Linguistics

is systematic study of human language lies at the crossroads of the humanities and the social sciences combines intuition and scientific approaches to analyze language

Introduction to Linguistics
Down, dirty, quick

Linguists
are not polyglotsdo not study various languages in order to speak them are not translators are interested in areas including cognitive psychology, philosophy, logic, literature, computer science, and anthropology describe and explain language and are not concerned with the prescriptive rules of the language (i.e., do not split infinitives)

Branches of Linguistics
Phonetics (production of sounds) Phonology (the use of sounds) Morphology (word formation) Syntax (sentence and phrase formation) Semantics (meaning) Pragmatics (effect of situation) Other
Theoretical Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics, Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Neurolinguistics, Anthropological Linguistics

Linguistics Circle

Phonetics
study of the production and perception of speech sounds concerned w/sounds of language, how these sounds are articulated and how the hearer perceives them. three sub-disciplines of phonetics:
Articulatory Phonetics: the production of speech sounds Acousitc Phonetics: the study of the physical production and transmission of speech sounds Auditory Phonetics: the study of the perception of speech sounds

Phonology
study of the sound patterns of language concerned with how sounds are organized in a language examines
what occurs to speech sounds when they are combined to form a word how these speech sounds interact with each other

Lynn isnt in love with phonology. . .

endeavors to explain what these phonological processes are in terms of formal rules.

. . .but some of it is important to AmE

Not all varieties of a language have the same phonemic inventory:
Mary, merry, marry cot, caught; tot, taught

Where/Why does [ ] rise across the country?

or, if they do have the same phonemic inventory, they dont have the same allophonic alternations

Sounds into writing rules. . .

Simple Vowels IPA Chart

It gets worse. . . . simple English vowels

. . .see what I mean?

Morphology
studies word formation and structure Studies
how words are put together from their smaller parts rules governing this process

Morphology
dog, dogs, bulldog walk, walks, walked, walking, moonwalk red, reddish, redden, reddens, redder

elements that are combining to form words are called morphemes morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning you can have in a language
cats, for example, contains the morphemes cat and the plural -s

Morphemes
Dog Dogs Bulldog Walk Walks Walked Red Reddish Redder 1 morpheme 2 morphemes 2 morphemes 1 morpheme 2 morphemes 2 morphemes 1 morpheme 2 morphemes 2 morphemes dog + -s [pl] bull + dog walk walk + -s [3rd per sing.] walk = -ed [past tense] red red + -ish [deriv. adj] red + -er [comparative]

or looked at another way

Phonology vs. Morphology

Phonemes
/b/ + /e/ (2 phonemes)

Morphemes: base, root, free, bound, inflectional, derivational. . .

Derivational
change the meaning of a morpheme Change the part of speech of a morpheme can be prefixes or suffixes
Prefix: un-, in Suffix: -ly, -ness

Morphemes
/be/ = bay (1 morpheme)

Inflectional
do not change the meaning Do not change the part of speech of a morpheme strictly provide grammatical Always suffixes

/p/ + /a/ + /t/ + /s/ (4 phonemes) /e/ (1 phoneme) /t/ + /i/ + /ch/ + /U/ + /r/ (5 phonemes)

/pat/ + /s/ = pots (2 morphemes) /e/ = a (1 morpheme) /tich/ + /Ur/ = teacher (2 morphemes)

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense]

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] -ed [past tense] drinks

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] -ed [past tense] drinks drank

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] -ed [past tense] -ing [progressive] drinks drank

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks -ed [past tense] drank -ing [progressive] [is] drinking

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks -ed [past tense] drank -ing [progressive] [is] drinking -en [perfective participle]

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks -ed [past tense] drank -ing [progressive] [is] drinking -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks -ed [past tense] drank -ing [progressive] [is] drinking -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk

Go with adjectives:
-er [comparative]

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks -ed [past tense] drank -ing [progressive] [is] drinking -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks -ed [past tense] drank -ing [progressive] [is] drinking -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk

Go with adjectives:
-er [comparative] bloodier

Go with adjectives:
-er [comparative] -est [superlative] bloodier

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] drinks -ed [past tense] drank -ing [progressive] [is] drinking -en [perfective participle] [has] drunk

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with nouns:
-s [plural]

Go with adjectives:
-er [comparative] -est [superlative] bloodier bloodiest

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with nouns:
-s [plural] vampires

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with nouns:
-s [plural] -(s) [possessive] vampires

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with nouns:
-s [plural] -(s) [possessive] vampires vampires

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with nouns:
-s [plural] -(s) [possessive] s [plural possessive] vampires vampires

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with nouns:
-s [plural] -(s) [possessive] -s [plural possessive] vampires vampires vampires

Contemporary AmE has 8 or 9 inflectional morphemes

Go with verbs:
-s [3rd person singular, present tense] -ed [past tense] -ing [progressive] -en [perfective participle] drinks drank [is] drinking [has] drunk bloodier bloodiest vampires vampires vampires

Go with adjectives:
-er [comparative] -est [superlative]

Go with nouns:
-s [plural] -(s) [possessive] s [plural possessive]

Put another way: Mod AmE Verbs

Derivational? Too many to list

Change meaning
Re-

Change part of speech:

picture (N) + esque = picturesque (ADJ) sing (V) + er = singer (N) quiet (ADJ) + ly = quietly (ADV) vaccine (N) + ate = vaccinate (V) tall (ADJ) + ness = tallness (N) migrate (V) + ory = migratory (ADJ)

Verbs Regular Add regular endings: -s present, 3rd person singular -ed past tens love laugh smile Irregular Add some endings, Change vowels Stay regular be sing write

reorganize, restate, remark, reconvene, repaint, retry, return. . .

