Applied Linguistics

The Basics of Applied Linguistics

1.1 What is human language? Language is a highly elaborated signaling system. We call the aspects that are peculiar to it the design features of language. Some of these we find only with the language of human beings,　others we have in common with animals. Another aspect of human language is that we　express thoughts with words.

1.1.1 DESIGN FEATURES OF LANGUAGE A principle feature of human language is the duality of patterning. It enables us to use our language in a very economic way for a virtually infinite production of linguistic units. How does this principle work? All human languages have a small, limited set of speech sounds. The limitation derives from the restricted capacity of our vocal apparatus. The speech sounds are referred to as consonants and vowels. Linguistically speaking, the distinctive speech sounds are called phonemes. You cannot use isolated phonemes for communication, because phonemes are by themselves meaningless. But we can assemble and reassemble phonemes into larger linguistic units. These are commonly called “words”. Although our capacity to produce new phonemes is limited, we frequently coin new words. Hence, our capacity to produce vocabulary is unlimited.

Notes: Language and words: some words have a direct relation to its form and meaning ‘iconic’ For example ‘Time period’ a long time. Here, the extension serves to visually represent the semantic emphasis. Iconicity in language can be found frequently.

The Term Paper on Language Acquisition Child Words Months

... other fascinating features of language. As stated by cognitive researches "Language is paramount among the capacities that characterize humans, setting us ... sounds in the parents' language, since phonemes from other languages occur, and the frequency of phoneme production matches the ... between Open class and Closed class words (open-class words are 'context' words like nouns, verbs, and adjectives, ...

However most words are Arbitrary. The words have no direct connect towards its meaning. Another example for nonarbitrariness are onomatopoeia. These are words that seem to resemble sounds. There are many examples for onomatopoetic words, like splash or bang. Some names for animals are also onomatopoetic, for example, “cuckoo”. Still, since animals such as the bird are named differently in different languages, there can be no ultimate motivation for the name.

1.2 What is linguistics? Linguistics is the scientific inquiry into the human language with all its aspects. All its aspects: these are many. There is a specialized branch for each approach to the examination of language. Until the beginning of the 20th century, scholars were occupied with research on the history of languages and the roots of words in ancient tongues. The famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure coined this approach the diachronic analysis and moved to the analysis of the system of language, which he assumed to be of greater importance. Saussure stated this in the first decades of this century and thus formed the fundament of modern linguistics.

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 12 1.2.1 DIACHRONIC VERSUS SYNCHRONIC VIEW Diachrony Diachronic linguistics views the historical development of a language. Thus, on the diachronic

axis we can go back and forth in time, watching the language with all its features change. Synchrony Synchronic linguistics views a particular state of a language at some given point in time. This could mean Modern English of the present day, or the systematic analysis of the system of Shakespeare’s English. However, no comparisons are made to other states of language or other times. Modern linguistics, following Ferdinand de Saussure, is primarily interested in the synchronic point of view. Saussure postulated the priority of synchrony: no knowledge of the historical development of a language is necessary to examine its present system. He arrived at this radical viewpoint due to his conviction that linguistic research must concentrate on the structure of language. Later, the whole paradigm was hence called structuralism. synchronic axis

1.2.3 THE VARIOUS LINGUISTIC DISCIPLINES: SURVEY In the following, the branches of linguistics we will deal with in this course are listed. This is only a very rough summary. You will get more detailed information when you turn to the respective chapters. Historical linguistics This discipline is occupied with the examination of the historical development of languages. But apart from this diachronic analysis, it also deals with the synchronic analysis of certain states of language. In this course, we will have a look at the development of the English language. Language acquisition and communication How do we learn our language? How do the processes of language comprehension and

The Term Paper on Semantics: Linguistics and Meaning

Why study semantics? Semantics (as the study of meaning) is central to the study of communication; and as communication becomes more and more a crucial factor in social organization, the need to understand it becomes more and more pressing. Semantics is also at the centre of human mind – thought processes, cognition, conceptualization – all these are strongly connected to the way in which we ...

production work? This discipline gives answers to these questions. Also, it takes a look at the role of memory in language and how it is used once we are able to talk. Strictly speaking, it is a branch of psycholinguistics, a discipline that emerged from the interdisciplinary collaboration of linguistics and psychology in the 1950’s. Research in language acquisition has meanwhile become a strong domain of its own. Phonetics The subjects of phonetics are the articulation, transport, and receival of speech sounds. Thus, there are three corresponding branches of phonetics: articulatory, acoustic, and auditory phonetics. In contrast to phonology, phonetics deals with the physical aspect of speech sounds. In order to give a correct transcription of speech sounds, there are several special alphabets. The one most commonly used is the IPA which you will find in this textbook. Phonology Phonology is the study of the distinctive sounds of a language, the socalled phonemes. Phonology examines the functions of sounds within a language. Morphology Morphemes are the smallest meaningful elements of a language. Morphology is the study of these meaning units. Not all words or even all syllables are necessarily meaning units. Morphology employs discovery procedures to find out what words or syllables are morphemes. Syntax Syntax is the study of sentence structure; it is a part of grammar in the broad sense. There are several ways of defining and examining sentences. We will have a look at various grammars. Semiotics Semiotics is the study of signs in communication processes in general. It concerns itself

with the analysis of both linguistic and non-linguistic signs as communicative devices and with their systems. We will take a brief look at the theory of signs, with emphasis on the linguistic sign. Semantics Linguistic semantics examines the meaning of linguistic signs and strings of signs.

The Term Paper on Linguistics and Language 4

1. The underlying assumptions, theories, and methods used by psychologiest, linguists, and researchers are believed to strongly affect the way each defines psycholinguistics. Please discuss some different conceptions of psycholinguistics in its relation to other branches of linguistics. Then, define yours. One of your reference should be “fundamentals of Pyscholinguistics by Fernandez and Cairns ( ...

Pragmatics Pragmatics is the study of the use of signs and the relationship between signs and their users. Text linguistics The traditional linguistic disciplines regard the text as a peripheral phenomenon, whereas Text linguistics regard the text as a sign of its own. There are various text types and mechanisms that constitute textuality. These lie beyond the borders of the separate sentences. Sociolinguistics This is the study of the interaction of language and social organization. There are several models that determine the variation of language in social contexts both on an individual as well as on a social-group scale. Sociolinguistics is also concerned with national language policies. Computer linguistics (also: computational linguistics) This domain is an interdisciplinary area of research between linguistics and information science. There are two main branches. First, computer linguists simulate grammars by implementing language structures into computer programs. In this context, the term computer metaphor became famous. It refers to the notion that the human brain can be simulated by a computer. Second, computer linguists use the computer as a tool for the

analysis of language. For instance, large corpuses of text are processed with the aid of especially designed software.

2.1 Semantic universals There are semantic categories that are shared by all cultures and referred to by all languages these are called semantic universals. There are many examples of semantic universals. Let’s discuss two of them: One semantic universal regards our notion of color. There exist eleven basic color terms: black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. The pattern that all languages universally abide by, is that they do not entertain a notion of a color term outside of that range. This means, any imaginable color is conceived of as a mixture, shade, or subcategory of one of these eleven basic color terms. As a result, one way of classifying languages is by color terms. The eleven color terms are not in usage equally among the languages on Earth. Not all languages have all basic color terms. Some have two, some three, and some four. Others have five, six, or seven, and some have eight to eleven. Those with two color terms always have black and white, those with three black, white, and red, and those with more have additional basic color terms according to the order in the list given above. This is a universal pattern. The languages which have the same basic color terms in common belong to the same language type. Hence, we find seven classes of languages according to this scheme. Another semantic universal is the case of pronouns. Think of what it is

The Term Paper on Born Child Children Word Kill

Killing any person is strongly condemned in the Quran. God has made life sacred. Killing the children is specifically condemned as they are the helpless victims in every society. "You shall not kill any (Nafs) person - for GOD has made life sacred - except in the course of justice... ." (17: 33) "You shall not kill your children due to fear of poverty. We provide for them, as well as for ...

you do when you talk to someone about yourself. There is always the “I”, representing you as the speaker, and the “you”, meaning the addressee. You could not possibly do without that, and neither could a speaker of any other language on earth. Again, we find a universal pattern here. Whenever you do not talk about yourself as a person, but as a member of a group, you use the plural “we”. English is restricted to these two classes of pronouns: singular and plural, each in the first, second, and third person. All languages that evince this structure are grouped into one language type. There are other languages that make use of even more pronouns. In some languages, it is possible to address two people with a pronoun, that specifically indicates, not just their being plural, but also their being ‘two’ people; this is then the dual pronoun. Other examples are languages that have pronouns to refer to the speaker and the addressee together, called inclusive pronouns. Exclusive pronouns refer to the speaker together with people other than the addressee. However, these are not among the European languages.

2.2 Phonological universals Different languages may have very different sets of vowels. If you are familiar with a few foreign languages, you may find it difficult to believe there are universal rules governing the distribution of vowels, but they do exist. Remember our example of basic color terms: A similar pattern could be drawn on the basis of the vowel system. Languages with few vowels al-

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 16 ways have the same set of vowel types. And if a language has more vowels, it is always the same type of vowel that is added to the set. These vowels may not always sound exactly the same, but they are always created at the same location in our vocal apparatus.

The Essay on Ministry Of Education Reading Language Children

The first acquisition of language for a child is oral, therefore when a child starts school they can speak and listen better than they can read. Consequently, it is important to have reading aloud activities in the classroom so the child may begin to associate oral language with written language. Reading material near matches their already well-developed language ability in the sense that what ...

2.3 Syntactic universals Remember the word order of English I mentioned above. Hmhm, you say: that cannot be a universal rule, since you know other sentences from English and possibly from other languages which do not follow this order. You are right, but the order subject, verb, object (SVO) may be defined as the basic order of English sentences. In other languages there are different “basic” orders, such as Japanese (SOV) or Tongan (VSO), a Polynesian language. After an extensive study, one can define two different sets of basic orders that languages follow: First SVO, VSO, SOV and second VOS, OVS, OSV. What is the difference? In the first set the subject precedes the object, in the second set it follows the object. Since the first set is the one which applies to the basic structures of far more languages than the second one does, the universal rule is that there is an overwhelming tendency for the subject of a sentence to precede the direct object among the languages of the world. 2.4 Absolute universals – universal tendencies; implicational – nonimplicational universals Of course, not all universals can be found in all languages. With so many tongues spoken, it would be hard not to find any exceptions. Most languages have not even been the subject of

extensive research as of yet. However, some rules appear without exception in the languages which have been studied so far. We call these absolute universals. If there are minor exceptions to the rule, we speak of universal tendencies or relative universals. In saying this, we take for granted that exceptions may be found in future surveys among languages which have remained unexplored up to the present day. Sometimes a universal holds only if a particular condition of the language structure is fulfilled. These universals are called implicational. Universals which can be stated without a condition are called nonimplicational. In other words, whenever a rule “If … then …” is valid, the universal appears in the structure of the respective language. There are thus four types of universals: implicational absolute universals, implicational relative universals, nonimplicational absolute universals, and nonimplicational relative universals. The final determination of which type a universal belongs to is dependent on intensive field research.

