BBI3201

1. BBI3201 Introduction to General Linguistics

2. Objectives • Students are able to: • 1. analyse the sounds of language, as well as the • structure of words and sentences (C3) • 2. evaluate the similarities and differences among • languages and universal aspects of grammar (A3) • 3. discuss developments in linguistics and related fields • (P2, CS) • 4. develop thinking skills such as explaining, analysing and evaluating discussions (CTPS)

3. Synopsis • This course covers essential elements of linguistics, the nature of language, phonetics and phonology, morphology and word formation, syntax and grammatical elements, semantics, linguistic comparison, linguistic schools and branches of linguistics.

4. Evaluation • Kerja Kursus 70% • Peperiksaan Akhir 30%

5. Evaluation KerjaKursus:(70%) • Quiz: (10%) It is in a form of a short essay based on Chapter 1. You are required to hand in the assignment by Week 5. • ASSIGNMENT: (25%) You will be given ONE written assignment to work on. You are required to hand in the assignment by Week 10.

6. Evaluation • MID-SEMESTER TEST (35%) • MCQs and short-structured questions will be asked. • You will be tested on the following: • Introduction to Linguistics • Phonetics and Phonology • Morphology • Syntax

7. Evaluation • FINAL EXAMINATION (30%) • MCQs and short-structured questions will be asked. • You will be tested on the following: • Semantics • Pragmatics • Language in Society • Language Change • Development of writing

8. COURSE TEXT • Fromkin, V., Rodman, R. and Hyams, N. (2014) An Introduction to Language. 10th ed. Boston: Thomson Wadsworth. • RM43.00 Contact: Mr Tan Yun Chuan:- 012-2808241/tanyunchuan@ymail.com>

9. WHAT IS LANGUAGE ? • Language is used for communication. Language allows people to say things to each other and express their communication needs. • The communication of most interest to us is the communication of meaning. • A language allows its speakers to talk about anything within their realm of knowledge.

10. Human Language • Human language is arguably the single most remarkable characteristic that sets our species apart • Our development of everything from music to warfare could never have come about in the absence of language • LANGUAGE IS WHAT MAKES US HUMAN, AND HUMAN LANGUAGE IS UNIQUE

11. Linguistic knowledge Knowledge of sounds system • Part of knowing a language is knowing what sounds or signs are in that knowledge and what sounds are not Knowledge of words • Knowing a language also includes knowing that certain sound sequences signify certain meanings or concepts e.g. cat glitter (words beginning with gl related to sight)

12. DESIGN FEATURES OF LANGUAGE(Fundamental properties of language ) Duality of patterning Displacement Open-endedness Stimulus-freedom Arbitrariness

13. DUALITY OF PATTERNING For most people, most of the time, the ordinary medium of language is speech How do we speak ? We allow air from the lungs to pass out through our mouths, and at the same time, we move our mouths in various ways to produce speech sounds-- consonants and vowels Every utterance we make consists of speech sounds, one after another

14. DUALITY OF PATTERNING (contd.) In fact, every human language operates with only a small set of speech sounds, e.g. English, consider the word cat : How many speech sounds does it contain ? (answer : 3 ) /k/ /æ/ /t/

15. DUALITY OF PATTERNING (contd.) For convenience, let us introduce special symbols for each of the speech sounds / k / , / æ/, / t / We use the slashes / / to indicate we are talking about distinctive speech sounds (phonemes) of a particular language --in this case, English

16. DUALITY OF PATTERNING (contd.) Now, if someone asks you what the English word / k æt / means, you will have no trouble in answering But suppose , someone asks you what the English phoneme / k / means ? * It is impossible for you to answer as the phoneme / k / has no meaning in English ( nor / æ/ or / t /)

17. DUALITY OF PATTERNING (contd.) But now notice something else -- these same meaningless phonemes can be rearranged to produce different words with different meanings thus the order / t æ k / tack, while / æ k t / act, / æt / at, and / t æk t / givestacked ortact

18. DUALITY OF PATTERNING (contd.) What is happening is that, by combining a very small set of meaningless speech sounds in various ways, we can produce a very large number of different meaningful items -- words. All human languages are constructed in this way, and this is called duality of patterning or duality

19. DUALITY OF PATTERNING (contd.) Duality is the use of a small number of meaningless elements in combination to produce a large number of meaningful elements

20. DUALITY OF PATTERNING (contd.) DUALITY IS UNIQUE TO HUMAN LANGUAGE In fact, bird songs and whale songs arguably contain an element of duality, but these are not exactly signaling systems Other creatures have signaling systems which are based on the principle of ‘one sound, one meaning.’

21. DISPLACEMENT Displacement is the use of language to talk about things other than the here and now This means that we are able to talk about events which occurred previously, such as about our childhood, or what did two months ago, etc.

22. OPEN-ENDEDNESS Open-endedness is our ability to use language to say anything at all, including lots of things we’ve never said or heard before A large pink spider wearing sunglasses and a polka dot sarong danced across the floor (It is most unlikely that you have ever seen the sentence above, but you have no difficulty in understanding it--even though you may not believe it)

23. STIMULUS - FREEDOM Stimulus-freedom is the ability to say anything you like in any context Suppose someone says to you, ‘What do you think of my kebaya ?’-- you are free to make any response you like, including none at all. You might reply, ‘it’s pretty’ or ‘it is so ugly’ or ‘it doesn’t suit you’. This however does not mean that human language is totally random. There are social pressures that make some responses more likely than others. The absence of stimulus-freedom would mean that your every remark is determined by the context, so that like a character in a play, you do not have the choice of what to say.

