Comparative Linguistics ENGL 4371 Dr. Mosheer Amer 2011

1. Comparative LinguisticsENGL 4371Dr. Mosheer Amer 2011

2. Lecturer: Dr Mosheer Amer • My background is in linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, and TESOL. I have studied in Palestine, the USA and Australia. • BA English, Al-Azhar University – Gaza • MA TESOL , ST. Michael’s College, Vermont, USA, 2003 • Ph.D. Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia, 2009

3. My primary research interests: Critical discourse analysis Language, identity and nationalism News Media Discourse 3

4. Course Objectives At the end of this course, students will have developed a thorough understanding of key concepts in the linguistic systems of Arabic and English have understood the main similarities and differences in both languages’ structures (e.g. phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) have located problematic areas and points of negative transfer that may arise due to differences between the two language systems have reflected on and identified ways to remedy problems that Palestinian EFL learners face in their learning process 4

5. Assessment Midterm Exam 20% Final Exam 60% Project 20% 5

6. Required Textbook Issues in Comparative Linguistics (2007) by Dr Walid Amer Recommended readings: Todd, L. (1987). An introduction to linguistics. London: Longman. A selection of readings and handouts will be circulated throughout the course. 6

7. What do we mean when we say “language”? • Lang1: a representation system known by human beings: Human language as a general property of human life, very much like vision and hearing (an abstract, uncountable noun). In this sense, language is used in the discussion of whether other species use language. • Lang2: an abstraction describing one particular group of people, often a nation, rather than another – ‘the English language’, ‘the French language’, etc. • Lang3: a set of sentences – everything that has been or could be said – ‘the language of the Bible’ or ‘the language a learner produces’, etc. (cited in in Cook, 2008: 16)

8. What do we mean when we say “language”? Cont’d 4. Lang4: the possession of a community – ‘the language used for relating to other people; something that is used for social reasons as part of society; language as a means of communication and serving social functions. 5. Lang5: the psychological knowledge in the mind of an individual – ‘I have learned French as a foreign language for eight years’

9. Some more definitions! • Language is a symbolic system linking what goes on inside our heads with what goes on outside. It mediates between self and society. It is a form of representation, a way of representing the world to ourselves and to others. (Barton, 1994) • Languages are not purely linguistic entities. They serve social functions. In order to define a language, it is important to look to its social and political functions, as well as its linguistic features. So a language can be thought of as a collection of dialects that are usually linguistically similar, used by different social groups who choose to say that they are speakers of one language, which functions to unite and represent groups (Holmes, 1992)

10. Language and culture: The language side • Members of the same cultural group share rules as to how language should be used, i.e., there’s a tacit agreement about the meaning of linguistic signs • These rules include: • rules of the formal language system: phonetics, morphology, syntax, semantics • rules of language use: what is situationally appropriate, what politeness level should be used in what context? That is, what do you say when and to whom? • rules of interpretation: when someone says/does X, what do they want to express?

11. The individual culture member internalizes these rules subconsciously and just perceives them as “normal”, “this is how people are supposed to act!”. • An outsider entering the new culture may not be aware of (all) these rules and is likely to transfer rules from his/her own culture without being aware of them • If two cultures’ rules differ or are contradictory, misunderstanding may occur

12. What is linguistics? • Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It seeks to answer the questions: what is language and how is it represented in the mind and how does it function in society? Linguists focus on describing and explaining language. • The underlying goal of the linguist is to try to discover the universals concerning language. That is, what are the common elements in all languages. The linguist then tries to place these elements in a theoretical framework that will describe all languages and also predict what can not occur in a language.