The Term Paper on Language And Words

1. Introduction A language is a system of symbols, generally known as lexemes and the grammars (rules) by which they are manipulated. The word language is also used to refer to the whole phenomenon of language, i.e., the common properties of languages. Language is commonly used for communication, though it has other uses. Language is a natural phenomenon, and language learning is common in ...

History of the spoken language:

5. Language acquisition and disorders

part from the general historical development of languages, there is another, rather personal development in each of us when we acquire a language. We undergo child language acquisition, development, and maturation. We acquire second, third, fourth or even more languages in school or when we travel abroad. Another feature of personal linguistic developments are language disorders due to malfunctions of certain areas of the brain. In this chapter, we will examine some of the findings of Neurolinguistics. This branch of linguistics investigates the relationship between the brain and language.

5.1 Child language acquisition Children have to learn language from scratch, although the capability to speak is inherent in everyone. There are certain milestones and stages of language acquisition during the child’s first months and years. 5.1.1 MILESTONES I: 0–8 weeks. Children of this age are only capable of reflexive crying. We also call this theproduction of vegetative sounds. II: 8–20 weeks. Cooing and laughter appears in the child’s vocal expression.

III: 20–30 weeks. The child begins with vocal play. This includes playing with vowels (V) and consonants (C), for example: “AAAOOOOOUUUUIIII”. IV: 25–50 weeks. The child begins to babble. There are two kinds of babbling, a) reduplicative babbling CVCV, e.g., “baba”, and b) variegated babbling, e.g., VCV “adu”. V:9–18 months. The child starts to produce melodic utterances. This means that stress and intonation are added to the sound chains uttered. After having passed these milestones, children are, in essence, capable of pronouncing words of the natural language. 5.1.2 STAGES From this time on, children start to produce entire words. There are three stages, each designating an increasing capability to use words for communicative purposes: I: Single words and holophrases. Children may use a word to indicate things or persons, e.g., “boo” (=book), or “mama”. Also, a single word is employed to refer to entire contexts. At this stage, “shoe” could mean “Mama has a nice shoe”, “Give me my shoe” or even “I want to wear my new red shoes when we go for a walk”! II: The next stage is the usage of two word phrases. This stage is also called telegraphic speech. It begins around the second birthday, maybe sooner or later, depending on the child. Examples are “Dada gone”, “cut it”, “in car”, “here pear”. At this stage, children design socalled pivot grammars. This means that the child has a preference for certain words as the pivotal (axis) words, implementing a variety of other words at different points in time to create phrases:

III: The child begins to form longer utterances. These lack grammatical correctness at first

and are perceived as, though meaningful, rather rough assemblies of utterances. Examples are “dirty hand wash it”, “glasses on nose”, “Daddy car coming”, or even “car sleeping bed”, which a boy uttered, meaning that the car was now parked in the garage. There are many phonological and grammatical features of speech development, all of which cannot be listed here. A characteristic of children’s early language is the omission of consonants at the beginning, ending, or in consonant clusters in words. Examples: “boo” instead of “book”, “at” instead of “cat”, or “ticker” instead of “sticker”. Children learn grammatical morphemes, commonly referred to as “endings”, in a certain order. They often start with the present progressive “-ing”, as in “Mama talking”. More complex forms, such as the contractible auxiliary be (as in “Pat’s going”) are learned at a later point in time.

5.2 Language development and maturation Parents from different cultures behave differently towards their children as far as linguistic education is concerned. In some areas of the world, people think that baby talk, or Motherese hems linguistic development. There are also cultures where parents talk to their children as they would to adults), or where they do not put so much thought into how to teach their children language at all. When taking a closer look, no particular advantages or disadvantages can be found. Children’s language is creative, but rulegoverned. These rules comprise the seven operating principles of children’s language. These principles correspond to the essential communicative needs of a child. One main aspect in all principles is the predominant use of the active voice, the passive voice requiring a more complex understanding of concepts. The instrumental principle serves to indicate the personal needs of the child. These are the “I want” phrases. The regulatory principle helps to demand action of somebody else: “Do that.” “Hello” is the utterance – among others – which represents the interactional principle. It is

very important for establishing contact. The personal principle carries the expressive function. “Here I come” is a proper substitution for many phrases. The heuristic “Tell me why”-principle is very important because once the child is able to form questions, language helps in the general learning process. The imaginative principle comes in when the child wants to impart his or her dreams or fantasies. It is also what applies when the child pretends. Information is also important for children’s communication. To tell others about the own experience soon becomes important. Another major step in language development is taken when the child learns how to write. Again, there are several stages: I: Preparatory. Age approx. 4–6 years. The child acquires the necessary motorical skills. Also, the principles of spelling are learned. II: Consolidation. Age approx. 7 years When the child begins to write, its writing reflects its spoken language. This does not only refer to the transcription of phonetic characteristics, but also to word order and sentence structure. III: Differentiation. Age approx. 9 years LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 26 Writing now begins to diverge from spoken language; it becomes experimental. This means that the writing of the child does not have to reflect speech. The child learns to use writing freely and sets out to experiment with it. IV: Integration. Age approx. mid-teens Around this age, children/teens develop their own style. A personal voice appears in the written language and the ability to apply writing to various purposes is acquired.

5.3 Second language acquisition Some aspects of second language acquisition are similar to first language acquisition. The learner has already acquired learning techniques and can reflect on how to learn best. However, learning languages depends on the personality, age, intelligence, and active learning strategies of the learner. The learners of a second language (L2) start out with their own language, which we call source language. They are on their way to learn a target language (TL).

All that lies in between we call interlanguage. All L2 speakers are on some stage of interlanguage. Beginners are closer to their source language (SL), experts of L2 are closer to the target language. And if we don’t continue with our studies, our interlanguage competence may even decrease. People who have lived in foreign countries for a long time are often so close to the target language that they hardly differ from native speakers. There are some features of interlanguage which are worthwhile to look at. They play an important role in the learning process. Everybody experiences their effects in language learning. Fossilization. At a certain stage the learner ceases to learn new aspects of the TL. Although perhaps capable to express herself in a grammatically correct way, the learner here does not proceed to explore the great reservoir of language any further in order to express herself in a more refined and sophisticated manner. Regression. The learner fails to express herself in areas (phraseology, style or vocabulary) that he or she had mastered at an earlier point in time. Overgeneralization. The learner searches for a logical grammar of the TL that would cover every aspect of the language, or seeks to find every aspect of existing grammars confirmed in the living language. In doing so, the learner draws on aspects of the target language already earned and overuses them. Overelaboration. The learner wants to apply complex theoretical structures to contexts that may call for simpler expression. Interference from L1 (or L3), with phonological interference being the most common example. Syntactic interference and semantic interference are also possible, e.g., so-called

false friends. These are words that exist in the source language as well as in the target language.However, their meaning or use might differ substantially, as in the German “Figur”vs. the French “figure” (=”face”), or the English “eventually” vs. the German “eventuell” (=”possibly”).

Variable input. This refers to the quality of education in the TL, the variety and extent of exposure to the TL and the communicative value of it to the learner. This is why the design of learning material and contact with many TL native speakers plays a vital role in learning a new language. Organic and/or cumulative growth. There can be unstructured, widely dispersed input which is not always predictable. This is structured by the learner in progressive building blocks.

5.4 Language disorders The principle language disorders are aphasia, anomia, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. Usually, language disorders are caused by injuries or malfunctions of the brain. Neurologists were able to locate those areas of the brain that play a central role in language production and comprehension by examining patients whose brains had suffered damages in certain areas. 5.4.1 APHASIA This is a disorder in the ability to process or produce spoken language. Two scientists, Broca and Wernicke, were able to locate two areas of the brain responsible for these activities. Broca’s area. In 1864 the French surgeon Broca was able to locate a small part of the brain, somewhat behind our left temple. This area is responsible for the organization of language production. If it is damaged, the patient usually knows what (s)he wants to say but can’t organize the syntax. More nouns than verbs are used. There is hesitant speech and poor articulation. Comprehension and processing are usually not impaired. Wernicke’s area. Carl Wernicke identified another type of aphasia in

1874. He located a part of the brain behind the left ear where he found comprehension of language to take place. Speech production and syntax are generally possible with Wernicke’s patients. However, comprehension and, also to some extent, production is impaired, and patients show the tendency to retrieve only general nouns and nonsense words from their mental lexicon and to lose specific lexis, or vocabulary. They do not seem to be aware of their problem and thus do not react to treatment easily. Both Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas are located in the left half of the brain. The executive centers, however, are located in the right hemisphere. A separation of the two halves of the brain effects the capability of converting linguistic information into action, or vice versa. Apart from the types of aphasia identified by Broca and Wernicke, there are also other kinds of aphasia. Jargon. In “neologistic jargon aphasia”, patients can only produce new approximations of content words (nouns), they will never hit the exact word. In general, messages are hard to understand and often completely incomprehensible or not decodable by listeners, although the speakers have good syntax. Conduction. Patients understand what is being said to them, however, they are unable to repeat single words and make other errors when speaking. However, they are aware of their errors. In this kind of aphasia, it is neither Broca’s nor Wernicke’s area that is damaged, but the connection between them. In transcortical aphasia, there is a weakness in comprehension. The best　preserved feature is the ability to repeat heard phrases. Therefore, the processing of language is impaired, but the patient is able to hear and pronounce the acoustic chain. Global aphasia has the worst effects on the patient. All language abilities are seriously

impaired in this case. Both Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas are damaged. 5.4.2 ANOMIA Anomia is the loss of access to certain parts of the lexis. Anomia patients are unable to remember the names of things, people, or places. There is often a confusion between semantically related words. Undoubtedly, you will have experienced this phenomenon yourself! We are all prone to it at times. It usually increases with age, although pure anomia is a much more acute state and is not related to aging. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 28 5.4.3 DYSLEXIA This is a disorder of reading where the patient is not capable to recognize the correct word order. Patients also tend to misplace syllables. There is also an overgeneralization of the relation between printed words and their sound value. For example, a patient may transport the pronunciation of “cave” = /keIv/ to “have” = */heIv/ instead of /hQv/. 5.4.4 DYSGRAPHIA Dysgraphia is a disorder of writing, mainly spelling. Patients are not able to find the correct graphemes when putting their speech into writing. Also, they are not able to select the correct order of graphemes from a choice of possible representations.