24. STIMULUS - FREEDOM (contd.) There are, of course, certain formal and especially ceremonial context in which you are bound by the context -e.g. church services Non-human signals are NOT stimulus-free, but rather stimulus boundi.e. a non-human creature produces a particular signal always and only when the appropriate stimulus is present.

25. ARBITRARINESS Arbitrariness refers to the absence of any necessary connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. The overwhelming presence of arbitrariness in language is the chief reason it takes so long to learn the vocabulary of a foreign language-- it is generally impossible to guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

26. ARBITRARINESS ( cont’d) • Flower • Bunga • Hana

27. Phonetics and Phonology • Phonetics is the general study of speech sounds. • Phonology is the study of the sound system of language – the rules which govern pronunciation

28. To know a language is to know the sounds of that language and we know how to combine those sounds into words. • For example: When we know English, we know the sounds represented by the letters b, e, and d and we can form the word bed. • Articulatory phonetics is the study of how the vocal tract produces the sounds of language.

29. Anatomy of the vocal tract

30. Difficulties of English Pronunciation • Orthography, or alphabetic spelling, does not represent the sounds of a language in a consistent way: • Different Spelling, Same Sounds • For example: Did he believe that Caesar could see the people seize the seas? • The same sound /i:/ is represented variously by e, ie, ae, ee, eo, ei and ea.

31. Same Spelling, Different Pronunciations • For example: • cough - /kƆ:f/ • tough - /tΛf/ • bough - /baʊ/ • through - /θru:/ • though - /ðəʊ/ • thoroughfare - /θʌrəfeə/

32. Some letters have no sound in certain words (so-called silent letters). • mnemonic debt hole know write island • English spelling is not consistent at all with its pronunciation.

33. IPA • The International Phonetic Alphabet • a different symbol for each distinctive sound • the same symbol should be used for that sound in every language which uses it . The sounds of all languages fall into two classes: • Consonants 2. Vowels

34. Consonants

35. Consonants

36. Consonants

38. How can the sounds of consonants be classified? • The place of articulation, and • The manner of articulation • The production of any sound involves the movement of air. • Most speech sounds are produced by pushing lung air through the vocal chords.

39. Place of articulation • Consonants are classified according to where the airflow restriction occurs in the vocal tract. • Movement of the tongue and lips creates the constriction, reshaping the oral cavity in various ways to produce the various sounds.

40. Place of Articulation • Bilabials [p], [b], [m]: we articulate by bringing both lips together. • Labiodentals [f], [v]: We articulate by touching the upper teeth on the lower lip. • Interdentals [θ], [ð]: The sound is pronounced by inserting the tip of the tongue between the teeth.

41. Place of Articulation • Alveolars [t], [d], [n], [s], [z], [l], [/r]/. All these sounds are pronounced with the tongue raised in various ways to the alveolar ridge. • [t], [d], [n] the tongue tip is raised and touches the ridge, or slightly in front of it. • [s], [z] the sides of the front of the tongue are raised, but the tip is lowered so that air escapes over it.

42. Place of Articulation • [l] the tongue tip is raised while the rest of the tongue remains down, permitting air to escape from both sides of the tongue. Thus, [l] is called a lateral. • [r]: the sound is produced by curling the tip of the tongue back behind the alveolar ridge – a retroflex sound

43. Place of Articulation • Palatals [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], [dʒ], [j]: the constriction occurs by raising the front part of the tongue to the palate. • Velars[k], [g], [ŋ]: these sounds are produced by raising the back of the tongue to the soft palate or velum.

44. Manner of Articulation • How do we distinguish the sounds of [p], [b] and [m] (they are bilabials) or [t], [d] and [n] (they are all alveolar ridge sounds)? • Speech sounds also vary in the way the air stream is affected as it flows from the lungs up and out of the mouth and nose. It may be blocked or partially blocked; the vocal cords may or may not vibrate. This is called the manner of articulation.

45. Manner of Articulation • When the vocal cords are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless. • When the vocal cords are drawn together, the air from the lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes through, creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced.

46. The voiced/voiceless distinction is very important in English. This phonetic property distinguishes the words in word pairs like the following: • pin: [pɪn] cat: [kæt] bin: [bɪn] get: [/get]

47. Voiceless sounds can be classified into two classes: aspirated and unaspirated • Aspirated voiceless consonant means when the consonant is being pronounced, there is a puff of air.

48. Nasal sounds: When the velum is not in its raised position, air escapes through the nose and mouth. Eg: [m], [n] and [ŋ] • Stops are consonants in which the air stream is completely blocked in the oral cavity for a short period (tens of milliseconds). eg: [b], [p], [m], [t], [d], [n], [k], [g], [ŋ], [tʃ] and [dʒ] • Fricatives are sounds produced with the air flow so severely obstructed that is caused friction. eg: [f], [v], [s], [z], [θ] and [ð]

49. Affricates are produced by a stop closure followed immediately by a gradual release of the closure. eg:[tʃ] and [dʒ] • Liquids: there is some obstruction of the airstream in the mouth but not enough to cause any constriction. eg: [l] and [r] • Glides are produced with little obstruction of the airstream.eg: [j] and [w] • Approximants are sounds that approximate a frictional closeness, but no actual friction occurs.eg: [w], [j], [r] and [l]

50. Some charts have a row for affricates (e.g., the chart below based on page 21 of the textbook). The IPA consonant chart doesn't -- you can always get the affricate symbol by putting together the stop and the fricative symbols in the relevant column.