1 Introduction to the Linguistic Study of English 1. What is language? There are two words in the title of this course that need some explanation. Firstly, if somebody asked you "What is English?", you would most certainly reply that English is a language. Your interlocutor might next wonder what was meant by language. There are various definitions of language, but let us look at only two, one from the early 1920s and one from the late 1980s. In 1921 (p.8) the American linguist Edward Sapir defined language in the following way: "Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols." Almost 70 years later, British Linguist, David Crystal (1989:251) said: [we can refer] to language as human vocal noise (or the graphic representation of this noise in writing) used systematically and conventionally by a community for purposes of communication." The first thing that we notice in both definitions is that language is restricted to human communication, which raises two issues: do non-humans use language and do they communicate. The answer to the first question is that only humans use language, that is language is species-specific. Human beings are born with the capacity to learn and use language and in this sense language is innate. Every child that is born and that does not have a severe brain damage can learn a language. This does not mean that the child is born with the capacity to learn a particular language. An infant born by Croatian parents and raised in China in a Chinese speaking family will learn Chinese with equal ease as we have all learned Croatian. The main reason why language capacity is restricted to human beings is that animals lack the necessary apparatus for the production of what Crystal calls vocal noise. This apparatus for producing vocal noise consists of the larynx, the oral and nasal cavities, the tongue, the teeth and the lips. Even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, lack a larynx and a mouth that allow them articulation of a wide variety of sounds produced by human organs of speech. If animals are not equipped with speech organs which would enable them to produce vocal noise called speech, can they communicate at all? One can often hear expressions such as the language of bees, the language of traffic signs, etc. These are obviously not languages in the above sense, but it cannot be denied that there exist other systems of communication in addition to language. Let us consider first some animal communication systems: Scent. Some insects communicate by emitting chemicals, called pheromones, to signal their reproductive readiness. Dogs urinate to mark their territory. Colour. The colour of many animals plays an important role in communication. For example, the octopus changes colour in order to communicate its readiness for mating or to defend its territory. Facial expressions. Chimpanzees and other apes can change their facial expressions to communicate such things as anger, fear, frustration, readiness to fight, etc. Now, if you look back at the first definition of language, the one by Sapir, you will
An educational publication on linguistic study of English language. Learn about the very definition of the modern language, fundaments of human oral communication, types of languages, and more about English.
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
1
Introduction to the Linguistic Study of English
1. What is language? There are two words in the title of this course that need some explanation. Firstly, if somebody asked you "What is English?", you would most certainly reply that English is a language. Your interlocutor might next wonder what was meant by language. There are various definitions of language, but let us look at only two, one from the early 1920s and one from the late 1980s. In 1921 (p.8) the American linguist Edward Sapir defined language in the following way: "Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols." Almost 70 years later, British Linguist, David Crystal (1989:251) said: [we can refer] to language as human vocal noise (or the graphic representation of this noise in writing) used systematically and conventionally by a community for purposes of communication." The first thing that we notice in both definitions is that language is restricted to human communication, which raises two issues: do non-humans use language and do they communicate. The answer to the first question is that only humans use language, that is language is species-specific. Human beings are born with the capacity to learn and use language and in this sense language is innate. Every child that is born and that does not have a severe brain damage can learn a language. This does not mean that the child is born with the capacity to learn a particular language. An infant born by Croatian parents and raised in China in a Chinese speaking family will learn Chinese with equal ease as we have all learned Croatian. The main reason why language capacity is restricted to human beings is that animals lack the necessary apparatus for the production of what Crystal calls vocal noise. This apparatus for producing vocal noise consists of the larynx, the oral and nasal cavities, the tongue, the teeth and the lips. Even our closest relatives, chimpanzees, lack a larynx and a mouth that allow them articulation of a wide variety of sounds produced by human organs of speech. If animals are not equipped with speech organs which would enable them to produce vocal noise called speech, can they communicate at all? One can often hear expressions such as the language of bees, the language of traffic signs, etc. These are obviously not languages in the above sense, but it cannot be denied that there exist other systems of communication in addition to language. Let us consider first some animal communication systems: Scent. Some insects communicate by emitting chemicals, called pheromones, to signal their reproductive readiness. Dogs urinate to mark their territory. Colour. The colour of many animals plays an important role in communication. For example, the octopus changes colour in order to communicate its readiness for mating or to defend its territory. Facial expressions. Chimpanzees and other apes can change their facial expressions to communicate such things as anger, fear, frustration, readiness to fight, etc. Now, if you look back at the first definition of language, the one by Sapir, you will
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
2
notice that he mentions a system of voluntarily produced symbols. Now, communication normally relies on using something to stand for something else. An obvious example are words. We can use words to replace such real-word things as car, blackboard, beer, dog. Such items that stand for the real-world objects are called signs and for this reason language is also referred to as a system of signs. Every sign consists of two parts: the signifier and the signified. We may say that the sign indicates a relationship between the form (the signifier) and the meaning (the signified).