5.5 Errors Errors in linguistic production are not a malfunction caused by disease. They occur frequently and are part of the communication process. Here are examples of the usual types of errors made: Anticipation. Sounds appear in words before their intended pronunciation: take my bike _ bake my bike. This error reveals that further utterances were already planned while speaking. In preservation errors, the opposite is the case. Sounds are “kept in mind” and reappear in the wrong place: pulled a tantrum _ pulled a pantrum Reversals (Spoonerisms) are errors where sounds are mixed up within words or phrases: harpsichord _ carpsihord

Blends occur when two words are combined and parts of both appear in the new, wrong word: grizzly + ghastly _ grastly Word substitution gives us insight into the mental lexicon of the speaker. These words are usually linked semantically. Give me the orange. _ Give me the apple. Errors on a higher level occur when the structural rules of language above the level of pronunciation influence production. In the below example, the past tense of “dated” is overused. The speaker “conjugates” the following noun according to the grammatical rules of “shrink-shrank-shrunk”: Rosa always dated shrinks _ Rosa always dated shranks. Phonological errors are the mixing up of voiced and unvoiced sounds: Terry and Julia _ Derry and Chulia Force of habit accounts for the wrong application of an element that had been used before in similar contexts. For example, in a television broadcast by BBC, the reporter first spoke about studios at Oxford university. When he then changed the topic to a student who had disappeared from the same town he said: “The discovery of the missing Oxford studio” instead of “The discovery of a missing Oxford student.”

7. Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies the material aspects of speech sounds. What is meant by “material aspect” ? And what other features exist which characterize sounds? Well, material aspects of sounds are those aspects that make for the physical production, transportation and comprehension of the sound. Another aspect of a sound is its

function within a language. The function of sounds is, however, examined by another linguistic discipline, namely phonology (see chapter 8).

Please take note of the fact though that this represents the European (including the English) categorization of these linguistic disciplines and that Americans follow a different convention. Americans use the term “phonology” to refer to our understanding of both phonetics and phonology. They refer to what we call ‘phonetics’ also as ‘phonetics’, but refer to what Europeans call ‘phonology’ as ‘phonemics’. So if you ever come across the American terminology, do not be confused. In any way, in this textbook we will stick to the European terms. The modern alphabet does not suffice to transcribe all sounds on a oneto-one basis. There are many instances though, when we need an internationally comprehensible code for the detailed transcription of sounds, such as in linguistic research, as well as in foreign language teaching. A special alphabet devised by the International Phonetic Association (IPA) is then used. Phonetic characters refer to the actual utterance of a sound. In phonetic writing, the symbols for these sounds are put within brackets, such as: [T]. Back to phonetics. We stated above that there are three different physical aspects of a sound. These are the articulatory aspect of the speaker, the acoustic aspect of the channel, and the auditory aspect of the hearer.

Articulatory phonetics researches where and how sounds are originated and thus carries out physiological studies of the respiratory tract, trying to locate precisely at which location and in which manner a sound is produced. Acoustic phonetics examines the length, frequency and pitch of sounds. Special instruments　are required to measure and analyze the sounds while they travel via the channel. Auditory phonetics studies what happens inside the ear and brain when sounds are finally

received. It also interested in our ability to identify and differentiate sounds.

7.1 Articulatory phonetics – consonants In this textbook, we will concentrate on articulatory phonetics, which also happens to be what　modern linguistics has traditionally focused on. Our notion of the typical, classical linguist,　zealously studying speech sounds, such as the famous Dr. Higgins from George Bernard　Shaw’s Pygmalion, is derived from this stage in the discipline. Any speech sound is caused by a stream of air that, originating in our vocal apparatus, escapes　our mouth or nose. The various sounds all differ according to the voicing, location and manner　of their production. A minor change of any of these three factors may alter a sound significantly. For example, if a stream of air leaves the vocal tract unhindered, the result is a　vowel. If the stream of air is obstructed in any way the result is a consonant. Although the procedure is very complex, it is possible to determine the exact voicing, location and manner　of articulation of all sounds of a language. 7.1.1 VOICING Try to utter two long consonants, first [z], then [s], continually: “zzzzzzzzsssssssssszzzzzzz”. Hold your fingertip to your larynx (Adam’s apple) and try to notice what happens. You will feel a vibration. This is caused by a stream of air that is being pressed through a narrow aperture,　called glottis, between the vocal cords. It is the pressure of the air on the walls of the　glottis that causes the vibration of the cords. We are able to produce two different sets of sounds, which are otherwise identical: voiced and voiceless sounds, by this small change of　the glottis. There are many consonants which are differentiated in this way, like [f]—[v], [t]— [d], or [g]—[k]. 7.1.2 MANNER OF ARTICULATION 7.1.2.1 Plosives and continuants Another fundamental distinction of consonants is made between socalled plosives and continuants. Plosives are consonants that are brought about by an explosive release

of air from the mouth, e.g. [t]. They are also called stops, or oral stops. If the air is released through the nose, we call the resulting consonant is a nasal plosive, as in [m] or [n], which is also called nasal stop since the mouth is kept closed for the most part. If the air continues to be released after the articulation of the consonant, the sound is a continuant. If we let out air continuously through a space behind the upper teeth, the so-called alveolar ridge., we produce a type of continuant sound called fricative, e.g., [f]. Affricates are produced by a plosive and a fricative continuant following immediately thereafter, as in [tS], e.g., in the word “chair”. Fricatives and affricates with a hissing sound, as [z] in “zip”, or [Z] in “measure” are also called sibilants. Oral stops, i.e. nonnasal plosives, and fricative and affricative continuants all have in common that the air is not let out through the nose; consonants produced in this way are called obstruents. If air is released also through the nose, these consonants are called sonorants. The sounds [l] and [r] are called liquids. 7.1.2.2. Aspiration A further manner of articulating a sound is by either aspirating or not aspirating the sound. Try to pronounce these: [pit]—[spit]. You will notice that while saying the word ‘pit’, a stream of air evades your mouth, whereas when saying ‘spit’, your glottis starts to vibrate immediately after the pronunciation of [sp]. Hence, we may call the [p] aspirated when saying ‘pit, while it is unaspirated when saying ‘spit’. This distinction results from the glottis remaining open after certain occasions of a sound, namely in the case of aspirated ones. 7.1.3 PLACE OF ARTICULATION Consonants are distinguished also according to the location of their production, that is, after the various organs of the vocal tract. Labials are consonants that are articulated by use of the lips. Some of these are created by

bringing the lips together, like [m]. These are called bilabials. Other consonants are brought about by bringing the bottom lip to the upper teeth. These are called labiodentals, e.g., [f]. Alveolars. These are articulated by raising the tip of the tongue to the alveolar ridge, like [d]. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 36 Velars. If you raise the back of your tongue to the soft velum, velars are produced. An example is [g]. Interdentals are the sounds at the beginning of “thin” and “then”, in IPA: [T] and [D]. In order to articulate these, you have to press the tongue between the teeth. Again you can see that the difference is voicing. Palatals (or Alveopalatals) as in the middle of the word “measure” are produced by the contact of the front part of the tongue with the hard palate just behind the alveolar ridge. With the help of this detailed information we can now refer to every consonant by its location and manner of articulation; [f], for example, is a voiceless, labiodental fricative.

7.2 Articulatory phonetics — vowels In contrast to consonants, where voice, manner and place of articulation serve as descriptive categories, vowels are differentiated by their position of the tongue and the lips. These categories are indicative of the different ways in which the two sounds are produced – while consonants are produced with the help of many organs, vowels depend only on the position of the tongue and the lips. The positioning the tongue and the lips allow for a great amount of variation, enabling us to voice many more vowels than the familiar five vowels a, e, i, o, u. English has more than a dozen different vowels. Also, in English we find several diphtongs. Vowels can be

produced by raising the tongue high, keeping it in the middle, or low in the mouth; also, the tongue can be moved to the front, center or back. The lips can be rounded or nonrounded. If you try to articulate while moving your lips and your tongue around, you will notice how manifold the resulting vowel-like sounds are. A general chart of the vowels of English looks as follows:

This chart is a rough sketch of the mouth. It is similar to a coordinate system, with the positions high, middle, and low representing one axis, and the positions front, central, and back the other axis. The only position not used in English for the pronunciation of vowels is the high central point. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 37 7.3 English sounds — an overview In the following, you will find a general characterization of English sounds. With this table at hand, all sounds can be easily identified according to their place and manner of articulation.

Here is a summary of the characteristics: Oral stops, fricatives, and affricates are consonants referred to as obstruents: The stream of air cannot escape through the nose and where it passes through the mouth, it is obstructed. All other consonants are sonorants. Glottals are sounds produced by the air stream moving along the glottis. The glottal stop [/] is produced by a complete closure of the glottis. You may test this by saying “ah-ahah.” Another feature of vowels is whether they are rounded or unrounded. This refers to the position of the lips. English front vowels are always unrounded. German [y] is an example

of rounded front vowels. English central vowels are always unrounded. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 38 English back vowels are always rounded.

8. Phonology

Phonology deals with the function of sounds within a language. Let us have a close look at these functions. Every language has a precisely defined set of sounds. This set consists of the so-called distinctive sounds. The system of the speech sounds and their usage is defined as duality of patterning: with a given set of components, we may construct an unlimited number of new arrangements of the components. In other words: Our language provides us with a limited set of sounds, but we can arrange these to ever new utterances.

8.1 Phonemes and allophones By calling a sound distinctive, we refer to its capability of changing the meaning of a word. Naturally, single sounds cannot carry any meaning. “B” or “P”, for example, are meaningless utterances. But when several distinct sounds are assembled to a word, each of them suddenly contribute to a meaning. And by exchanging individual distinct sounds, we may change this meaning. We call these sounds phonemes, the smallest distinctive elements of a language. They are easy to discern. Compare two words which differ only by one sound, e.g., “pin” and “bin”. By replacing the beginning consonants, the meaning of the word changes. We call such pairs minimal pairs. The test we just performed to locate the phonemes is called Commutation Test. The phonemes thereby discerned are then put within dashes, such as /p/, /b/, for phonological transcription.

These are, of course, ideal units of the sound system of a language. They should not be confused with the sounds of actual utterances examined by phonetics. Phonetics tries to differentiate among the sounds with the highest possible degree of accuracy. It does so without regard for the influence a sound may have on the meaning of an utterance. These phonetic units are put in brackets, as you can see in the chapter on phonetics. Not all sounds of a language are necessarily distinctive sounds. Compare the English and American pronunciations of “dance”: [dQns] versus [dA¢ns]. Although there are different sounds in the pair, the meaning does not change. Thus, [A¢] and [Q] are not phonemes in this case. We call this phenomenon free variation. The two sounds can be referred to as allophones. These sounds are merely variations in pronunciation of the same phoneme and do not change the meaning of the word. Free variation can be found in various dialects of the same language. In this case, the different pronunciations of words throughout a country do not change the meaning of those words. Another example of sounds which are not phonemes are those which occur in complementary distribution. This means that where one sound of the pair occurs, the other does not. An example for complementary distribution are the aspirated and unaspirated allophones of /p/. The initial consonant as in “pill” is aspirated. The consonant after /s/ in “sprint” is unaspirated. The respective transcriptions would be [pHil] and [sprInt], where [H] indicates aspiration. Aspirated [pH], as you can see in this example, occurs only at the beginning of words. [pH] and [p]are only allophones of the same phoneme /p/.

8.2 Distinctive features From our studies of phonetics, we know how to describe the features of sounds. The same techniques apply for the description of phonemes. In the pair “vault ” and ” fault “, for example, the difference lies in the voicing of the first

phonemes: /v/ versus /f/, the first representing a voiced consonant [+voiced], the second an unvoiced consonant [-voiced]. Voicing is of great importance in the English sound system. Therefore we call it a distinctive feature. Other distinctive features are [±nasal] (for consonants only)or [±consonantal], etc.