-ness
creativeness, laziness, expressiveness, courtliness

Un undo, unpaid, unadverturous, unadvisedly,unaerated, unaffected

Phonology vs. Morphology

Phonemes
/b/ + /e/ (2 phonemes)

Put this much together and you have.syllable and word!

Syllable: organized sequence of sounds Word: [hard one!] unit of language, mostly w/meaning and morphemes

Morphemes
/be/ = bay (1 morpheme)

/p/ + /a/ + /t/ + /s/ (4 phonemes) /e/ (1 phoneme) /t/ + /i/ + /ch/ + /U/ + /r/ (5 phonemes)

/pat/ + /s/ = pots (2 morphemes) /e/ = a (1 morpheme) /tich/ + /Ur/ = teacher (2 morphemes)

Word Formation
fan (fanatic) lab (laboratory) fax (facsimile) phone (telephone)

Word Formation
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) TESOL (Teachers of English as a Second Language) AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) ASAP

Acronyms: creating a word from initials

Clipping: reducing a word to one of its parts

Word Formation
edit editor peddle peddler enthuse enthusiasm shevelled dishevelled (Bill Brysons word)
Xerox Kleenex Band-aid Sandwich

Word Formation

Back Formation: new form from removing prefixes/suffixes

Eponyms: derived from proper name of a person or place

Word Formation
motel = motor + hotel smog = smoke + fog brunch = breakfast + lunch camcorder = camera + recorder

Word Formation
petite, genre (from French) karaoke (from Japanese) tea, tofu (from Chinese) salsa (from. . .guess where?)

Blending: formed from parts of other words squished together

Borrowing: aka: we dont have the word so well just steal it

Syntax (Lynn likes this area)

study of sentence structure attempts to describe what is grammatical in a particular language in term of rules rules detail an underlying structure and a transformational process

Underlying? Transformational?
underlying structure of English for example would have a subject-verb-object sentence order
S V [O] John hit the ball

transformational process would allow an alteration of the word order

could have something like The ball was hit by John

Sentence: The students attended class

Syntax gets interesting when

Start using it for practical purposes such as natural language generation Attribute-Value Grammar tree for Mary chased John.

Put this much together and you have.clause and phrase!

Clause: unit of language w/subject and verb marked for tense Phrase: unit of language similar to clause but lacking either subject, verb, or tense marker

Semantics
study of meaning (loaded statement!) concerned with describing
how we represent the meaning of a word in our mind how we use this representation in constructing sentences

based largely on the study of logic in philosophy

Pragmatics & Speech Acts

study of the ability of natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated includes social uses of language:
eye contact, turn taking in conversation, use of appropriate words in social conversation, taking the perspective of the listener, understanding and appropriately using body language and expressions

Lynn really likes pragmatics

Pragmatics depends on
the speaker the addressee other features of the context of utterance, such as the following:
effect that the following have on the speakers choice of expression and the addressees interpretation of an utterance:
Context of utterance Generally observed principles of communication The goals of the speaker

Pragmatics depends on implicature

refers to what is suggested in an utterance, even though not expressed nor strictly implied (that is, entailed) by the utterance.
"Mary had a baby and got married strongly suggests that Mary had the baby before the wedding but would still be strictly true if Mary had her baby after she got married. Further, if we add the qualification " not necessarily in that order" to the original sentence, then the implicature is cancelled even though the meaning of the original sentence is not altered.

H. P. Grice & Cooperative Principle

"Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." cooperative principle describesdoesnt prescribehow people interact with one another

10

H. P. Grice & Maxims

Maxim of QualityTruth
Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Pragmatics rather like Rhetoric

Language intentionally used Concerned w/spoken language Concerned w/speech acts:
convince, judge, defend. . .

Maxim of QuantityInformation
Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Maxim of RelationRelevance
Be relevant.

Language used to persuade people Classically concerned w/spoken language Concerned w/

Invention, delivery, arrangement, style, memory

Maxim of MannerClarity
Avoid obscurity of expression. ("Eschew obfuscation") Avoid ambiguity. ("Espouse elucidation") Be brief. ("Avoid unnecessary prolixity") Be orderly.

Descriptive

Prescriptive

Another quickie comparison

Pragmatics
Boast, celebrate, praise argue, motivate, exemplify disparage, belittle, praise, accuse, annoy

Rhetoric
Ethos: purpose is to make the hearer trust speaker Logos: purpose is to use argument to persuade Pathos: purpose is to stir emotions

11