Introduction

to
Linguistics
 INTRODUCTION
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Human
language, understood as a systematic use of speech sounds,
signs, and written symbols for communication among
people, is a very complicated system, which can be
analyzed on different levels and from various points of
view. Modern linguists often adopt different perspectives on
language depending on the goals of their research.
It is common to distinguish between language as an
individual act of speaking or writing in a particular context
at a given moment or in a certain social context, and
language as the abstract linguistic system underlying the
linguistic behaviour of a whole community of speakers. In
addition, a number of separate, though often closely
interrelated, branches of linguistics can be distinguished.
Branches of Linguistics
GENERAL OR THEORETICAL
LINGUISTICS
General or theoretical linguistics tries to determine
universal principles for studying languages and to
describe the general features of language.
CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
Contrastive linguistics concentrates upon the
differences between languages. Its findings are often
applied in the context of language teaching.
COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS
Comparative linguistics studies different languages
looking for similar characteristics. These languages
may have common historical origin though the main
emphasis of the analysis is usually placed on the
structural correspondences between languages under
investigation.
HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
Historical linguistics analyses the development of
language in time, registering the changes that have
taken place in it.
APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Applied linguistics is concerned with the application
of linguistic theories and their findings in solving
various language problem, mostly in the teaching of
foreign languages, studying language disorders, in
translation, lexicography, and stylistics.
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Sociolinguistics studies the relationship between
language and society, taking into consideration
standard and non-standard forms of language,
regional and social varieties with reference to such
concepts as
ethnicity, social status, sex, age, etc.
PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
Psycholinguistics is a branch of linguistics which
studies the relationship between linguistic behaviour
and the mental processes. It is interested in how
mental processes influence the production and
perception of speech.
COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
Computational linguistics uses computer techniques
and applies them in automatic translation and speech
analysis using corpora for large-scale statistical
investigation and computational processing of spoken
and written texts.
DEVELOPMENTAL LINGUISTICS
Developmental linguistics is concerned with the
study of the acquisition of language by children,
describing the stages and patterns of development and
explaining the typical features and variations.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
LINGUISTICS
Anthropological linguistics studies language
variation and usage in relation to culture. Emphasis is
often placed on the analysis of the so called non-
Western languages.
Features Common to All Languages
There are a lot of questions that can be asked about
language, some scientific, some not. One such question is:
Which is the oldest language in the world? Several
centuries ago, researchers were much concerned with this
question, however, it does not have a reliable answer,
simply because we cannot go so far into the history of
humanity.
Features Common to All Languages
Another often asked question is about the features that all
natural human languages share. The American linguist
Charles Hockett has pointed out a number of such
properties. Here are some of them:
Features Common to All Languages
Another often asked question is about the features that all natural
human languages share. The American linguist Charles Hockett
has pointed out a number of such properties. Here are some of
them:
a) all languages have vowels and consonants;
b) all languages have words;
c) all languages can create new words when required and modify
their meanings;
 Features Common to All Languages
d) all languages are open-ended in the sense that they can produce
totally new utterances which are understood by the users of the
language;
e) all languages can form questions;
f) in all languages it is possible to talk about things and situations
that are removed from the immediate situation of the speaker
(this is called displacement);
g) in all languages we can use hypothetical, unreal, and fictional
utterances.
Features Common to All Languages
Thus, as we can see, human linguistic knowledge involves
numerous different aspects. People are able to produce sounds and
to understand the sounds produced by others, and those sequences
of sounds signify meanings. The relation between the linguistic
form (written or spoken word or expression) and meaning is
arbitrary, i.e. there is no direct physical correspondence between a
linguistic expression and the entity in the world to which that
expression refers.
Features Common to All Languages
For example, there is no explicit relationship between the English
word window and the object itself. In other languages the same
concept is represented differently
(e.g. langas in Lithuanian, okno in Russian, das Fenster in
German, etc.). There are certain words in most languages whose
pronunciation to some extent suggests their meaning. These are
onomatopoeic words that imitate the sounds associated with the
things, creatures or actions
that they refer to.
Features Common to All Languages
For instance, meow imitates the sound made by a cat,
splash imitates the sound of liquid hitting something or being
moved around quickly, whoosh means to move very fast with a
soft rushing sound. However, even onomatopoeic words are not
exact phonetic imitations of natural sounds. Therefore, their forms
often differ from language to language (compare the English bow-
wow and the Lithuanian au-au as imitations of dog barking).
Features Common to All Languages
All natural languages are creative, because they allow innovation
in response to new experiences, situations, and scientific
discoveries. Creativity is a very important feature of all natural
human languages. The human creative ability in language use is
not just what we choose to say at a particular moment in a
particular situation but also includes our understanding of a new
sentence that we have never heard before.