P

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 40 Every feature has two values, the positive value ‘+’ contrasting the negative value ‘-’.

8.3 Redundant features Some features of sounds may be redundant in a language. This means that these sounds have a specific feature, but do not constitute minimal pairs. An example for such a redundant feature is [±nasal] of vowels in English. You have already seen that phonetics treats consonants as nasal or nonnasal only. Still, vowels can be positive nasal [+nasal] or negative nasal [-nasal].

This does not make them into phonemes; they are merely allophones of the same vowel. In the English language the redundant feature of nasality is found to abide to a general rule: Vowels that are [+nasal] are always followed by consonant that are also [+nasal]. Likewise, ‘Consonants that are [+nasal] are always preceded by vowels that are also [+nasal]. For example, the vowel in “band” is [+nasal], while in “bar”, it is [-nasal]. Still, nasality is a distinctive feature in English consonants. In languages other than English, nasality of vowels may well not be a redundant feature. The general rule stated above says that nasality in English vowels is predictable, because you can tell if a vowel is nasal or not by looking at the consonant following it.

8.4 Rules of phonology The sequences of phonemes are determined by certain laws that are peculiar to that particular language. The English language, for example,

does not allow consonants such as /b/ or /g/ to be followed by a consonant similar to it. The phoneme sequence */bgliz/, to give another example, is not permitted in English due to the consonant cluster /bg/ at the beginning. The following rules have been found to apply to the assembly of phoneme sequences in the English language. 8.4.1 ASSIMILATION RULES The rule stated above concerning the nasalization of vowels preceding [+nasal] consonants is an assimilation rule. The vowel segment is assimilated to the consonant segment by copying the [± nasal] feature of the latter to the former. You can observe this phenomenon in your own language. There are many instances in which we try to ease articulation and the easiest way of doing this is to simplify articulation by assimilating sounds. The assimilation rule also reflects a phenomenon called coarticulation. According to this principle, features of phonemes spread in anticipation of sounds or perseveration of articulatory processes. 8.4.2 FEATURE ADDITION RULES Sometimes, features are added to phonemes when they occur in a specific phonetic context. We have already looked at aspirated and unaspirated occurrences of stops like /p/. At the beginnings of words as in pill, /p/ is aspirated. The feature of aspiration is hence added because /p/ is a sound at the beginning of a word. In other phonetic contexts, the feature of aspiration is not added. 8.4.3 SEGMENT-DELETION AND ADDITION RULES Phonological rules of a language may result in the addition or deletion of segments from a phoneme sequence. A good example for this rule is French, where wordfinal consonants are deleted when a consonant follows. But they are maintained when the following word starts with a vowel or a glide: LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 41 Before a consonant: petit tableau [p´ti tablo] Before a vowel: petit ami [p´tit ami] 8.4.4 MOVEMENT (METATHESIS)

RULES

In some languages, and in some English dialects, phonemes are rearranged. Consider the example “ask”. In some English dialects, it is

pronounced [Qks]. Historically, “ask” derived from OE “aksian”. A metathesis rule changed it in most English dialects to the form commonly known today, whereas in others, the old form is pertained.

9. Morphology

Thereas phonology studies the smallest distinctive elements of a language, morphology is the study of the smallest meaning units of a language. This smallest meaning unit is also called a morpheme. The overriding rule is that a morpheme must be able to stand alone, i.e. to yield meaning independently of its general context. Let’s start out by taking a closer look at the term ‘smallest meaning unit’ and how it may be understood. We are inclined to think that a ‘word’ fits the definition of ‘smallest meaning unit’. However, not all words are single meaning units. Some words are ‘nonsense words’ and lack any meaning whatsoever. These are invented words mostly, for example “brillig”, or “chorps”. Then there are words that are composed of more than one meaning unit. Examples of words which consist of more than one meaning unit are: blueñberry, autoñbus, henceñforth Although a word may be a smallest meaning unit, such as ‘blue’, it does not necessarily have to be one, as in ‘blueberry’ Neither can syllables be regarded as the smallest meaning units. They are, in the first place, phonological units. They consist of a nucleus, which is a vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel-like consonant, and one or several satellites. A satellite is always a consonant. (satellites) + nucleus + (satellites) (C1, C2,…) + V + (C1, C2,…)

Words may consist of several syllables, but not all of them are necessarily meaning units. Example: Masñsañchuñsetts, poñlice, moñther Thus, while a syllable may be a smallest meaning unit, such as the syllable ‘end’ in the word ‘endless’, it does not necessarily have to be one. As we can see, a morpheme cannot necessarily be confined to a particular form of a word or a syllable. The study of morphology seeks to, in the first place, determine the precise form (Greek- morph) that an elemental meaning takes. However, it does, as we will see later, remain within the abstract domain, in cases where form either varies or where form is simply nonexistent. Morphemes are also referred to as the minimal linguistic signs; you may also come across the term moneme, which is the French term for morpheme. The above may have given you an understanding of why linguists have been engaged in endless debates over the definition of the word “word”. The term remains ambiguous, and we should try as best to avoid it. After all, linguistic terminology is available to describe linguisticunits in higher detail.

9.1 Types of morphemes We can discern different types of morphemes when analyzing a text corpus. The process of sorting out which morpheme is which is called distributional analysis. 9.1.1 GRAMMATICAL CLASSIFICATION Grammatically speaking, there are two classes of morphemes:

W

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 43 Free morphemes: these may occur on their own, they can be used freely according to the rules of sentence structure, for example “boy, tree, church, go, leave, love.” Bound morphemes: These are an exception to the rule that a

morpheme must be able to stand alone; they have no meaning of their own, but add substantial meaning to other morphemes to which they are attached. They are used for various purposes, such as inflection. Example: “-ing, -er” in “working, worker.”, where “work” is a free morpheme accompanied by various bound morphemes, namely suffixes. 9.1.2 MORPHOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION Morphological classification will help you to understand exceptions and different occurrences of morphemes. Homophonous morphemes sound the same, although their morphological function and visual realization may be different, for example the “in” in “inn”, and the “in” in “incongruous”. Discontinuous morphemes. A morpheme of this type does not appear in one continuous string in a word, but is split up into fragments. For example, the morpheme “ge- and -t” in the German word “ge-reis-t”. Still, both parts belong together. A portmanteau morpheme is the result of a fusion of two other morphemes. For example, the French “au” is a fusion of the former morphemes “à” and “le”. Unique or residual morphemes. These are a further exception to the rule that a morpheme must be able to stand alone. Representing bound morphemes, unique or residual morphemes are, by themselves, meaningless and gain meaning only in combination with other morphemes. Examples for this kind of morpheme are the “cran” in “cranberry”, or the “mit” in “transmit”, “commit”, and so on. Zero morphemes. As already mentioned above, there do exist meaningful grammatical features that are not materialized, neither in writing nor in sound waves, in a consistent manner. The plural of a noun, for instance, is not always formed by

adding a bound morpheme ‘s’ to the word. Some words are not changed at all when meaning the plural. We usually simply understand which case the speaker meant from the context of the conversation. One such example is the word ‘sheep’, designating singular as well as plural sheep. The zero morpheme ‘plural’ would, in this case, designate the abstract concept of the plurality. It then means the plural sheep as opposed to the singular sheep. 9.1.3 MORPH,

MORPHEME, AND ALLOMORPH

Note that any language has a register of morphemes, the physical realizations of which are called morphs. While morphemes remain ideal abstract units, the corresponding morphs may show some variation. In the case of the plural morpheme, various realizations are possible. These variations sound and look differently: /z/ in “dogs, beds”; /s/ in “cats”; /iz/ in “garages” All three morphs are different representations of the same morpheme of plurality. Several morphs that belong to the same morpheme are also called allomorphs: variants of one morpheme. In morphological transcription, morphs are commonly put in-between braces. The plural morph in “cats” thus becomes {cat}+{s} in morphological transcription. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 44 9.2 Morphology and word-formation We have already seen that the term word is highly ambiguous. Now we come to consider it anew. Commonly, various grammatical forms of linguistic units such as “sing”, “sang”, “sung” are referred to as various words. In all three words of our example, however, we are confronted with various forms of the same unit, namely “sing”. We will use a more specific term for these “pure” linguistic units than word. We thus refer to the more abstract units, regardless of their representation as phonological or

orthographic units in various inflectional forms, not as words, but lexemes; in linguistic transcription they are distinguished by capitals. Hence the word “cut” can offer three forms of the lexeme past and participle. The sum of the lexemes of a language is called the lexicon. The lexicon of a language is not fixed. New entries may occur, or old ones might become extinct. New entries are called neologisms, if they are created from existing resources of the language. New entries can also be borrowed from other languages. As for the process in the former case, we are able to create new words by applying the morphological rules of our language. Morphological rules apply to both inflection and word formation.

CUT:

present,

9.2.1 INFLECTION There are two kinds of inflection: The declension of nouns, adjectives, and pronouns, and the conjugation of verbs. There is a set of morphological rules which we apply in order to form the correct tenses or cases. We combine free morphemes with bound morphemes, the latter marking tense, gender, number, case, and so forth. Bound morphemes like {to}, which appears as a marker of the infinitive, are also used in order to form correct sentences. These markers help to create sentences that are correct according to the syntactic rules of a language. We see here that morphology and syntax cannot be regarded as entirely different disciplines. 9.2.2 WORD FORMATION 9.2.2.1 Derivation. There are morphemes in English that allow us to change words. These are derivational morphemes: new words are derived in the process.

Derivational morphemes are affixes. If affixes are added to the front of a word, we speak of prefixes like in-, a-. If they are attached to the end of the word, they are called suffixes, such as -able, -ish. Derivational morphemes may or may not cause a change of the grammatical class of the word. In any event, the following morphological rules apply to most cases cover the main changes brought about by affixes. We speak of word formation as the productive feature of a language. By changing one element, new classes of words can be produced.

9.2.2.2 Compounding We may also create new words by combining two free morphemes. The product of such a process is called a compound. While German is notorious for compounding a multitude of units (e.g., Weihnachtsbaumschmuckvertriebsorganisationshandbuchverkäufer), compounds in English usually don’t exceed two units. In a compound, the two morphemes always serve two different purposes. The initial morpheme is also called the head of the compound, the following is the body. The head of the compound always determines the body semantically, e.g., {black}+{bird}→ a black bird, whereas the body usually determines the grammatical class of the whole compound. There are various possible combinations of English compounds:

9.2.2.3 Other processes of word-formation Apart from the above mentioned morphological processes, there are also other ways of creating new words: Invention: Xerox, Exxon. Acronymy: NATO, Unicef. Reduplication: zigzag, chitchat. Blending: smog, brunch. Clipping: bus, auto, flu.

