An Introduction to Linguistics

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An Introduction to Linguistics
An Introduction to Linguistics

• Lecture 1

Lecture 1
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Definition of Language

• Sapir (19217) in Language takes language as "a
  purely human and non-instinctive method of
  communicating ideas, emotions and desires by
  means of voluntarily produced symbols".
• Mario Pei and Frank Gaynor (1954) in A Dictionary
  of Linguistics regard language as "a system of
  communication by sound, i.e., through the organs
  of speech and hearing, among human beings of a
  certain group or community, using vocal symbols
  possessing arbitrary conventional meanings".

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Definition of Language

• Jack et al.(1985) in Longman Dictionary of
  Applied Linguistics define language as "the
  system of human communication by means of a
  structured arrangement of sounds (or their
  written representation) to form larger units,
  e.g. morphemes, words, sentences".
• Hadumod Bussmann (1996) in Routledge Dictionary
  of Language and Linguistics views language as
  "vehicle for the expression or exchange of
  thoughts, concepts, knowledge, and information as
  well as the fixing and transmission of experience
  and knowledge. It is based on cognitive
  processes, subject to societal factors and
  subject to historical change and development".

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Features

• Language Is Systematic
• Language Is Symbolic
• Arbitrariness
• Language Is Primarily Vocal
• Language Is Human Specific
• Language Is Used for Communication

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Language is Systematic

• In natural verbal communication, people can learn
  and use a language consistently. This shows that
  language is systematic. Each human language is
  organized into two basic systems a system of
  sounds and a system of meanings.
• Sounds are units which combine to make words or
  parts of words, like bed, reason, un- and -tion.
  These units will enter in systematic ways into
  various combinations to form larger meaningful
  sequences, like complex words, phrases, or
  sentences. Different sequences of sounds have
  difference in meaning. Human language operates on
  two levels of structure.

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Language is Symbolic

• We say language is a symbolic system in the sense
  that there is no or little connection between the
  sounds that people use and the objects to which
  these sounds refer. Words are associated with
  objects, actions and ideas by social convention.
• Without the symbolic signs of language, we can
  not talk about anything as we like.

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Arbitrariness

• Arbitrariness does not mean that everything about
  language is unpredictable but that human
  languages use neutral symbols. The forms of
  linguistic signs bear no natural resemblance to
  their meaning. The link between them is a matter
  of convention, and conventions differ radically
  across languages.

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Arbitrariness

• The fact that there is no natural connection
  between the form of words and their meanings
  makes it possible for different communities to
  use language to organize and categorize their
  experience of the world.

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Language is Primarily Vocal

• The primary medium of language is sound. No
  matter how well developed are their writing
  systems, all languages use sounds. Our knowledge
  of the continued existence of preliterate
  societies, language acquisition by children, and
  historical records tells us that writing is based
  on speaking. Writing systems are attempts to
  capture sounds and meanings on paper. Moreover,
  writing can influence speaking.

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Language is human specific

• The claim that language is human specific implies
  that there are certain characteristics of human
  language that are not found in the communication
  systems of any other species. Although birds,
  bees, wolves, dolphins and most other animals
  communicate in some way, they convey limited
  information and only emit emotions such as fear,
  and warnings. Animal communication is
  stimulus-bound while human language is not.
  Experiments to teach animals more complicated
  systems have a history of failure.

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Language is used for communication

• Through language we can do things animals cannot.
  Language allows us to talk about anything to each
  other within their realm of knowledge and express
  our communicative purposes. We can use language
  to live, work, and play together. We can also use
  language to tell the truth or to tell a lie.
  Moreover, language enables us to communicate our
  general attitudes toward life and others, and
  create what the anthropologist Malinowski called
  "a phatic communion".

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• Language is not a self-contained system, but as
  entirely dependent on the society in which it is
  used. We must study meaning with reference to an
  analysis of the functions of language in any
  given culture. Three major functions of language
  are
• 1. the pragmatic function language as a form of
  action
• 2. the magical function language as a means of
  control over environment
• 3. the phatic function language as a means to
  help establish and maintain social relations.

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The Origin of Language

• Biologists, anthropologists, psychologists,
  neurologists, and linguists have done a wide
  range of studies in the origin of language. Some
  have looked at the problem of whether primitive
  man had the physiological capacity to speak. The
  reports show that the human vocal tract evolved
  from a non-human primate form to facilitate
  efficient communication. Some hold that learning
  to use tools and learning language are
  interrelated skills. With the development of the
  human society, man learned to use tools by hand
  and tools promoted the development of speech,
  because learning involved language.

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Language Families

• The role of intercultural contact is a real
  problem in studying many language families. Both
  types of classification ignore the relevance of
  cultural links between languages. With the
  passage of time and the development of
  intercultural communication, languages influence
  each other by contact and may borrow words from
  each other. Sometimes languages that have no
  historical relationship can converge so that they
  seem to be members of the same family. Thus, it
  is often very difficult to decide whether two
  languages look similar because they share a
  common origin, or because they have borrowed from
  each other.