F. de Saussure (1863) To relate the form to its meaning we need also someone who will interpret this relation. In other words the relation between the signifier and the signified is not direct, it is mediated through an interpreter. We can show this three-fold distinction as in the following diagram:
Ogden and Richards (1923)/Charles Sanders Peirce (1931) There are three types of signs: 1. Icon. It is a sign whose form has actual characteristics of its meaning, i.e. icons always bear some resemblance to their referents. Onomatopoeic words like snip, snap, snatch, buzz, cuckoo are icons because they resemble what they signify. Photographs, for example, are icons because they show what the object in the photograph really looks like. 2. Index. An index is a sign whose form only has characteristics associated with the real- world object For example, when you see a scull and crossed bones, this usually means 'mortal danger'. When you see such a sign (index) on a bottle, it usually means poison, and if you drink it you will look like that in a couple of weeks. When you drive along a highway and you see a road-sign with a fork and a spoon on it, you immediately recognize that this means that there is a restaurant nearby. Indexical signs are not arbitrary because their presence has in some sense been caused by the presence of the referent. 3. The third and the most important type of sign for our purposes is the symbol. A symbol is a sign whose form and meaning are related only by convention, that is,
signified
signifier
Sign vehicle: the form of the sign
Sense/Interpreter: the sense made of the sign
Referent: what the sign ‘stands for’
S
e
n
s
e
:
t
h
e
s
e
n
s
e
m
a
d
e
o
f
t
h
e
s
i
g
n
;
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
3
there is nothing natural or intrinsic that would relate the signifier and the signified and we say that the relationship between them is arbitrary. For example, what is natural in the relationship between the word dog and the real animal. It is only by convention that the speakers of English use the word dog, for an animal of the canine species. Other languages use different signifiers for the same signified, e.g. Hund in German, hont in Dutch, pas in Croatian, cane in Italian, etc. 1.1 Language vs. animal communication systems Differences and similarities between human language and natural animal communication systems can be best shown by comparing essential characteristics of the two systems. These characteristics are called design features. 1. Interchangeability - this means that all members of the species can send and receive messages. This is obviously true of human language. Although it is sometimes said that bees use a special kind of'dance' to indicate the distance and quality of the source of food, not all bees in a hive do that. Birds sing to mark their territory, but this is done only by male birds. It seems that vocal noises produced by non-human primates (e.g. chimpanzees and gorillas) are interchangeable. 2. Feedback. Users of the system monitor and correct their linguistic output. This is true of humans; it has not been determined whether this is true of animal communication systems. 3. Specialization means that the communication system is used only for communication. This is true not only of human language but also of some animal communication systems.Crying may also communicate something (e. g. a particular emotional state), but people also cry when they have a foregn body in their eyes, that is, communication is not the primary function of crying. 4. Semanticity. Humans use a system of arbitrary signs to convey meaning. Bee dancing, bird calls and songs and vocal noises produced by chimpanzees and gorillas are also used to convey meaning but the range of messages conveyed is extremely small when compared to the vastness of human communication. 5. Arbitrariness. As has already been pointed out, there is no natural connection between the signifier and the signified. This association is a matter of convention, and only some onomatopoeic terms are not entirely arbitrary; although they are not entirely arbitrary, they still differ from language to language. Compare the words for cockoo in some other languages: coucou (French), cuchillo (Spanish), cuculo (Italian), cucu (Romanian), cucvlus (Latin), Kuckuck (German), kukushka (Russian), kakuk (Hungarian), kukavica (Croatian). Animal communication systems do not seem to show arbitrariness. 