The study of language Based on “The study of language”. George Yule. Fourth Edition
Topics The origin of language Animals and human communication The sounds of language The sound patterns of language Word formation Morphology Grammar Language and the brain Language and social variation Language and culture
The divine source God created Adam and “whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.� Following a Hindu tradition, language came from Sarasvati, Wife of Brahma, creator of the universe. The Egyptian pharaoh, Psamtik, tried an experiment with 2 newborn babies, goats and a mute shepherd. After 2 years of isolation, the children spoke Phrygian, and he concluded that was the original language. King James IV made a similar experiment which made him conclude Hebrew was the language of the Garden of Eden.
The natural sound source
The basic idea is that primitive words could have been imitation of the natural sounds which early men and women heard around them.
The social interaction source The idea is that the sounds of a person, such as grunts, hums, groans, and curses, involved in physical effort could be the source of our language.
The physical adaptation source Based in the evolution of humans and their physical changes. Difference between the skull of a gorilla and that of a Neanderthal suggests that some consonant-like sound distinction would have been possible.
The tool-making source As we know, the human brain is not only large relative to human body size, it is also lateralized, that is, it has specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres. Those functions that control the motor movements involved in complex vocalization and object manipulation are very close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain. It may be that there was an evolutionary connection between the language-using and tool-using abilities of humans and that both were involved in the development of the speaking brain.
Communication
First of all, we have to discriminate between communicative signals and informative signals. Communicative signals are those which communicate something intentionally. A clear message. Informative signals are those which communicate an unintentional message. For example, when someone sneeze and you assume that person is cold.
Properties of human language Displacement, arbitrariness, cultural transmission and duality. Displacement. Contrary to animals, humans can refer to past and future time. Indeed, this property allow us to talk about things and places that we aren’t sure about their existence.
Arbitrariness. This is the relationship between linguistic signs and objects.
Productivity. This property refers to the great creativity to humans to create new expressions and manipulate their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations.
Cultural transmission. This is the process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next. Duality. Human language is organized at two levels simultaneously. So, at one level, we have distinct sounds, and, at the other level, we have to distinct meanings.
Talking to animals Animals produce a particular behavior in response to a particular sound-stimulus or noise, but doesn’t actually “understand” what the words in the noise mean.
Chimpanzees and language
Washoe. Beatrix and Allen Gardner taught to this female chimpanzee to use a version of American Sign Language.
Sarah and Lana Chimpanzees were being taught by Ann and David Premack, to use a set of plastic shapes for the purpose of communicating with humans. These plastic shapes represented “words” that could be arranged in sequence to build “sentences”.
Phonetics Phonetic is the general study of the characteristics of speech.
Voiced and voiceless sounds When the vocal folds are spread apart, the air from the lungs passes between them unimpeded. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiceless. When the vocal folds are drawn together, the air from lungs repeatedly pushes them apart as it passes through, creating a vibration effect. Sounds produced in this way are described as voiced.
Place of articulation
it’s a term used to
describe the location inside the mouth at which the constriction takes place.
Bilabials: these are sounds formed using both lips. Labiodentals: these are sounds formed with upper teeth and lower lip. Dentals: these sounds are formed with the tongue tip behind the upper front teeth. Alveolars: these are sounds formed with the front part of the tongue on the alveolar ridge, which is the rough, bony ridge immediately behind and above the upper teeth. Palatals: sounds produced with the tongue and the palate.
Velars: sounds produced with the back of the tongue against the velum. Glottals: there is one sound that is produced without the active use of the tongue and other parts of the mouth.
Manner of articulation
word to describe the same
sounds in terms of how they are articulated. Stops: result from a blocking or stopping effect on the air stream then letting it go abruptly. Fricatives: a type of friction produced by almost blocking the air stream and having the air push through the very narrow opening. Affricates: Combining a brief stopping of the air stream with an obstructed release. Nasals: when the velum is lowered and the air stream is allowed to flow out through the nose. Liquids: are formed by letting the air stream flow around the sides of the tongue as the tip of the tongue makes contact with the middle of the alveolar ridge.tthere is “in the mind�
Glides: These sounds are typically produced with the tongue in motion to or from the position of a vowel.
Vowels Vowel sounds are produced with a relatively free flow of air. They are all typically voiced. To describe vowel sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue influence the shape through which the airflow must pass.
Phonology Phonology is the description of the system and patterns of speech sounds in a language.