13. What are some key linguistic terms used to describe the following features of language? • Prosody: tone, pitch, word and sentence stress, tempo • Phonetics & phonology • Word forms: Morphology • Syntax: sentence structures including word order • Semantics: the ways in which meaning is constructed through words • Pragmatics: The influence of context on language

14. Sound – Phonetics & Phonology • Phonetics describes the sounds that occur in the human language; phonology is the study of the sound system of a particular language • Phoneticians describe the place and manner of articulation of sounds, e.g., /b/ as in ‘buy’ is a voiced bilabial stop • The phonetic alphabet is used for detailed transcriptions of spoken language, e.g., “buy” /baI/ • Sentence level intonation and stress are also investigated, e.g., ‘I can’t beLIEVE it’, ‘PROcess’ vs. proCESS’

16. Languages differ in the sounds and sound combinations that occur, for example: • French doesn’t have /θ/ sound like English • Arabic does not have /p/ sound • English does not have kh /x/ sound • You can not start a word in English with a /ng/ sound • English does not have tones (as in Chinese) • Japanese does not have consonant clusters (‘McDonald’) • Malay has a 6-vowel system, English has a 12-vowel system, Punjabi has a 20- vowel system

17. Languages differ in the use of voice contour (prosody) and what it means, e.g., • Suggestions in English are expressed with a rising intonation (“coffee?”) whereas in some South Asian languages it has a falling intonation • A statement can be turned into a question through rising intonation in many Indo-European languages but not in Chinese Mandarin

18. Words - Morphology • Morphology looks at the rules for making words • Morphemes are the smallest lexical units that carry meaning; these can be words (‘tree’) or single letters (e.g., plural -s in English: tree -> trees) • Languages differ in how words are made, combined, and altered and what features have meaning, e.g, • Many languages such as French and German change verb endings depending on person (I / you (singular) / he-she-it / we / you (plural) / they) • English attaches –s only to verbs for 3rd person singular • Chinese does not alter verbs for person at all • Japanese adds morphemes to increase the formality level of verbs

19. Grammar - Syntax • Studies of syntax look at sentence structure and formation • Languages differ in their basic word order, e.g., • woman ate chocolate (SVO) • woman chocolate ate (SOV) • chocolate woman ate (OSV) • ate woman chocolate. (VSO) • Languages differ in how fixed or flexible their word order is, e.g., • Der Hund beisst den Mann. = Den Mann beisst der Hund. (German) • The dog bites the man. The man bites the dog. (English)

20. Meaning - Semantics • Languages differ in the range of meanings a word covers. • There’s no inherent relationship between the form of a word and the meaning it carries, e.g., there’s no inherent reason why a chair must be called ‘chair’ or ‘Stuhl’ or ‘chaise’ or ‘kursi كرسي’ • Word meaning relationships: polysemy (foot, mouth), antonyms, synonyms, hyponyms (Jasmine ---flower), homophones (pear/pair, flower/flour). • Word combinations: collocations (handsome man but pretty woman )

21. Pragmatics: Meaning in context/How language is used in communication • Pragmatics investigates the influence of context on meaning; that is, how speakers express themselves linguistically to get what they want. • Speakers have to know • the conventions that a culture applies in general (taboos, social rules, views of interpersonal relations) and in specific situations (how you are supposed to behave with strangers, a superior, family) • What social rules and relations and situational contexts influence how people behave (request; politeness; social hierarchy)

22. Cultures differ in the analysis of social relations and context factors, e.g., • To what extent is your teacher entitled to respect? • What age difference makes the interlocutor clearly senior and deserving of respect: 1 week, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years? • Cultures differ in required politeness/directness levels and how it is all encoded linguistically (power, distance and level of imposition), e.g., • How do you speak to friends / teachers / parents / your boss…? • Hierarchical differences are marked through changing verb morphology in Japanese, French and German, but through greater use of modals and hedging in English, e.g., “I’mterribly sorry to bother you but do you think you could possibly help me with this?”