6. Discretness. Human language consists of isolable units (phonemes, morphemes, words) which can be combined into still larger units (phrases, clauses, sentences). Animals (bees, birds, primates) do not combine different kinds of'dance' or cries to produce novel messages. 7. Displacement refers to the ability to refer to events remote in time and space. Only human beings are capable of communicating about things and events that occured in the past or that will happen in the future. Bee dancing can show displacement in the sense that bees can indicate the distance of food source, but
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
4
they cannot indicate where the food source was two days ago. Vocal noise produced by birds or primates reflects primarily reaction to immediate events. 8. Creativity (Productivity) refers to the ability to create new messages on any topic at any time. Every sentence we produce is in a sense completely new and may have not been produced before. Humans are also capable of understanding sentences they had never heard before. It is doubtful whether birdsong or vocalization of certain monkeys convey novel messages. Another creative aspect of language is the process of creating new verbs from nouns in English, as in the following table adapted from W. O'Grady, M. Dobrovolsky and F.Katamba(1996):
Noun Verb
leave the boat on the beach beach the boat
stab the man with a knife knife the man
they spent the summer in Rome they summered in Rome
we flew to London by Concorde we Concorded to London
9. Duality of patterning. Humans can combine meaningless units (phonemes) into larger meaningful units or recombine them into other meaningful units (stop, spot, pots). Animal communication systems do not exhibit such duality of patterning. 10. Tradition. Some aspects of the communication system are transmitted from experienced adults to the younger members of the species. This is obviously an important factor of language acquisition, but it is also found in some animal communication systems. 11. Prevarication. This means that the users of the communication system can talk nonsense or lie. This is certainly true of humans, but it is not clear whether animal communication shows any signs of prevarication. 12. Learnability refers to the ability of the user to learn other variants (e. g. humans can learn other languages or dialects). Animal communication systems are genetically inherited and do not show this design feature. 13. Reflexiveness. Only humans can use language (metalanguage) to talk about language, i. e. only humans write grammars and linguistic textbooks.
1.2 Language and linguistics Now that we have answered the first question and have some idea of the similarities and differences between human language and animal communication systems, let us turn to the second part of the title of this course, viz. English. In the past this seemed a fairly easy question because only two major regional varieties were recognized: British English and American English. However, the situation is not that simple, as you will see in more detail when we come to discuss some basic issues in sociolinguistics. At this point, the problem is perhaps best illustrated by considering titles of some books, such as World Englishes by Jennifer Jenkins (2003). English is normally a non-count noun derived from the adjective English and as such should not be used with a plural ending. The plural ending suggests here that there is more than one English: British English, American English, Australian English, Canadian English, South African English, etc. In addition to these Englishes, all of which are spoken as the first language, there are also different kinds of English spoken as second language. Before discussing various kinds of English and the place of English in the classification of languages let us turn to the term linguistic study of English, that is, let us try to answer briefly what it means to study a language from a linguistic point of view.