9.3 Word classes and sentence functions Traditional grammars often begin with a classification of word classes. There are the following eight classes (including typical examples): Nouns (communicator, starship, captain) Pronouns (I, you, he, which) Adjectives (fast, deep, many) Verbs (see, retire, laugh) Prepositions (on, in, at) Conjunctions (and, but, because) Adverbs (much, deservedly, partly) Interjections (alas, oh) Articles (the, a) Numerals (one, two, three) Some difficulties remain, such as with adverbs: one cannot, for example, exchange the adverbs “very” and “quickly” freely in a sentence: *he ran very versus he ran quickly To avoid this problem, the subcategory of the intensifiers is used to distinguish adverbs such as ‘very’, from the common adverbs. The classing of words gives us overall categorical information about those words. Note that words from the same class can take on different functions depending upon their use in a sentence. Nouns, for example, may appear as

subjects or objects in sentences. This additional specification of the function of words within the context of a sentence, such as subject, object, etc., is called functional information.

Hr ee

10. Syntax e have studied the phonological and morphological structures of the English language. But to know a language and to speak it correctly also involves being able to articulate complete sentences. The study of the syntax of a language is the study of its sentence structure as well as the linguistic knowledge necessary to form sentences. 10.1 What is a sentence? At first sight, this may seem like a trivial question to you. If you take into consideration though that there is a branch of linguistics that has been devoting its energy solely to the analysis of sentences, the question may be worthy of scrutiny. Let’s take a look at some definitions of sentences first. Then we will go into models of grammars in detail. 10.1.1 ARISTOTELIAN DEFINITION Aristotelian logic claims that a sentence is an utterance consisting of subject and predicate. These terms have been rephrased theme and rheme by the communicational sciences. Here, theme means the part of the sentence that is already known and that is to be specified. Rheme then means the specifying part, the new information revealed on the theme. However, subjectpredicate and theme-rheme do not always correspond. Consider the sentence “I went to London by train last weekend.” If this sentence answers the question “Where did you go by

train?”, ‘London’ is the rheme. But, if it answers the question “How did you go to London last weekend?”, ‘by train’ is the new information and, therefore, the rheme. 10.1.2 LOGICAL DEFINITION A logical definition claims that a sentence is the expression of one single, complete thought. However, complex sentences may consist of several thoughts which are interwoven. Thus, this definition does not apply to all sentences. One example of a complex thought structure are subordinate sentences. 10.1.3 STRUCTURALIST DEFINITION (BLOOMFIELD) Following the American structuralist Bloomfield, a sentence is “an independent linguistic form, not included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form.” A sentence is independent of any other linguistic form because it can stand alone, other than a single lexeme, which represents no independent syntactic unit. According to this definition, subordinate clauses are not sentences of their own because the depend on the main clause. In the following, we will see how structuralist analysis deals with sentence structure where subordinate clauses appear. 10.2 GRAMMATICALITY AND ACCEPTABILITY Sentences can also be categorized under the aspects of grammaticality and acceptability. Sentences of a language can be grammatically correct or not. In the latter case, we call them ungrammatical sentences. This term may sound contradictory, since a sentence is, per definition, grammatically correct and complete. Sentences can, nevertheless, lack correct grammaticality, e.g.:

*Susan put the knife. Ungrammatical sentences appear in everyday language. When you observe your own language, you should find plenty of them. W LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 48 Also, sentences may be grammatically correct, but still make no sense at all. In this case, they lack acceptability. Examples from English and German are: Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Nachts ist es kalter als drausen. Acceptability hence means that the meaning content of the sentence must be clear, understandable or acceptable to the reader. 10.3 Sentence types There are various types of sentences. . Simple sentences consist of one clause only. These clauses contain only one verb: “Mary went to town.” . Coordinate sentences (also: compound sentences) consist of two or more clauses joined by words like “and”, “or”, “but”, etc. These words are called conjunctions. The clauses in coordinate sentences hold equal status, i.e. they could each stand alone as simple sentences: “The captain gave an order but the crew hesitated to confirm.” . Complex sentences consist of two or more clauses. Here, one clause serves as the grammatical part of another. We call these embedded clauses. Embedded clauses do not have a status equal to a simple sentence. In other words, they cannot stand alone and depend on the sentences which contain them. “Peter said Jane became ill yesterday.” Most times embedded clauses are introduced by special words such as “whether”, “that”,

“if”, etc. These are called subordinators: “Peter said that Jane became ill yesterday.” Complex sentences may also differ in form from simple sentences because the word order or grammatical form of words is altered: “The captain said the starship took up speed immediately.”, but “The captain wanted the starship to take up speed immediately.” 10.4 Sentence structure What are the constituents of a sentence? We have seen that morphemes are packed together to form strings of morphemes. These are called sentences. Nevertheless, not every single morpheme in a sentence may have independent status. Several morphemes may belong together more closely than others do. Bearing this in mind, we must look for units larger than the morpheme if we want to know what actually makes up a sentence. This discovery procedure is again called distributional analysis. The method of distributional analysis is called segmentation. Consider the following example: “Aggressive Romulans relentlessly attack unguarded starships.” We will now analyze the sentence for its constituents. 10.4.1 SEGMENTATION 10.4.1.1 Reduction by omission LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 49 Which of the elements may be omitted without damaging the essential structure of the sentence?

A loss of the original meaning may occur in this reduction process that is concerned only with

the grammaticality of the sentence. 10.4.1.2 Reduction by substitution Which of the elements may be substituted by shorter ones? Again, a change of the meaning content may be possible.

10.5 Immediate constituents We have now analyzed the sentence and learned that it can be segmented into several levels of constituents. The broadest category of a constituent is the one that is discerned ‘immediately’, at the beginning of the analysis; for this reason this type of constituent is called the immediate constituent, short ‘IC’. Let’s have a look at the sentence: “Poor John ran away.” Our first step in analyzing the sentence would be to distinguish “poor John” and “ran away”; therefore these two elements are the immediate constituents of the sentence. If we were to proceed with our analysis, we could discern the immediate constituents of “poor John”, which

are “poor” and “John”. The immediate constituents of “ran away” would be “ran” and “away.” LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 50 10.5.1 NOUN PHRASE AND VERB PHRASE Immediate constituents of a simple sentence are thus the Noun-phrase (“poor John”) and the Verb-phrase (“ran away”) These immediate constituents can then, as mentioned above, be analyzed for their own respective constituents. As we will see below, the structures of these noun- and verb-phrases can be very complex. The determination of the immediate constituents of all levels of a sentence is called IC-analysis. 10.5.2 MODES OF REPRESENTATION The results of distributional analysis can be presented in various forms. These representations then serve as tools for the disambiguation of sentences. For example, in the sentence “Old men and women dance.”, the adjective may be understood to refer to both “men” and “women”, or “men” only. The acronyms in the examples mean: NP = noun-phrase, VP = verb-phrase, N = noun, A = adjective, V = verb, Adv = Adverb. 10.5.2.1 Labeled bracketing Bracketing is one way of representing the results of distributional analysis. Different bracket types are here reserved for particular structure levels of a sentence. Braces {}, for example, contain whole sentences. To remind of its function, the brace is additionally labeled after the opening with an “s”. Parentheses () indicate noun- or verb-phrases, and brackets [] indicate nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. {S(NP[Apoor]+[NJohn])+(VP[Vran]+[Advaway])} This method of representation is agreeable in that it adheres to the

actual sentence format. It has the drawback, however, that it is rather laborious to present and to grasp visually. Even in our short example, the elements are hard to distinguish. 10.5.2.2 Block diagram In this way of representing the constituents, the broadest structure appears at the bottom of the diagram, with each row further up showing a more segmented level. Each row thus shows the immediate constituents of its lower row.

10.5.2.3 Tree diagrams Tree diagrams have proven to be the most convenient way of representing an IC-analysis. In the diagram, so-called nodes, where the NP, VP, etc. are situated, are connected by links, which serve for connection similar to the branches of a tree. At the top of the diagram, the “s” represents the sentence. The immediate constituents of the sentence are the NP and VP.

] 10.5.3 PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR Another type of analysis of sentences, phrase-structure analysis, aims to sort out the rewrite rules or phrase-structure rules (PS-rules) of a sentence. A sentence is here analyzed for its constituents, or phrase-structure. From there on, alternatives are sought

that are capable of substituting these phrase-structures, hence ‘rewrite rules’.

As you can see, the system allows for alternatives, with one element having the possibility of being rephrased in various ways. These alternatives are due, in part, to the structure of the transitive and intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs take a direct object. Thus, transitive verbs always appear with two noun-phrases. These are called the arguments of the verb: “The dog frightened the man.” Intransitive verbs do not take objects: “The dog barked.” Some verbs can be used transitively and intransitively: “George won.” “George won the race.” The variability of rewriting is thus important for the creativity of a language. 10.5.4 RECURSIVITY RULES Recursivity is a property all languages share. We can always add another sentence to a sentence to get an even longer sentence. Also, we could extend phrases infinitely. In the rewrite

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 52 rules given above, you find the recursivity rule VP → V + S. Why is this recursive? Well, a sentence consists of a NP and a VP. If the VP again contains a sentence, such as a subordinate clause, another VP must appear within that subordinate clause: VP → V + S; S → NP + VP; VP →V + S; S → NP + VP; etc. Other recursivity rules are: NP → NP + NP VP → VP + VP 10.5.5 PROBLEMS WITH IC-ANALYSIS In some cases, there remain ambiguities with IC-analysis, as in: “World War I was started by Austria.” and “World War I was started by 1914.” There are two different meanings behind these sentences, but an ICAnalysis of both sentences will yield the same structure. Thus, we are forced to rely on our “feeling” or “linguistic knowledge” if such sentences occur. Furthermore, there are discontinuous constituents, as in: “Al turned the light off.” Here, constituents appear separated from each other, although they do belong together. Unfortunately, this is difficult to show with the IC-analysis. Obviously, there seems to be a level beyond the actual sentence on which such structures appear more clearly. We will investigate this in the chapter on transformational generative grammar.

10.6 Transformational generative grammar (TGG) The American linguist Noam Chomsky revolutionized the theory of syntax by formulating this completely new approach. Chomsky defined a language as an

infinite set of grammatical sentences. According to him, a grammar is a finite set of rules generating the grammatical sentences. The grammar must be explicit and projective. It describes the competence of an ideal native speaker and ignores performance, the actual utterances. This last point, in particular, caused criticism: “Chomskyans” tend to acknowledge only those examples of a language that fit into their TGG, disregarding everyday language. This “idealism” thus neglects many non-grammatical phenomena of the language. 10.6.1 THE COMPONENTS OF TGG Phrase structure rules. You already know them. They make up the framework for the underlying, basic structure of a language. Chomsky labels the phrase structure rules the base component of the grammar. Deep structure (also: underlying structure).