23. Linguistic Competence • Linguistic Competence (stored mental knowledge; language as system and rule-governed) • produce an unlimited number of grammatical sentences that he/she has not encountered before, • understand an unlimited number of sentences belonging to his/her native language never encountered before, • pass grammaticality judgment on NL sentences which he/she encounters, Colourless green ideas sleep furiously • identify ambiguous sentences and provide interpretations for such sentences We need more intelligent leaders The statistician studied the whole year

24. Linguistic Competence vs. Communicative Competence • Communicative competence (Hymes 1971): The speaker’s ability to produce appropriate utterances not grammatical sentences since the basic function of language is “meaningful communication” amongst speakers of the same speech community. • Appropriateness: whether and to what extent something is suitable and effective in some context.

25. Linguistic Competence vs. Communicative Competence A: What is your name? B: Well, let us say you might have thought you had something from before, but you haven’t got it anymore. A: I am going to call you Sam.

26. Activity 4 • For each of the following, suggest one possible context and who might be speaking to who. What might be the speaker’s purpose.

27. Activity 5 • What is the relationship of the speakers in the following conversation? Keeping as much of the original meaning as possible, change the dialog to make it sound like a natural exchange between 1- close friends, 2- parent and young child. A- I’m sorry to interrupt, but I was wondering if you wanted to break for lunch yet? B- I’m afraid I’m still rather busy. But thank you very much for asking. A- Perhaps I’ll see you in the restaurant later. B- Yes. That would be nice.

28. Language and Society • Language changes with the passing of time. Shakespeare’s English is different from English used now. This also applied to Arabic. • The same language used in various regions also changes and with time dialects ((لهجات appear which differ slightly or greatly from each other. • Variations happen at all levels of language structures among dialects (e.g. the letter (ق

29. Language and Society • A standard language appears in order to maintain mutual intelligibility and communication in each country, especially for writing purposes and in formal situations (e.g. BBC in Britian, MSA in Arab countries) • Colloquial language is different in some way from highly educated people. • Lingua Franca appears in countries where people speak different languages. One language is agreed upon as the language used in government and in official and business dealings, e.g. (Hindi in India, Urdu in Pakistan, English is the “official” language of the world.

30. Language Universals • All language sounds are the result of a very limited number of vocal organs. • All languages have consonant and vowel sounds. • All languages have plosive sounds and fricative sounds. • All languages have ways of referring to time. • All languages have ways of referring to "one" or more than "one" (singular & plural) • All languages have rules for building parts of the sentences (phrase structure rules). • All languages have a set of transformational rules that change positive into negative, the interrogative, the passive, etc. • If the language has gender categories in the noun (male or female), it has gender category for the pronoun. • Languages with the dominate word order (verb-subject-object) have the adjective after the noun (as is the case in Arabic).

31. What should be the goal of language teaching/learning? • To help people think better, i.e. for brain training and logical thinking • To appreciate literature and other cultures • To increase self-awareness and maturity • To communicate with other people • To promote specific cultural, political values • etc

32. Contrastive linguistics (CL) • CL is concerned with comparing two languages for purposes of identifying similarities and differences which hold between them as well as potential areas of learning problems. • Interest in CL originated in the U.S. during WWII due an urgent need to learn/teach foreign languages. • Fries (1945) and Lado (1957): (1) differences between the 2 languages compared cause difficulties for the learner of L2. • (2) Interference (negative transfer) from L1 to L2 is a major source of learning errors. • One can predict areas of learning difficulties on the basis of contrasts identified in the process of comparing the two langs.

33. Negative Transfer • Positive transfer occurs when L1 and L2 have similar systems or features. • Negative transfer occurs when L1 and L2 have different systems or features. CL is interested in this type. • Later studies: about one third of learning errors (problems) are attributed to interference from L1. • Interlingual errors: in which errors are external results out of the negative interference, e.g., learners apply Arabic rules when using English language. • Intralingual errors: the error is internal and comes out of the difficulty of the language itself. • Developmental errors are as important to L2 learning as interference errors. • Error analysis: the learner acquires the L2 by testing hypotheses about the systems of L2.

34. What to do for next class? Consult relevant readings on English Phonetics. You are encouraged to visit the library and do readings on phonetics. Salamz 34