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
5
The branch of science that studies language from a scientific point of view is called linguistics, that is; "linguistics may be defined as the scientific study of language" (Lyons 1968:1). The term scientific begs another question, but suffice it to say that by scientific study of language we mean "its investigation by means of controlled and empirically verifiable observations and with reference to some general theory of language-structure." (Lyons 1968:1). When you hear a language that you had never heard before at first it sounds simply as some kind of noise. After some time you start to recognize some of this noise as familiar sounds, such as /pl, /t/, lal etc. The sounds produced by humans when they speak are studied by phonetics. However, because of the structure of their organs of speech, humans are capable of producing an almost infinite variety of sounds, but not all of these sounds are relevant to a particular language. For example, the sound Ipl is pronounced differently in post and spit but this difference does not cause any change in meaning, i.e. if you pronounce both sounds in the same way you will still get your meaning across. On the other hand, compare the initial sounds in cat, mat, sat in the sentence The cat sat on the mat. In each case these words differ in meaning only because they have different initial sounds. Do not confuse spelling and pronunciation because one and the same sound may be spellt in more than one way, e.g. [f] in fish and enough. The branch of linguistics that studies sounds which make a difference in a language is called phonology. Since phonology studies only those sounds that have some function in a language it is also sometimes referred to as functional phonetics. However, sounds do not have any meaning (although they can cause a change of meaning) and therefore they are combined into larger meaningful units, such as cat, dog, bird, etc. These larger units are called morphemes and are studied by morphology. Although morphemes have meaning ((i.e. they express a relation between a signifier and a signified) we do not normally use them in isolation. We combine them into larger units like a big dog or The dog saw the cat. The structure of such larger units (phrases, sentences) is studied by syntax. Finally, not all combinations of morphemes (we shall come later to the discussion of differences between morphemes and words) express the same meaning. Compare the sentence above with The cat saw the dog. The branch of linguistics which studies meaning is called semantics. Phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics are traditionally referred to as the four major branches of linguistics. Morphology and syntax are often subsumed under the term grammar. Before we look at the place of English within the languages of the world, let us turn to these traditional branches of linguistics and some less traditional ones. Recomended reading:
Poole, Stuart C. 1999. An Introduction to Linguistics. Houndmill-Palgrave (ch. 1)
Dobrovolsky, Michael; 1996. Animal communication. In: William O'Grady, Michael Dobrovoisky and Francis Katamba (eds.) Contemporary Linguistics. An Introduction.Longman. (Chapter 16; especially § 1; 2.1; 2.2; 7).
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
1
Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language
PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
- Transmission of utterances (communication) is done by means of speech sounds
- Q: What are other means of communication?
- PHONETICS: the study of the spech sounds as phonetic segments or PHONES (articulatory
phonetics; acoustic phonetics; auditory phonetics) - Q: What is the power source of our spech sounds?
- Organs of speech (Figure 1):
- Q: What are other functions of the organs of speech?
- CONSONANTS: sounds articulated via closure or obstruction in the vocal tract
- Voiced: when the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them
apart as it passes through, creating a vibration effect.
- Voiceless: when the vocal cords are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them
unimpeded.
- Distribution of consonants Collins & Mees (2003) The Phonetics of English and Dutch.
Boston.Brill Leiden. (Figure 2):
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
2
- VOWELS: produced with a relatively free flow of air through the vocal tract
Place of articulation of vowels (Figure 3):
- Q: Are vowels voiceless or voiced?
- ASSIMILATION: a tendency of sounds to adopt a feature of neighbouring sounds (voiced
Readings: Dirven, R., M. Verspoor (2004) 'Meaningful building blocks'. In: Dirven, R., M. Verspoor (2004). Cognitive
Exploration of Language and Linguistics. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 49-75. Poole, S.C. (1999) ' Morphology'. In: Poole, S.C. (1999) An Introduction to Linguistics.Hampshire/New
York:Palgrave. 73-82. Yule, G. (1996). 'Morphology'. In: Yule, G. (1996). The Study of Language. CUP. 74-85.
Let me tell you about Jim's two sisters.
One likes to have fun and is always laughing.
The other liked to study and has always taken things seriously.
One is the loudest person in the house and the other is quieter than a mouse.
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language
1
SYNTAX
- SYNTAX (Gr. syntaxis< sintassein, to join, put together) is the study of the structure and ordering of components within a sentence (phrase syntax, clause syntax, sentence syntax). - Grammar = syntax - Traditional linguistic pyramid
- Descriptive vs. prescriptive approach to grammar - Prescriptive approach is based on traditional analysis which is, on the other hand, based on Latin paradigms:
Present tense, active voice
1. per.sg. I love 2. per.sg. you love 3. per.sg. he loves 1. per.pl. we love 2. per.pl. you love 3. per.pl. they love
amo amas amat
amamus amatis amant
- Prescriptive rules Q: What is wrong with the following sentences: 'I can't get no satisfaction'.