This component is generated by the phrase structure rules. The deep structure is what lies “behind” the actual sentence. Two sentences which mean the same may have the same deep structure, but two sentences which mean something completely different may also show the same deep structure. Due to this stress on meaning, the deep structure makes up the semantic component of the model. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 53 Transformational rules. These serve to transform the “raw” construction of the deep structure into the surface structure. One transformational rule is: If you want to construct a question in English, you have to either change the word order, or add an auxiliary verb. Examples:

I can help. → Question: Can I help? I go to town. → Question: Do I go to town? Another transformational rule applies to forming the imperative: Leave away the subject. Example: You go to town. → Imperative: Go to town! The result of the transformation is called the surface structure of the sentence. Nevertheless, this is still not the actual utterance. Remember that TGG does not deal with the performance of speakers. Thus, the surface structure is what is in our minds just before we say it. The examples above show two samples of surface structure. The surface structure is then expressed, i.e. pronounced, according to the phonological rules of that language. 10.6.2 SUMMARY OF TGG The following diagram gives an overview of the transformational processes: PHRASE-STRUCTURE RULES ↓ Deep Structure ↓ TRANSFORMATIONAL RULES ↓ Surface Structure ↓ PHONOLOGICAL RULES ↓ Spoken Sentence In this model, sentences are generated by transformations. Hence the name TGG. 10.6.3 TRANSFORMATIONAL RULES TGG is a very complex subject matter. Let’s take a look at the basic transformation rules: Deletion. A simple deletion rule deletes “that” when it precedes a NP at the beginning of a

“that-clause” Example: I believe that he went to town. → I believe he went to town. Movement. Prepositions that “belong” to verbs are moved to the end of sentences in certain cases. Example: They called up the police. → They called the police up. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 54 Addition. In negative sentences, “do” is added. The element “not” does not occur on its own. We say They do not like worksheets. but not *They not like worksheets.

11. Semiotics

What is semiotics? Newcomers in the field of languages often wonder what field this discipline deals with. Well, we have an answer at hand that sounds both simple and puzzling: Semiotics is the science of signs. And so you might ask ‘But what is a sign’? When people talk about others “making” or “giving signs”, they usually refer to gestures. Then there are “signs” which help to guide and regulate traffic. Wherever we go “signs” appear, such as words, books, architecture, signs in people’s behavior, etc. There are even events that are regarded as “signs”. As you can see from this brief survey, the term “sign” is used quite casually. Of course, semiotics is not the science of how to perform gestures, or of ordinances or municipal regulations for traffic signs. In terms of semiotics, signs always serve a communicative purpose. Furthermore, signs are always part of a system of signs. The system of human gestures or the system of traffic signs and their meaning could thus indeed be subject to

semiotic inquiry. Generally, signs consist of a sign vehicle and some meaning connected with it. So gestures or traffic signs are interesting because of their meaning content. We shall see later on what this means in detail. Semiotics investigates a wide range of fields, starting from zoosemiotics and cultural semiotics up to aesthetics and computer semiotics, to name only a few. Semiotic theory can, in fact, be applied to almost any field since most processes in nature and culture rely on communication, and with that, rely on signs that serve that communicative purpose. In this chapter we will concentrate on the linguistic sign and semiotic models of the sign. And of those there are quite a few. They differ mainly in one characteristic: Most models of the sign are either dyadic or triadic models. This means that they show either two or three sides, or apices. The most prominent example for the dyadic, or two-sided sign, is the one developed by Ferdinand de Saussure. The three-sided, or triadic model of the sign, was created by Charles Sanders Peirce and influenced semiotic theorists of the 20th century more so than any other model.

11.1 Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the founder of modern semiotics, designed a dyadic or bilateral sign model. According to him, the sign is two-sided. Unfortunately Saussure did not live to see his theory spread. His insights received their due recognition posthumously, when his students published his theories that they had written down in their scripts. Luckily, several versions of these scripts exist. This enabled the publishers to give a very

detailed survey of Saussure’s theories. 11.1.1 THE TWO-SIDED SIGN Saussure’s idea of the sign is based upon a notion of duality. The word “dual” implies the number of two. Hence, Saussure’s sign shows two sides. In order to understand the more complex construct of Saussure’s, consider a trivial example: When you look at a thing, e.g., a tree, you instantly know the word that designates the thing. Words and things are connected in our minds. The same goes for words you hear without seeing the respective things. So when somebody tells you: “There’s a tree in my father’s garden”, you know what “tree” means in this context, even without ever having seen that tree.

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LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 56 This explanation, however, does not entirely meet Saussure’s terminology. From his point of view, language is an entirely psychological entity. Therefore, “things” in the real world do not play any role in the model. Saussure so to speak focuses on what goes on in our heads. So, neither the physical aspects of things nor those of sounds are considered. The two aspects of the linguistic sign Saussure identified are therefore mental aspects: the ideas or concepts of things and the mental images of sounds, both of which are stored in our memory. 11.1. 2 CONCEPT AND SOUND IMAGE Concept and sound image, Saussure contended, cannot be separated. He

compared them with the two sides of a piece of paper: Just as one cannot cut the front side of a piece of paper without cutting the back side as well, our mind is structured such that the concept automatically evokes the sound image and, vice versa, that the sound image automatically evokes the concept. Therefore, concept and sound image belong together and form a unity. The following figures illustrate the idea of the two-sided sign: The figure on the left shows the relationship between the terms concept and image acoustique. These two sides of the sign are brought together by an ellipse encompassing them. The figure on the right demonstrates this using an example.

Later, Saussure coined the term signified for concept, and the term signifier for sound image (the original French terms are signifié-concept, signifiant-image acoustique).

These terms are interchangeable. The concept, or signified then, as mentioned above, is the correlate of the sound-image, or signifier. Saussure claims here that these mental concepts always abide to the ideal and prototypical features that the signifier ideally was to refer to. For instance, when we hear “arbor”, or “tree”, we do not think of a particular tree, such as a birch tree, or the old oak tree in our backyard, but of an abstract concept that entails the ideal, prototypical features of “tree”, for example the trunk, branches, leaves, tallness, etc. The sound chain, i.e. the actual

utterance, may have brought about this concept, however, it is the “impression” of this sound chain in our minds that is of interest to Saussure. It is this impression that he refers to with his term ‘sound image’ and he regards it, as mentioned above, to be completely cut off from the physical world. The relation between the concept and the sound image, furthermore, is an arbitrary one. There is no natural, inherent connection between the two. Instead, we associate concepts with sound images and vice versa following conventions. (The concept of arbitrariness is discussed in the introduction of this reader.) A sign, with its signifier and signified, has to be, finally, acknowledged by a social group, or language community in order to be regarded as a sign. That is to say, a random utterance of one individual, although he or she may want it to signify something, may not have gained sufficient acknowledgment to be regarded as a sign. This is because Saussure regarded semiotics to be a social science. According to him, signs are collective entities. 11.1.3 MEANING AS OPPOSITION According to Saussure, language is a structure. This is why his work and that of his followers has been called structuralism. Within this structure, meaning comes into being through opposition. We have already seen that, for Saussure, meaning is not connected with physical objects, since he claimed that nothing existed outside the semiological system of signifiers and LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 57 signifieds. In other words: without some structure superimposed to it, nothing gains meaning. This applies not only to the physical world, but also the realm of thought.

Thought would be thus, without the structure of language, “amorphous”, “uncharted”, “vague”. This important notion manifests Saussure’s theory of linguistics, and semiotics, as a science concerned not with substance, but form. Do not be confused by this terminology! People use the term “substance” in everyday language in order to designate, say, a chemical substance. But Saussure’s term “substance” by no means refers to physical shape. It is rather “that which needs to be structured”. For example, the substance of thought depends on the structure of language, or form, to gain meaning. Meaning takes form, comes into being, within this structured system only. And this meaning, according to Saussure, holds exclusively; in other words, a sign designates a concept that no other sign designates. For example, the sign “table” designates something exclusively. There is no other sign which means “table”. Hence, when we hear the word “table”, we can easily make out what it means. Saussure says that the sign stands in opposition to all others. In other words: A sign designates a concept as opposed to all others which do not designate the same concept. All signs form a semiotic network in which the oppositions between all signs give meaning to the individual ones. Naturally, this is valid for individual systems of signs only. The counterargument that correlate signs from other languages do exist, such as “Tisch” meaning the same as “table”, does not hold.

11.2 Peirce Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was a contemporary of Saussure, unfortunately however,

neither of them had contact with or knowledge of the work of the other. While Saussure’s model has been recognized as important for linguistics in general and semantics in particular, Peirce is considered one of the most important figures in the history of semiotics. Some scholars regard him to be the founder of the modern theory of signs. There are some profound differences between Saussure’s and Peirce’s views of the sign. Saussure two-sided model of the sign claimed to regard language only (Remember ‘the world outside’ was not a part of language for Saussure.).

Peirce, in contrast, saw that ‘world outside’ to be a part of the system of language and incorporated it into his triadic model of the sign. Saussure’s two-sided model is, furthermore, static in that it offers an explanation of how a sign is structured and an analysis of its state. Peirce’s model is dynamic in that it does not regard the sign as a set entity and in that it takes the overall production process of signs, semiosis, more so into consideration. This semiosis is, furthermore, a pragmatic procedure: In this procedure everybody is seen to have his or her own view of the world and by using signs to express this individual view, is seen to contribute to an endless generation of new signs. It is easy to see why this makes for a much more dynamic understanding of language as people’s individual views of the world can not be ascertained in a consistent, static manner. This is the main, foremost difference between Saussure’s and Pierce’s approaches to language. It is important to keep in mind that Peirce’s model cannot be regarded merely as an extention of Saussure’s model. It is based on different notions of the sign altogether

and thus needs to be approached in its own terms. 11.2.1 THE TRIADIC SIGN Peirce’s triadic model sees the sign as a phenomenon of thirdness, with the various aspects of a sign relating to each other as best represented with the triangle.