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Language Families

• However, many achievements have been made in the
  classification of languages. According to Crystal
  (1987), there are at least 29 languages families
  in the world.

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Linguistics

• Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching Applied
  Linguistics defines linguistics as the study of
  language as a system of human communication.
  Chomsky defines linguistics as principally
  concerned with the universals of the human mind.
  He considers linguistics as a branch of cognitive
  psychology. However, Chomsky's definition is a
  strictly formalist one. It takes the forms of
  languages as evidence of language universals
  without considering how these forms function in
  communication and the conduct of social life in
  different communities.

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Linguistics

• The study of language in the Western world is not
  at all new it goes back many centuries to Greek
  and Roman antiquity and biblical times.
  Linguistics as an independent field of study, a
  university discipline with different
  specializations within in and areas of
  application, with its own professional
  organizations, journals, and scholarly meetings,
  is a creation of the twentieth century, and more
  specially a phenomenon of the period after World
  War II.

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Linguistics

• In the past twentieth century, the scientific
  emphasis has gradually shifted from the study of
  speech sounds (phonetics and phonology) to
  grammar (morphology and syntax) then to meaning
  (semantics) and the study of texts (discourse
  analysis). Linguists have of course always been
  aware of the fact that in language all aspects
  are involved, namely, psychology, society,
  cognition. But the answer to the question which
  it is necessary or most rewarding to investigate
  scientifically has varied in emphasis in the past
  century.

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Prescriptive and descriptive

• Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
  However, prescriptivism prefers one variety of
  language to the others. It prescribes rules of
  that is correct. To prescriptivists, the duty of
  grammarians, schoolmasters and dictionary makers
  is to maintain some absolute standard of
  correctness. Any deviations from the rules are
  said to be incorrect or nonstandard. So, the
  prescriptive approach relies heavily on rules of
  grammar.

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Prescriptive and descriptive

• On the contrary, descriptivism claims that the
  linguist's first task is to describe the way
  people actually speak and write their language,
  not to prescribe how they ought to speak and
  write. Linguistics describes data observed.
  Linguists are interested in what is said, not
  what they think ought to be said. They are
  observers and recorders, not judges. As we know,
  with the passage of time, all languages are
  subject to change. All living languages are there
  to serve the different social needs of the
  communities that use them. As these needs change,
  languages will tend to change to meet the new
  situations.

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Speech and Writing

• Linguists regard the spoken language as primary,
  not the written. In the past, because it was
  difficult to cope with fleeting utterances before
  the sound recording, grammarians and the
  traditional classical education overstressed the
  importance of the written word. The belief in the
  superiority of the written word has continued for
  over two millennia. It was assumed that spoken
  language was inferior to and in some sense
  dependent upon the standard written language.
  People insisted on following language used by the
  best authors of classical times. Spoken language
  was regarded as formless and featureless. The
  sentences are brief and contain many mistakes,
  hesitations and silences.

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Synchronic and diachronic

• In linguistic study, we can either look at a
  grammar at one particular point of time, or we
  can study its development over a number of years.
  The diachronic study refers to the description of
  the historical development of a language. For
  instance, a diachronic study of the Chinese
  language might look at its development from the
  time of our earliest records to the present day.
  The synchronic study refers to the description of
  a particular state of a language at a single
  point of time. It is impossible to have a clear
  understanding of language changes without the
  analysis of language at a single point in time
  and the knowledge of how a system works at any
  one time.

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Syntagmatic and paradigmatic

• In doing linguistic inquiry the linguist is
  concerned with two major types of relationship.
  One is paradigmatic relation, which refers to
  oppositions which produce distinct and
  alternative terms (foot as opposed to feet). The
  other is syntagmatic relation, which refers to
  the relations between units which combine to form
  sequences.

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Competence and performance

• The concepts of competence and performance were
  proposed by Chomsky. To him, competence refers to
  the knowledge that native speakers have of their
  language as system of abstract formal relations.
  Performance refers to what we do when we speak or
  listen, that is, the infinite varied individual
  acts of verbal behaviour with their
  irregularities, inconsistencies and errors.

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Form and Function

• The functional approach centers on linguistic
  explanation based on language's function in a
  larger context.
• The formalist approach insists on a sharp
  division between a synchrony and diachrony and
  between competence and performance. It values
  maximally general analyses with minimal number of
  types of primitives and places a higher value on
  formal syntactic analysis over semantic,
  pragmatic, discourse explanation. It also relies
  heavily on introspective data. To the classic
  formalist, language is a synchronically closed
  system which must be explained from within.

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Linguistic Inquiry

• The expansion of knowledge in so many directions
  has led, since the 1930s down to the present, to
  several attempts to make synthesis and to develop
  a unified theory of language. Several schools of
  thought have emerged round a few prominent
  linguists such as Firth, Halliday, Hjelmslev and
  Chomsky, major centers of linguistic study like
  Prague School, Geneva School, Copenhagen
  School), and leading concepts such as
  structuralism, functionalism, tagmemics, systemic
  functional grammar, transformational generative
  grammar, speech act theory).

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• Thank you for your attention