Mary runs faster than me. And Mary crossed the finish line in a record time. Who did you see? He is the person to talk to. I wanted to simply check if he's available tomorrow. - Descriptive approach: Structural analysis – one type of descriptive approach which describes the distribution of forms (morphemes) in a language as it is used by its speakers
Somebody taught English to children. → Active
child (Sg.) →children (Pl.)
sound form: \’chil-drən, -dərn\
SEMANTICS
SYNTAX
MORPHOLOGY
PHONOLOGY
Children were taught English → Passive
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language
2
- Test-frames - tools for eliciting specific grammatical categories which share common characteristics: The _________makes a lot of noise. I heard a ____________ yesterday. Q: Establish a grammatical category which would fit the following test-frame: The machine ______ a lot of noise. I ______________ a blackbird yesterday. - Syntax may also be explained in terms of a creative and systematic (largely subconscious) component of grammar allowing for novel, but grammatically correct combinations of linguistic component structures. Q: Does it seem appropriate to put the words together as follows?
Brought a father her wedding to shotgun the
- Different levels of syntactic organization: - Distribution helps in detemining a word's category by investigating the type of elements (functional categories) with which the word can cooccur, i.e. by establishing its distributional properties
Category Distributional property Examples
Noun ocurrence with a determiner a car, the weat Verb ocurrence with an auxiliary has gone, will stay Adjective ocurrence with a degree word very rich, too big
- Immediate constituent analysis shows how small constituents (components) in sentences go together to form larger constituents. Its aim should be to make explicit, via a diagram, what we believe to be the structure of grammatical sentences in a language. Phrase level constituents
Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding The man saw the thief in a car Fred took Jean to Honolulu He came here
- Phrases are built around a 'skeleton' consisting of two levels where to each level elements of different types can be attached
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language
3
NP VP AP PP phrase level N V A P word level S VP ? NP NP ?
Art N V Art N ? [The] [dog] [followed] [the] [boy] ?
- Head - a word at the lowest level around which the phrase is built (N, V, A, P) - Specifiers – elements in a phrase helping to make more precise the meaning of the head (Det, Qual, Deg) - Complements are elements, themselves phrases, providing information about entities and locations whose existence is implied by the meaning of the head (books about the war) Q: Define highlighted elements within a phrase: a) He likes books. b) He was quite certain about that. c) We were in the house when that happened. d) All animals eat. e) Mary went out. f) Never eat before turning in. - Phrase structure rules are grammatical mechanisms which regulate the arrangement of the elements that make up a phrase: NP → (Det) N (PP)... VP → (Qual) V (NP)... AP → (Deg) A (PP)... PP → (Deg) P (NP)... - The phrase structure template: XP
Specifier X Complement Head Q: Analyze the following phrases according to the phrase structure template: a) almost in the house b) never drink the water c) quite certain about Mary d) the man e) in the water f) Fire! - Sentence : the largest unit of syntactic analysis; the unit of a language which puts concepts together and expresses an event.
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language
4
- The sentence rule: S → NPVP - The structure of S
S NP VP
NP Det N V Det N _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ -Tests for phrase structure: - The substitution test confirms the existence of a syntactic unit, i.e. a constituent by replacing them by some other elements: The citizens rebelled after they discovered the truth. The students will wear ties if the teachers will do so.
They stopped at the corner and we stopped there too. - The movement test proves that a single constituent can be moved to a different
position within the sentence. - The coordination test defines a constituent by allowing it to be joined by another group
of words by a conjunction such as and, or, but. Q: Perform a movement and a coordination test on the above sentences.
- Noam Chomsky 1950 Syntactic structures; basis of a generative grammar as a set of explicit rules that yield an infinite number of grammatically acceptable sentences; a top-down approach. - deep structure: language universals, i.e an abstract level of structural organization in which all the elements determining structural interpretation are represented - surface structure: the syntactic form sentences take; arbitrary. Active vs. passive: different surface structure, same deep structure Charlie broke the window vs. The window was broken by Charlie. Conceptual ambiguity: same surface structure, different deep structure Q: Provide a different 'surface structure' for the same 'deep structure' for the following sentences:
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Mia
Highlight
Introduction to the Linguistics of the English Language
5
a) Lara was arrested by the police. b) She took her coat off. c) Somenone stole my bicycle. d) I told him to turn down the volume.
Annie whacked a man with an umbrella. → Who had an umbrella? Q: In what ways are these expressions 'ambiguous'?
a) an English student b) Flying planes can be dangerous c) The parents of the bride and the groom were waiting
Further readings: O'Grady, William, M. Dobrovolsky, F. Katamba (2001) Contemporary Linguistics : An Introduction. St. Martin's Press. pp. 163-225.