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Linguistics
Linguistics is the study of language - how it is put together and how it functions. Words are arranged in a certain order, and sometimes the beginnings and endings of the words are changed to adjust the meaning. Then the meaning itself can be affected by the arrangement of words and by the knowledge of the speaker about what the hearer will understand. Linguistics is the study of all of this.
- What is a language?
Language is a system of conventional spoken, manual, or written symbols by means of which human beings,express themselves. Communication is intentional(you are willing to inform). Any information which is not intentional is not communication.
- Do animals communicate?
Yes, animals can communicate with other members of their own species. The main differences between human and animal communication are the following:
1 Human language can be used to talk and reflect on language and its uses ( reflexivity )
2 It allows humans to talk about events and things not present in the immediate environment or even about places,events or things whose existence we cannot be sure of ( displacement )
3 There is no naural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning ( arbitrariness )
4 Humans are continually creating new expressions and sentences by manipulating their linguistic resources ( productivity )
5 Human language is transmitted culturally while animal communication is instinctive. We have a predisposition to acquire language but a specific language (English,Spanish,Urdu...) has to be learnt ( cultural transmission )
6 Human language has a physical level at which we produce sounds and another level at which we produce meaning ( duality ),so with a limited set of sounds we can produce a large number of sound combinations (words) which are distinct in meaning.
Linguistic signs
Language consists in signs, belonging to three types:
- iconic: they look like what they represent ( i.e photographs) - indexical: they have a connection withthe thing they represent (smoke to fire) - symbolic: they are only conventionally related to the thing they represent (a flag to a nation)
Most language is symbolic. The relation between the linguistic sign and what it signifies is arbitrary.
Variation in language
The variation may depend on users (speakers) and use (situation)
1 Variation according to USER:
The characteristics of language user which affect language include:
- diatopic variation,which is variation according to place or geographical variation - diastratic variation, or variation according to social class or to the social group to which a speaker feels they belong
These factors may affect lexis , grammar and pronunciation.
1 Regional Variation:
The mode usually means the difference between written and spoken language (which involves the use of intonation or non-verbal communication ) Consider also, “new” modes of communication (eg. e-discourse, computer mediated discourse ...) and especially multimodality
* Multimodality is an inter-disciplinary approach that understands communication and representation to be more than about language.
- The activity in which language plays a part ( field or domain ):
The use of language will depend on the activity we are engaged in. For instance,the vocabulary and structures employed in a seminar about chemistry will be different from the language used in a conversation about the weather. The language of an official document is different from that of an advertisement. There are also specialized languages,jargon,etc.
Sociolinguistics
The sociolinguist’s aim is to move towards a theory which provides a motivated account of the way language is used in a community, and of the choices people make when they use language.
What languages have in common
There is a hypothesis that languages have a common origin,the called proto-language (s)
In the strict sense, a proto-language is the most recent common ancestor of a language family, immediately before the family started to diverge into the daughter languages.
Language families
The language families are a group of languages with a common origin. The major language families are:
-Austronesian -Indo-European -Niger-Congo -Sino-Tibetan
In Chomsky’s view the aim of linguistics is to go beyond the study of individual languages, to determine what the universal properties of language are and to establish a “universal grammar” that would account for the range of linguistic variation that is humanly possible.
Language universals
- categories used to analyze a language:
- all languages have nouns
- all languages have vowels
- (^) not all langs. have prepositions, future tenses or cases
- the dominant order of words is VSO and noun + adj. (marked/unmarked)
- if a language has gender categories in the noun, then, it has gender categories in the pronouns. [ implicational universals ]
- Reference grammar:
It’s a grammatical description that tries to be as comprehensive as possible, so that it can act as a reference for those interested in establishing grammatical facts, whether contemporary or historical.
5. Theoretical grammar:
Theoretical grammar is concerned with language in general rather than with an individual language, as is the study of essential components of any human language.
6. Traditional grammar:
The term traditional grammar generally refers to the collection of prescriptive rules and concepts about the structure of language that is commonly taught in schools.