Phonemes Each one of these meaning-distinguish sounds in a language.
Phones & allophones. Difference between phoneme and phone is that phoneme is an abstract unit or sound-type, there is “in the mind”. On the other hand, phone is a version of sound-type produced in actual speech, “in the mouth” /maɪ gɒdnes/ My godness!!!
Now, the different versions of one phoneme is called allophone; like the different version of spider-man.
Minimal pairs When two words are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same position, the two words are describe as a minimal pair.
Syllables A syllable must contain a vowel or vowel-like sound. The most common type of syllable in language also has a consonant before the vowel and is usually represented like CV.
There are and
syllables: CV syllables: VC, CVC, CCVC, VCC, V.
Consonant cluster: when the coda can consist of more than one consonant. Stop Star Close Break
Coarticulation effects The process of making one sound almost at the same time as the next sound is called coarticulation. Assimilation When two sound
segments
occur in sequence and
some
aspect of one segment is
taken or
“copied� by other.
Elision The process of not pronouncing a sound segment that might be present in the deliberately careful pronunciation of a word in isolation.
Etymology The study of the origin of words Coinage That is the invention of totally new terms. New words based on the name of a person or place are called eponyms.
Borrowing That is the taking over of words from other language.
Compounding There is a joining of two separate words to produce a single one.
Blending The combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term is also present in this process. However, blending is usually accomplished by taking only the beginning of one word and joining it to the end of the other word.
Clipping is a reduction of the word.
Backformation A very specialized type of reduction process. The process whereby the noun first came into use and then the verb was created from it. Television
Televise
“Your favorite movie will be televise”
Conversion when the noun comes to be used as a verb, without any reduction. Phone
Phone
“I phoned you yesterday”
Acronym Acronyms are new words formed from the initial letters of a set of other words.
Derivation The most common word-formation process to be found in the production of a new English word. It is accomplished by means of a large number of small “bits� (affixes).
Morphology The study of forms.
Morphemes Minimal unit of meaning or grammatical function. We can distinct between two morphemes. Free morphemes Bound morphemes
Free morphemes Morphemes that can stand by themselves as single words. And there are: lexical, that carry the content of the message (noun, adjective, verb); and functional, this set consists largely of the functional words in the language (conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns).
Bound morphemes Those forms that cannot normally stand alone and typically attaches another form. And there are: derivational, used to make new words or to make words of a different grammatical category from
stem
(prefixes and suffixes); and inflectional, which aren’t used to produce new words in the language, but rather to indicate aspects of grammatical function of a word.
Grammar
The process of describing the structure of phrases and sentences in such a way we account for all the grammatical sequence in a language and rule out all the ungrammatical sequence is one way of defining grammar.
Parts of speech
NOUNS are words used to refer to people, objects, creatures, places, qualities, phenomena and abstract ideas as if they were all “things” Example: Boy, Dog.
ARTICLES are words used with nouns to form noun phrases classifying those “things” or identifying them as already known. Example: a, an, the.
ADJECTIVES are used, typically with nouns, to provide more information about the things referred to. Example: Happy girl, Furious man.
VERBS are words used to refer to various kinds of actions and states involving people and things in events. Example: Jessica plays soccer, James rides a bike.
ADVERBS are words used, typically with verbs, to provide more information about actions, states and events. Some adverbs are also used with adjectives to modify information about things. Example: That turtle moves slowly.
PREPOSITIONS are words used with nouns in phrases providing information about time, place and other connections involving actions and things. Example: On the table, next to the sofa.
PRONOUNS are words used in place of noun phrases, typically referring to people and things already known. Example: I, you, he, she, it, we, they.
CONJUNCTIONS are words used to make connections and indicate relationships between events. Example: and, because, when.
Agreement
Number, that is, whether the noun is singular or plural.
Person, covers the distinctions of first person (involving the speaker), second person (involving the hearer) and third person (involving any other).
Tense, the form of the verb can be described.
Gender, makes the distinction between male and female.
Neurolinguistics The study of the relationship between language and the brain.
Language areas in the brain Broca’s area, or “anterior speech cortex” is crucially involved in the production of Wernicke’s area, or “posterior speech cortex” is part of the brain crucially involved in the understanding speech. The motor cortex is the area that generally controls movements of the muscles (for moving hands, feet, arms, etc.). Close to Broca’s area is the part of motor cortex that controls the articulatory muscles of the face, jaw, tongue and larynx. Arcuate fasciculus forms a crucial connection between Wernicke’s and Broca’s area.