11.2.1.1 The representamen This part of the sign model is what we already know from Saussure who introduces it by another name, namely the sign vehicle, the signifier, expression respectively. From this you can see that semiotic theory, though it evolved differently, drew on the same ideas and concepts quite often. The representamen is the first correlate of the sign. Still, Peirce sometimes mixed up his own terms and said the representamen was the sign in the whole. In most cases, however, Peirce makes quite clear that the sign is the whole, and the representamen is only part of it. 11.2.1.2 The object We have seen that the representamen is the sign vehicle. Thus it refers to something which it itself is not. In other words: “Table” is only a chain of sounds. The thing it refers to is nothing acoustic, but a body. Any real or ideal unit we can refer to can be described as an object in the Peircean sense. Peirce names two classes of objects:

immediate object: We speak of an immediate object when a sign can spontaneously be associated with some specific object. “Hunger”, for example, assumingly evokes the idea of the desire to eat. mediate or dynamic object: How we experience objects is a highly individual process that takes place independently in each of us. The main, or direct, correlation of the sign as to some object can, moreover, change over time. Somebody who starved, will, for example, entertain a different notion of ‘hunger’ from then on. This is referred to as semantic language change. The mediate or dynamic objects are, in this sense, possible variations of the association of the immediate object. 11.2.1.3 The interpretant The interpretant is the meaning of the sign as created in the mind of the interpreter. Peirce also said that this was the “effect” of the sign. This effect can be measured by everyday experience. Everything we learn day by day changes our view of the world. Thus, we may interpret signs differently today, if our knowledge of them or experience with them has changed since yesterday. For example, linguistics will mean something else to you at the end of this class than it did at the beginning. The interpretant is thus the meaning as created on the basis of our sum of experience. This is a part of the overall process of creating signs, semiosis, to which we will get right now. 11.2.1.4 Unlimited semiosis The process of creating signs is called semiosis. The representamen stands for something: the object. Also, there is a person to whom the representamen is a

representation. In the mind of this person, the interpreter, the interpretant is thus created. Peirce speaks of a process that could go on indefinitely, of an endless succession of signs. In it one thought leads to another and every interpretant can in the course be the representamen of another sign. As such, the search for a first or last sign in this process, a coherent whole LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 59 with a beginning and ending, ceases to be the predominant aim. Peircian semiotics, instead, focuses on the process itself. 11.2.2 FIRSTNESS,

SECONDNESS, THIRDNESS

According to Peirce, a sign can stand in relation to that which it stands for in three different ways. These potential relationships are what he calls a trichotomy of firstness, secondness, and thirdness. Peirce then elaborated this trichotomy, leading to a very complex sign theory. In this course we will start out by understanding this trichotomy in regard to the correlate object. Icon. Icons are signs that are similar to that which is denoted. One of the best examples are photographs, where the picture resembles the object to a great extent. Icons stand in relation of firstness to the object. Index. The index does not resemble the object itself as the icon does, though it does depict a physical context having to do with that object. Smoke, for example, does not resemble fire, but it does refer to fire nevertheless. The relation between indices and objects is secondness. Symbol. Peirce regards symbols as arbitrary and conventional signs. Symbols refer to their objects “by virtue of law”. All linguistic signs, i.e. words, are therefore symbols. (Note that

many linguists have different understandings of the term “symbol”; thus, when reading linguistic texts, make sure that you are familiar with that linguist’s notion of “symbol”.) Thus, in order to use symbols (in the Peircian sense of the term) effectively, you simply have to know, i.e. learn, their meaning. This type of relation is what Peirce called a relation of thirdness. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 60

12. Semantics

Actually, this chapter ought to bear the name “linguistic semantics”, since semantic theories have been developed by many schools of thought. However, philologists concerning themselves with semantics regard it as the meaning structure of human language. We have already come across the term meaning in the chapter on semiotics. We saw that the words of a language carry meaning. In this chapter, we will take a look at the semantic relations that exist between the words of a language and the meaning these words designate (semantics comes from Greek “semantikos”, belonging to the sign. Also, we will take a look at the two main linguistic phenomena that modern linguists concerns itself with, namely metaphor and deixis.

12.1 The meaning of “meaning” Scholars have been busy thinking about the concept of meaning since the beginning of philosophy. When we try to explain the meaning of a word, say ‘woman’, we find that we quite naturally take recourse to other words, such as ‘human’, ‘female’, and so

on. But what is “human”, we could go on to ask. What is “female”? What does “what”, “is”, “define” mean? What is the meaning of “meaning”? At some point, we will undoubtedly fail to produce new words in order to explain others. This means that finally we arrive at a point where we must accept that some basic words are left undefined. Nevertheless, they are understood by all speakers of a language. These basic words are called the primitive semantic elements. We’ve seen that language always refers to objects of one kind or another, either physical (e.g., things) or mental (e.g., ideas or feelings).

When talking about meaning, however, language itself becomes the object of investigation. Thus, it is language about language, describing, for example, the units, characteristics, or sounds of a language. We call this language about language the metalanguage. When we discussed the functions of language as defined in the communication model by Roman Jakobson, we mentioned this term for the first time. We use metalanguage whenever we discuss linguistic theory in any of its aspects. In the following, you will see again how important it is to be able to move to the metalinguistic level. Otherwise, we would not be able to discuss semantics at all!

12.2 Word meaning and sentence meaning When we look at a language, we find that there are different kinds of meaning behind different kinds of words. Content words. These are principally nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. All of these refer to concrete objects, actions, or abstract concepts, feelings, etc. In other words: there is

always some immediate content which can be associated with the word. Function words. These are prepositions or articles. There is no immediate content ascribed to these words. They help to construct meaning in larger linguistic units, in other words: they have a function. As you have seen now, meaning has to do with words. Words serve to build sentences. How do we know the meaning of the sentence? Is it merely the sum of the meanings of its words? Of course not. Consider this example: The hunter bit the lion. — The lion bit the hunter.

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LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 61 In both sentences, the same words occur. However, the meaning of each sentence is quite different from the other. Sentence meaning, hence, depends not only on the words, but also on word order, pronunciation, etc. Trying to determine what a sentence means and why it means what it means, is what is referred to in semantics as looking for the semantic role. This is, in essence, nothing other than a basic process of asking ‘who did what to whom, with whom, or for whom’. Features such as word order, pronunciation and stress help us to define the semantic role.

12.3 Lexical semantics We have already discussed the term lexeme. In principle, all words in the lexicon of a language are lexemes (see Morphology).

Examining the meaning of words in the lexicon then is lexical semantics.

12.3.1 SEMANTIC FEATURES When we use a word, we know its meaning (or at least we ought to).

This means, we know many things about the word in question. Above, I mentioned the example “woman.” I said “woman” might be described by “human”, and “female”. Well, these aspects are also called semantic features or semantic properties. We can list the features of all words. They help to differentiate between words that sound or look the same, such as “bachelor”. Can you think of any more semantic features for this word? bachelor bachelor bachelor +animated +animated +animated +human +human -human +male … +male The + and – signs indicate whether a lexeme is specified by a certain feature or not. Sometimes, features do not apply to lexemes, as in our example: while the bachelor on the left hand represents an unmarried young man, who naturally is male, that feature does not apply to the meaning in the middle: Here we have the person holding the university degree (both male and female).On the right, we finally have the animal bachelor: a young male seal. 12.3.2 DENOTATION VERSUS CONNOTATION There are two aspects to the meaning of a word. We also say that there is a “core” meaning to every word, as well as some additional meaning. The “core” meaning is the meaning of a word in its literal sense. We call this the denotative meaning. The additional meaning is what we add according to our feelings about the term. This is the connotative meaning. A good example is the disease called cancer. The denotation of “cancer”

is the mere disease that can be described by growing tumors, malfunctioning organs, etc. The connotation of cancer is all the emotional additions, as “cruel”, “frightening”, “hard to heal”, etc. While the denotation of a lexeme is subject to language change in the broad sense, the connotation may change according to the taste en vogue. A few decades ago, “fur coat” had a connotation of value and high social status. Nowadays, “fur coat” evinces a connotation of “animal murder”, “cruelty”, “ignorance”, and so on. In short, the wearer of such a coat might find that people judge her (or him) differently. 12.3.3 LEXICAL FIELDS There are always words in a language that seem to belong together more so than others. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 62 Consider the following words: hammer, tongs, screwdriver, cutter, saw All of these have something in common: they are tools. These words with “something” in common belong to the same lexical field. Other lexical fields contain emotions, vehicles, furniture, and so on. 12.3.3.1 Markedness We do not use all lexemes equally often: we use them with different frequency. Consider the example of the following color terms: blue, red, yellow, green indigo, saffron, royal blue, aquamarine The first set of color terms seems more familiar. Both sets have a different status; we say that the “more familiar” set is less marked. Less marked forms are easier to learn and are used more frequently.

Another example is the use of male and female forms. Female forms are more marked than male ones in languages such as German and French. 12.4 THE MOST RELEVANT SEMANTIC RELATIONS BETWEEN LEXEMES Some semantic relations between lexemes determine their semantic locus within the lexicon of a language. Others simply govern the possibilities of substitution and differentiation of lexemes. 12.4.1 HYPONYMY Consider again the example of hammer, tongs, screwdriver, cutter, saw. All of these belong to the lexical field “tools”. In this case, “tool” is a semantically higher term, in that it stands for a group of items. All of the terms (hammer,…) are hyponyms of the broader term. “Hypo” is Greek for “below”. Thus all tools are hyponyms of “tool”. The term “tool” is, consequently, the hypernym for all tools (“hyper” = Greek “above”).

12.4.2 SYNONYMY Two words are synonymous if they “mean the same thing.” We all know words which serve the same purpose. An example from German is “Geldbörse – Portemonnaie – Geldbeutel.” An English example is “film – movie – motion picture.” True synonyms are hard to find in a language. Most synonyms originate from local differences. For example, in Austria people refer to a street as “Gasse”, whereas for the rest of the German-speaking community the same object is referred to as “Straße.” 12.4.3 ANTONYMY Apart from equality in meaning, as with synonyms, there is also the opposite. Opposition in meaning is known as antonymy. Large-small, wide-narrow, white-black, fat-slim are some examples for antonyms. All classes of words can have antonyms.

Verbs: go-stand Nouns: male-female adjectives: good-bad LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 63 12.4.4 ASYMMETRY OF THE LEXEME As an ideal, the linguistic sign shows one meaning connected with one expression. However, there are some exceptions to this ideal. 12.4.4.1 Homonymy. Two lexemes that look or sound the same may mean something different. Hence, there are two types of homonymy, according to visual or acoustic equality. Homophony. These lexemes sound the same, such as “whetherweather” and “meet-meat”. Homography. These lexemes look the same, as “read”, meaning as well /ri:d/ as /red/ in the past tense. There are even homophones which are at the same time homographs, as “ear-ear.” This pair designates as well the auditive organ (“Ohr”) as the fruit of corn (“Ähre”).

12.4.4.2 Polysemy We say that a word is polysemic when it looks the same and has more than one meaning. This term, although it is closely related to, and has overlappings with, homography, is used to exclusively refer to words of a common etymology. The different meanings here usually constitute a specific stage in the etymology of the word, and/or the altering meaning is brought about by a metaphor (see next section).

Example: ride (to ride by car or to ride a horse), or the German word “Stufe” (a step of a staircase or a level in school).

12.5 Metaphor The issue of metaphors is central to the debate over ‘meaning’.

Traditionally metaphors have been regarded as a type of extension of, or analogy to, the literal sense of linguistic signs. Most commonly they are extensions of visual, physical objects or experiences onto the abstract or emotional domains of thinking. For example, the metaphorical use of the word ‘branch’, as in the sense of ‘branches of sciences’, is derived from a meaning originally denoting a physical object. The debate carried out over ‘metaphors’ is thus largely a philosophical one that questions our traditional dialectic between the body and the soul. In trying to overcome this dialectic, or in trying to understand it, some argue that everything is a metaphor, while others question exactly how it is that the meaning of a sign can be extended with a metaphor. We can also say that people use and also create new metaphors much more often than one might think. Most of the metaphors we use are so conventionalized that we are not aware of using them as metaphors. For example, if you see the point, you should understand that this is a metaphor, since one cannot “see” an utterance. As we see, there is some “literal” meaning in the linguistic signs. However, signs may be used to create new meaning. Metaphors work on the principle that something in the original meaning is similar to the new one.

