An Introduction to Linguistics

An Introduction to Linguistics An Introduction to Linguistics Lecture 1 Lecture 1

Definition of Language • Sapir (1921:7) 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".

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".

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 tendto change to meet the new situations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Thank you for your attention

An Introduction to Linguistics