Features Common to All Languages
According to Fromkin et al., the sentence “Daniel Boone decided
to become a pioneer because he dreamed of pigeon-toed giraffes
and cross-eyed elephants dancing in pink skirts and green berets
on the wind-swept plains of the Midwest” will be understood by
the native speakers of English. (2007: 9). Most likely, no one will
believe the sentence; its logic will surely be questioned; but
everyone speaking English can understand it, though it was
probably never produced before.
Features Common to All Languages
Noam Chomsky was one of the first to speak about this human
ability to understand new sentences as part of the creative aspect
of language use. Another example of language creativity can be
given on the lexical level. Imagine that a new substance has been
created that helps to preserve food ecologically and for a long
time. Imagine that this substance has been called sperte; then the
food preserved in such a way would be spertical, and the process
of preservation would be called spertcalization.
Features Common to All Languages
This example illustrates the possibility to create completely new
words but, on the other hand, the limitations of creativity, since
the derived words of the new coinage follow the already
established rules of
affixation in English.
Principles of Modern
Linguistics:
Structuralism
 Structuralism
Structuralism is a term used in linguistics referring to a theoretical approach to
the analysis of language that describes linguistic items in terms of structures. The
basic claim of structuralism is that language is a structured system. Ferdinand
de Saussure is known as the father of structuralism. In 1916, his Cours de
linguistique générale (Course in General Linguistics) was published, where the
main ideas of structuralism were formulated. He argued that each element in a
language is defined by how it is related to other elements. He also formulated
several principles of linguistic analysis which have become the tenets of modern
linguistics.
These principles are presented with short explanations below.
 Structuralism
Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive. It means that linguists describe the
rules and facts of language exactly as they find them without making judgments.
They do not try to impose norms of correctness and do not try to change the
actual usage of the language of the native speakers. This contrasts with the
previous view of traditional grammar which was very strongly prescriptive. The
principle of descriptiveness also reflects the present-day view
about language change. Before de Saussure, it was held that linguistic change
involves corruption and should be stopped. Modern linguistics states that change
is a natural process. The task of a linguist is to describe the way people speak and
write, not to tell them how they ought to use language.
 Structuralism
Priority of the spoken language. It is one of the main principles of
modern linguistics that spoken language is more basic than written
language. For a long time only written language was studied, and
judgments about language on the whole were based on the results of
these studies. However, spoken language is very different from written
texts. There are great variations both in grammar and vocabulary
choices which the written language does not reflect. Therefore, for a
full understanding of language use, both spoken and written language
should be studied.
 Structuralism
Synchronic and diachronic description of language
Two basic principles can be applied to the study of language:
synchronic and diachronic. Diachronic linguistics is the study of
languages from the viewpoint of their historical development.
Synchronic linguistics studies languages at a single point of time. It
may be the present-day situation or any given period in the history of
language development. Both ways of describing languages are
important.
 Structuralism
All languages are equal. For a linguist, all languages serve as
the data for objective study. Though it was common earlier to
call certain languages “primitive” (in relation to the cultural
and economic development of certain societies), it was
determined that every existing natural language is a highly
developed system and its structure does not directly correlate
with the stage of social development of that speech community.
 Structuralism
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of linguistic units
A linguistic unit enters into relations of two different kinds
which identify it in the language system. It enters into
paradigmatic relations with all the other elements of the same
level which can also be used in the same context. For example,
in the phrase a…of milk; the missing element could be glass,
jar, mug, bottle (all these concrete countable nouns stand in
paradigmatic relationship).
 Structuralism
A linguistic unit enters into syntagmatic relations with the
other elements of the same level with which it occurs and
which make its context.
Syntagmatic relations for the phrase a glass of milk would be
between glass and a, of, and milk.
 Functionalism: The Prague School
Functionalism is represented mostly by the works of the Prague School
(established in 1926; the main representatives: V. Mathesius, R.
Jakobson, N.Trubbetzkoj). In linguistics, functionalism is best seen as
a movement continuing the tradition of Saussurean structuralism. The
main claim of this approach is that language is a system of functionally
related units. The phonological, grammatical, and semantic structures
of a language are determined by the functions that they have to
perform.
 Functionalism: The Prague School
The main function of language is the communicative one, i.e. language is used
by people to communicate. Language also has the expressive function – to
convey the speaker’s feelings and attitudes. B. Maliowski introduced the term the
phatic function, claiming that language is often used for maintaining social
relations (e.g. greetings, leave-taking, comments about the weather, etc.). The
Prague School also emphasized the distinction between the phonetic and the
phonological analysis of sounds, introducing the notions of phoneme and
distinctive feature. Of particular importance is also their formulation of the
theory of functionalsentence perspective (FSP) – a theory that analyses utterances
in terms of the information they express.
