General Linguistics:

Understanding
Language

Term 1, Week 1

Dr Sheena Shah

ss170@soas.ac.uk
Week 1

• What is linguistics?

• What does a linguist do?

• What is the scope of linguistics?

• What is language? Characteristics that differentiate

human language with other animal communication.

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What is language?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg02KxwrO5U 3
Linguistics

tries to answer the questions:

 What is language?

 How does language work?

‘…Systematic study of language, a discipline

which describes language in all its aspects
and formulates theories as to how it works’
(Aitchison 1999).
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Definition

‘Linguistics shares with other sciences a concern to be

objective, systematic, consistent, and explicit in its
account of language. Like other sciences, it aims to
collect data, test hypotheses, devise models, and
construct theories, its subject matter, however, is
unique: at one extreme it overlaps with such ‘hard’
sciences as physics and anatomy; at the other, it
involves such traditional ‘arts’ subjects as philosophy
and literary criticism. The field of linguistics includes
both science and the humanities, and offers a breadth
of coverage that, for many aspiring students of the
subject, is the primary source of its appeal’ (Crystal
1997).
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Characteristics

▪'native-speaker intuitions'

▪not prescriptive but descriptive

▪spoken word as primary

▪the framework used for analysis is not

language-dependent

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Different areas of linguistics

(Aitchison 1999:8) 7
Phonetics
Production, transmission and perception of sounds
used in speech.
“Why did Ken set the soggy net on top
of his deck?”

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Phonology

Organisation and behaviour of sounds used in language.

A phonologist looks for patterns in sounds

But what is a “sound pattern”?

Sounds:
vowels
consonants
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What consonant sounds occur in English?
What consonant (sound) combinations occur at the
beginning of English words?

blue green spray Words don’t begin with

flight tree splat clusters like ‘bz’ ‘rt’ or ‘lsp’
glow crab scream
clean draw stream
play brand sclerosis
pray Which of these combinations
don’t occur in other lgs?
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Morphology

Cats
Dogs
Finches
Morphology is concerned
with the way words
are structured in a language;
Friend with how they are made up
Friendly
Unfriendly of meaningful parts.

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Syntax

Syntax is concerned with the structure of sentences

How do words combine and what order do they
come in?

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In some languages, the order of words is extremely
important:
Semantics

Semantics is the study of

meaning.
How do we know what a
word means?

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Pragmatics

Pragmatics is concerned with how social context and

situation affect meaning.

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Other areas of investigation in linguistics

• Historical linguistics: synchronic vs diachonic

• Typology/universals

• Discourse analysis

• Evolutionary linguistics

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A linguist…
Need not be fluent in languages, but …
• Studies the structure and functions of language.
• Tries to describe and explain language structures and how they are
used.
• Remains objective and avoids making social judgments about
‘correctness’ or ‘purity’ of the languages they are studying. Linguists
view language either as a system of structures or as an instrument of
communication. Some take a more middle view: theoretical
frameworks that explore what language is and how people
communicate.
• ‘One is trained, through the discipline of linguistics, to develop
conventionalized styles of academic argumentation, for example, as
well as to approach information comprehensively and systematically,
paying attention to details, organizing information in useful ways,
recognizing data that support (or refute) a particular analysis, and in
accepting with tolerance — and, sometimes, even actively seeking —
exceptions to one's most deeply held opinions’ (Jefferies 1992).
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LANGUAGE???

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What is language?

• Use of sounds to communicate meaning between humans.

(Note: There are other means to communicate i.e. gestures, etc.)

Are we the only ones?

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Plants: Pass on information about advancing predators by means
of chemical signals.

Animals: Communicate among themselves frequently and

effectively.

But: Animal communication doesn’t satisfy

the design features for human language.

‘A dog cannot relate his autobiography;

however eloquently he may bark, he cannot
tell you that his parents were honest though
poor.’
Bertrand Russell (1948: 74) 20
THE NATURE OF HUMAN
COMMUNICATION
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Design features: Hockett

Charles Hockett (1916-

2000):
Developed design features
of human language.
The complete set of 13
features can be found in his
article in the Scientific
American article “The origin
of speech” from 1960.

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Design features of human language (1)
1. Interchangeability
All members of the species can
send and receive messages.
2. Feedback
Users of the system are aware of
what they are transmitting.
3. Specialization
The communication system
serves no other function but to
communicate.
4. Semanticity
The system conveys meaning
through a set of fixed relationships
among signifiers referents and
meanings.
5. Arbitrariness
There is no natural or inherent
connection between a token and its
referent.
6. Discreteness
The communication system consists
of isolatable, repeatable units.
7. Displacement
Users of the system are able to refer
to events remote in time and space.
8. Productivity
New messages on any topic can be
produced at any time.
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Design features of human language (2)
9. Duality of patterning
Meaningless units are combined
to form arbitrary signs. These
signs can in turn be recombined
to form new meaningful larger
units.
10. Tradition
At least some parts of the
system must be transmitted from
an experienced user to a learner.
11. Prevarication
The system allows users to talk
nonsense or lie.
12. Learnability
A user of the system can use other
variants.
13. Reflexivity
The ability to use the communication
system to discuss the system itself.
No natural non-human
communication system
exhibits both duality of
patterning and
displacement
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Definitions of language
• ‘Language is an intricate network of interlinked
elements in which every item is held in place and
given its identity by all other elements’ (Aichison
1999).

• ‘A language is a kind of system in which every actual

utterance, whether spoken aloud or merely thought to
oneself, at one and the same time by and large
conforms to (or manifests) the system, and changes
the system’ (Hockett 1960).

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INVENTORY OF THE WORLD’S
LANGUAGES
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Inventory of the world’s languages
How many languages are there in the world
today?

•Some languages not yet documented

•Difficulty in distinguishing languages from

dialects

• Mutual intelligibility versus socio-

political factors
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Language size

•5.6% of languages have more than a

million speakers

•55% have fewer than 10,000

•94% of the planet’s population speaks only

6% of its languages

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Question of the day

What ten languages have the

largest number of mother-
tongue speakers?

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The top 10 (data from Ethnologue)

1. Chinese (1.3 billion)

2. Spanish (437 million)
3. English (372 million)
4. Arabic (295 million)
5. Hindi (260 million)
6. Bengali (242 million)
7. Portuguese (219 million)
8. Russian (154 million)
9. Japanese (128 million)
10. Lahnda (Punjabi) (119 million) 30
Language endangerment

SOAS is home toThe Hans

Rausing Endangered
Languages Project
Only 600 languages – training people in how
have more than to document
100,000 speakers, endangered languages
and the rest are in – collecting data and
danger of promoting research on
disappearing. endangered languages
– Archiving data on
endangered languages
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Next week:

Phonetics!

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