Localization view It has been used to suggest that the brain activity involved in hearing a word, understanding it, then saying it, would follow a definite patterns. Tongue tips and slips Tip of the tongue phenomenon is in which we feel that some word is just eluding us, that we know the word, but it just won’t come to the surface.
Slip of the tongue produces expressions such as “black bloxes” for “black boxes”
Slip of the ear may provide some clues to how the brain tries to make sense of the auditory signal it receives when it hears “great ape” for “grey tape”.
Hdhd
Aphasia Aphasia is defined as an impairment of language function due to localized brain damage that leads to difficulty in understanding and/or linguistic forms.
Broca’s aphasia, or “motor aphasia” is characterized by a substantially reduced amount of speech, distorted articulation and slow, often effortful speech; comprehension is typically much better than production. Wernicke’s aphasia , or “sensory aphasia” is the type of disorder that results in diffiulties in auditory comprehension.
Conduction aphasia It’s associated with damage to the arcuate fasciculus. Individuals suffering from this disorder sometimes mispronounce words, but typically don’t have articulation problems. They are fluent, but may have disrupted rhythm because of pauses and hesitations. Comprehension of spoken words is normally good. Dichotic listening It’s an experimental technique that has demonstrated a left hemisphere dominance for syllable and word processing.
Sociolinguistics The study of the relationship between language and society.
Social dialects Whereas the traditional study of regional dialects tended to concentrated on the speech of people in rural areas, the study of social dialects has been mainly concerned with speakers in towns and cities.
Although the unique circumstances of every life result in each of us having an individual way of speaking, a personal dialect or idiolect. Speech style and style-shifting The most basic distinction in speech style is between formal uses and informal uses. Formal style is when we pay more careful attention to how we’re speaking and informal style is when we pay less attention. They are sometimes described as “careful style” and “casual style”. A change from one to the other by an individual is called style-shifting.
Speech accommodation The ability to modify our speech style toward or away from the perceived style of the person(s) we’re talking to. We can adopt a speech style that attempts to reduce social distance, described as convergence, and use forms that similar to those used by the person we’re talking to. In contrast, when a speech style is used to emphasize social distance between speakers, the process is called divergence.
Register & jargon A register is a conventional way of using language that is appropriate in a specific context, which may be identified as situational, occupational or topical. One of the defining features of a register is the use of jargon, which is special technical vocabulary associated with a specific area of work or interest. In social terms, jargon helps to create and maintain connections among those who see themselves as “insiders” in some way and to exclude “outsider”.
Slang Whereas jargon is specialized vocabulary used by those inside established social groups, often defined by professional status, slang is more typically used among those who are outside established higher-status groups. Slang, or “colloquial speech�, describes words or phrases that are used instead of more everyday terms among younger speakers and other groups with special interest.
AAE African American English, also known as “Black English” or “Ebonics” is a variety used by many (not all)African Americans in many regions of the USA. In the case of AAE, those different features have often been stigmatized as “bad” language, following a regular pattern whereby the social practices, especially speech, of dominated groups are treated as “abnormal” by those dominant groups who are charge of defining “normal”. Vernacular language Vernacular is a general expression for a kind of social dialect, typically spoken by a lower-status group,
which is treated as “non-standard” because of marked differences from the “standard” language. The sound of vernacular In AAVE is the trend to reduce final consonant clusters, for example, “left hand” is pronounced “lef han”. Or initial dental consonants are frequently pronounced as alveolar stops, for example “think, the” are pronounced as “tink, da”. Also, when a phrase indicates plural number, the plural –s markers is omitted, for example, “guys, friends” are pronounced “two guy, one of my friend”. The grammar of a vernacular It is typically in aspects of grammar that AAVE and other vernacular are most stigmatized as being “illogical” or “sloppy”. The sloppy” criticism focuses on the frequent absence of forms of the verb “to be” in AAVE expressions such as “you crazy”.
Culture We use the term culture to refer to all the ideas and assumptions about the nature of things and people that we become members of social groups. It can be defined as “socially acquired knowledge”. Categories A category is a group with certain features in a common and we can think of the vocabulary we learn as an inherited set of category labels. Some languages may have lots of different words for types of “rain” or kinds of “coconuts” and other languages may have only one or two. Linguistic relativity This is often discussed in terms of linguistic relativity because it seems that the structure of our language, with is predetermined categories, must have an influence on how we perceive the world.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis