evolution and changes in language through
periods of time.
Descriptive Linguistics is a branch of linguistics that studies how languages
are structured.
Comparative Linguistics is involved in the study of identifying similar and
dissimilar properties between different languages of a common origin.
Research in all these areas has facilitated the application of insights from
linguistics in language teaching and planning of language education and policies.

Head of the department: prof.A.Gurbanow

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