Generativism (Generative grammar)
The term is used to refer to the theory of language developed by Noam
Chomsky. His language theory revolutionized linguistics in 1957, when his
book Syntactic Structures was published. He draws a distinction between
linguistic competence and performance. A speaker’s linguistic competence
is that part of his knowledge of the native language system which enables
him to make an infinite number of sentences. Performance is linguistic
behavior which is determined both by the speaker’s linguistic competence
and various non-linguistic factors, such as social conventions, emotional
attitudes, etc.
Generativism (Generative grammar)
Chomsky claims that human language is innate: a child is born
with a biological predisposition to learn language. This feature
is species-specific, that is, it discriminates humans and other
living creatures. Chomsky was amazed at how rapidly a little
child acquires language. On the whole, he emphasized the role
of language as a basic means to investigate the human mind.
PHONETICS
Phonetics is the branch of linguistics which studies the
characteristics of speech sounds. Since in English and some
other languages there is a considerable discrepancy between
spelling and sound, phonetic alphabets have been created in
which one letter corresponds to one sound. The best-known
and most widely used one is the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA). The phonetic transcription is given in square
brackets, for example fee [fi:] or daytime [deitaim].
PHONETICS
Phonetics is traditionally divided into articulatory
phonetics, which studies how speech sounds are
produced, auditory phonetics, which studies how they
are perceived by the ear; it investigates the perception of
pitch and loudness of sounds, and acoustic phonetics,
which looks at the physical characteristics of speech
sounds.
PHONETICS
Individual speech sounds are called segments. All the
speech sounds are classified into consonants and
vowels. Vowels are pronounced without or with very
little obstruction in the vocal tract and they make the
nucleus of a syllable. Consonants are produced with
some constriction in the airflow through the vocal tract.
PHONETICS
According to their place of articulation, the English consonants are
further classified into bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, palatal,
velar, and glottal. According to the manner of articulation, they are
grouped into stops, fricatives, and affricates. In addition, consonants
are called oral, if the air escapes through the mouth; the majority of
consonants are oral. However, if the velum is lowered and the air
escapes through the nose, a nasal consonant is produced (e.g. the first
sound in
new or mouse).
PHONETICS
The English vowels are classified into simple vowels (or monophtongs) and
diphthongs. Diphthongs show a noticeable change in quality during their
pronunciation (e.g. the vowels in play and count). The manner of the
articulation of vowels depends on the position of the tongue and lips. They
are grouped into high, mid, and low; front, central, and back, and rounded
and unrounded. The distinction between lax and tense vowels shows that
the first are produced with relatively less tension and are shorter than their
tense counterparts, which show a greater vocal tract constriction. The vowel
in fit is lax and the vowel in feel is tense.
PHONETICS
Two speech sounds – [w] and [j] – are articulated with the tongue like a vowel,
yet they function like voiced consonants and are called glides (sometimes the
term semi-vowel is used). Length, pitch, and stress are prosodic (or
suprasegmental) features, which means that they exist over the segmental values
of the speech sounds in a syllable. In English, the stressed syllables are louder, a
bit
longer and higher in pitch. Pitch change in spoken language that is related to
differences in word meaning (i.e. change in pitch can show differences in word
meaning) is called tone. However, English is not a tone language. It is
intonation language, where the change in pitch functions on the sentence level
and its movement here shows an emotional meaning (anger, joy, irony, etc.) or
grammatical meaning (e.g. statements vs. questions).
PLACE OF ARTICULATION
Bilabial – sound is made with closure of both lips
such as the sounds [p], [b], and [m].
Labio-dental – sounds are produced with the
closure or near closure of the lower lip and the
upper teeth. Labio-dental sounds are [f] and [v].
Dental – the tip of the tongue is placed against or
near the teeth to produce the dental sounds [Ɵ] and
[ð].
Alveolar – alveolar sounds such as [t], [d], [n], [s],
and [z] are produced with the tip or the blade of the
tongue touching or brought near the alveolar ridge.
Palato-alveolar – sounds such as [ ] and [ ] are produced
with the tip of the tongue touching or nearly touching
the hard palate which is slightly behind the alveolar
ridge. The term alveopalatal is sometimes used for this
place of articulation.
Palatal – the palatal sound involves the front of the
tongue against or near the hard palate such as the
production of [j].
Velar – velar sounds [k], [g], [ŋ] are produced with the
back of the tongue against or near the velum or the soft
palate.
Glottal – the glottal sound [h] is produced with a
constriction in the glottis (opening between the vocal
cords in our throat).