12.6 Deixis Deixis comes from Greek, meaning “to point.” Indeed we frequently point at things, people, and events in our language. We need function words, e.g., prepositions and pronouns, to construct deictic utterances. We use deixis to articulate the orientation of

ourselves or things to some points of reference. There are three forms of deixis: LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 64 Personal deixis. This form of deixis refers to the utterances which refer to ourselves or the persons involved in the discussion or the general context. Personal pronouns are used to denotate persons. I think this is right. Did you hand in the worksheet as you are required to? Personal deixis may also point at persons mentioned earlier in the text: Beverly was quite upset yesterday. I hope she is in a better mood today (she = Beverly) Spatial deixis. We use this to mark the position of the speaker: I’ve been living in Kassel for several years. But also relative positions can be referred to: Here there be dragons! Temporal deixis. Finally, we use temporal deixis to mark our place in time. You will be attending classes for several years from now. As you can see, function words suddenly become relevant in the formulation of deictic utterances. They constitute meaning in the context. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 65

13. Pragmatics

e have investigated two of the main issues of language so far. The first was syntax, which deals with the relations among the various signs in a sequence of speech. The second was semantics, which deals with the linguistic sign and the meaning behind it, that is, the relation between language and objects. There is, however, a third issue to the linguistic sign. What this issue is easy to guess when considering

the following example: Speaker A (looks about a big square she’s standing on: “Oh, I just love Trafalgar Square!” Speaker B (responding): “But this is the Place de la Concorde!” What’s wrong with speaker A’s utterance? Well, it’s correct both semantically and syntactically. It makes sense and it is acceptable, apart from one aspect: It does not fit into the context. Here we see that there must be a relation between the sign and its user in a certain context. Obviously, sentences can be correct both semantically and syntactically and still be contextually wrong. According to the American philosopher Charles William Morris, this third relation of the sign is called the pragmatic dimension of the sign. Morris was a follower of Peirce, which accounts to why he adopted the model of the sign and its three dimensions:

This chapter deals with pragmatics. We will take a look at information structure and speech acts, investigating why we say what in which context.

13.1 Information structure As we have seen in the example above, information must be organized according to the given context. We may “understand” people all right in a conversation. Still, if information occurs that does not fit the context, we are puzzled: Jack: “Hi, Helen. Nice to see you. Are you coming to my party tonight?” Helen: “Well… I don’t know yet.” Jack: “O come on, it’s my birthday!” Helen: “My father owns a red sports car.”

Jack: “What the hell are you talking about??” LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 66 “Contextually correct” does not only mean that information can be correct or not, but also that the surface structure of a sentence is generated from the deep structure due to some regulative force in the language. In a birthday card, for example, you do not expect the sentence: “On this day, which is the 24th anniversary of the day of your birth, these words shall mean to you that the undersigned wishes to transmit her best wishes, namely congratulations.” You will rather find something like: “Happy birthday and best wishes. Yours, Elvira.” Obviously, there are alternatives of saying the same thing. We are “told” how to structure information in a sentence by several categories. 13.1.1 CATEGORIES OF INFORMATION STRUCTURE Given and new information. In every conversation there are phrases that are taken to be commonly known. These receive less stress and are expressed less elaborately than those representing new information. For example: “Yesterday my mother went to this new mall, the one in Queen’s road, you know, where the old cinema burnt down last year.” “Yesterday” and “my” are obviously known elements in this sentence. “New mall” is new information. It requires further explanation. Topic. The topic is the core of attention in a sentence, as the underlined word in: “I know it was you who took away my sandwich!” It is not always that easy to say where the topic is in a sentence. In: “O damn it!” the topic is definitely outside the spoken language, e.g., a mischief or bad luck. The word

“it” is obviously too vague to represent the topic in a sufficient manner. Contrast. Where nouns or noun phrases occur in opposition to each other, we find contrast. Examples are: “It was not Tom but Jerry who made me laugh more.” “Only Kathleen was able to pass the test.” In the second example, contrast occurs between “Kathleen” and all other members of a given group. Definiteness. Noun phrases are marked as definite when it can be assumed that the listener is able to identify them without difficulty. “Where’s the pub?” (definite) is appropriate in a small village where one single pub exists, whereas “Where is a pub?” or “Are there pubs around here?” (indefinite) would fit the situation of a larger neighborhood or city. Referentiality. Noun phrases are referential if they refer to a particular entity. In the sentence “This is the book I bought at Dillon’s”, for example, the noun phrase “book” is referential as it is defined more precisely by the subordinate clause. The noun phrase “it” in the sentence “It’s fun to study linguistics”, on the other hand, is nonreferential as it remains vague. Nonreferential phrases are thus used whenever some noun is required that cannot be derived from the general content of the phrase. In European languages, for example, nouns are required for the construction of any sentence. Due to this, phrases like “It’s raining” exist. Try to think about whatever is actually raining: is it the weather? The cloud? Is it the rain itself? God? The answer is no. The word “it” serves a purpose in itself because we require a noun phrase, something that “does rain” similar to “I run”, “Joe swims”,

“Eva sleeps”. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 67 13.1.2 PRAGMATIC CATEGORIES AND SYNTAX As we have seen before in the chapter on syntax, the same deep structure of sentences can be transformed into different surface structures. In this chapter, you will see when pragmatic categories apply to trigger certain transformations. Fronting. Moving phrases to the front of a sentence serves to indicate givenness or contrast. Givenness: “Latin lessons I cannot stand.” The speaker in this sentence presumes that the listener already knows that he/she can’t stand something. Therefore that part of the sentence is a given, something already known. Placing the noun phrase to the front then serves to distinguish the new and the given information of the sentence from each other. Contrast: “I really don’t like Tim. Harvey I find nice.” In this example, contrast is expressed through fronting. The unusual position of “Harvey” serves to emphasize the like/dislike opposition Left-dislocation. This is syntactically and formally similar to fronting; a noun is moved from its usual place to the left, i.e. front of the sentence in order to indicate givenness or contrast. The difference here is that the noun remains in the form of a pronoun in its original place as well. It is frequently used to reintroduce given information. “Linguistics, I’d just die for it.” Clefting and pseudoclefting. Consider the following sentence: “Spock met Kirk in the transporter room.” Cleft sentences are of the form: “It + BE + that…” “It was Kirk that Spock met in the transporter room.” Pseudocleft sentences are of the form: “WH-word (usually ‘what’) + … +

BE” “What Spock met in the transporter room was Kirk.” Both constructions serve to facilitate the information process for the listener. Because the given information is distinguished from the new, the listener can focus more readily on the new information. Between the two constructions, though, it is cleft sentence structure that has more force in achieving this effect. In pseudocleft sentences the new information is, though marked, not presented in one block at the front. The listener thus, after receiving the ”what” element of the new information, has to contribute somewhat more concentration to the given information in the middle before resuming with the latter part of the new information at the end of the sentence. Sentence stress. In most languages, noun phrases that represent new information receive more stress. But stress can also serve the purpose of marking opposition. Stress refers to intonation. In fronting and left-dislocation, stress is added to strengthen the emphasis on the acoustic level. Passive. Usually, the active voice is preferred in English. Sentences as: “A good time was had by all” sound ridiculous. This is because we prefer to name the agent in a sentence as the active part. Still, the two possible kinds of passive sentences in English fulfill impootant functions: Agent passive constructions are used when the subject of the sentence is of predominant interest, yet when a noun other than the subject of the sentence takes the active role in shaping the state of that subject.

“The Klingons were driven back by the Enterprise” Agentless passives are used when the agent is either known or irrelevant and thus unimportant in the sentence: LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 68 “The Klingons were driven back.”

13.2 Speech acts In the 1960’s, Two linguists, Austin and Searle, made up a theory on how language serves to perform action. Austin’s famous book is hence called: How to do things with words. When we communicate, we do not only intend to send some information to a receiver. In fact, we are always acting in one way or another when we talk. This does not mean that we perform some sort of play with our bodies, but that we are imparting something beyond the mere surface structure of the utterance. Just consider your own everyday communication: You do not merely ‘seek and provide information’, instead you declare, pronounce, give orders, commiserate, approve, etc. Speech acts can be quite diversified. 13.2.1 TYPES OF SPEECH ACTS Representatives: these represent states of affairs, such as assertions, statements, claims, hypotheses, descriptions, and suggestions. They are commonly regarded as being either true or false. Commissives: these commit the speaker to something, such as promises, pledges, threats, and vows. Directives intend to make the hearer carry out some action: commands, requests, challenges, invitations, entreaties, and dares. Declarations bring about the state of affairs: blessings, firings, baptisms, arrests, marrying,

declaring a mistrial. Expressives: these indicate the speaker’s attitude, such as greetings, apologies, congratulations, condolences, and thanksgivings. Verdictives make assessments or judgements: ranking, assessing, appraising, condoning. 13.2.2 LOCUTION, in the denotative meaning, but rather in the connotative meaning, i.e. what is actually inferred, brought about, and effected by the speech act. Locution. This is the acoustic utterance that can also be transcribed into phonetic transcription. It is also called the utterance act. We referred to this earlier as the acoustic chain. Illocution. Whenever you say something, you have an intention to say something. There may be one or more intentions behind the utterance. We say that there are one or more illocutionary acts in the speech act. Perlocution. This is the effect of the speech act on the hearer. There are two aspects of the perlocutionary act. First, there is the effect that the sender wants to evoke in the listener, and second, the effect that is finally achieved. An example is an order from someone without authority: The effect that the sender wanted to evoke was obedience; what was finally achieved, however, was disobedience. But how is it that we know what illocutionary force is behind a speech act, i.e., how do we know that somebody asking “Are you free tonight?” is not merely expecting a “yes/no”– answer, but wants to line up a date with us. We infer the illocutionary act of a statement from its context. This means

ILLOCUTION, PERLOCUTION

A speech act has three aspects to it. Note that we are here not interested

that we presume, for one, that a speaker always has some intention for wanting any information. The context here ‘boy-girl-evening-free time’ allows the listener to deduce ‘He wants to spend his time with me.’. If the context were such that both the speaker and the listener have part-time jobs at LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 69 McDonalds, the illocutionary act could well be very different, namely “Could you take my shift tonight ? (so that I could go on a date with someone else?)”. Whether a context counts as a valid context of a speech act usually rests on a number of conditions that, together, render that context. There are also always a number of conditions that have to be fulfilled so that a speech act can be interpreted as intended. “I now pronounce you husband and wife”, for example, is valid only if the speaker is entitled to wed couples, the two are willing and legally qualified to marry, all persons are present in an appropriate environment, such as a church, or a court, and so on. Most of these conditions are a matter of convention. In other words, whether a priest has the authority to marry couples, rests on our Christian convention of entitling such people with this authority. A promise is valid only if the convention of truthfulness is acknowledged by the promising person. As such, a directive, such as the invitation, is subject to interpretation according to different conventions of that specific condition. For instance, the invitation “Call me whenever you want” has become, by convention, to function also as a way of expressing a general willingness to help a person. The offer itself is thus usually not expected to be taken up at 4:30 in the morning. The pledge “I’ll pay you back as soon as I get

the money.” on the other hand, is usually taken literally, i.e. our conventions for dealing with money matters are usually literal. 13.2.3 THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE As you can well imagine, sorting out the different conventions that govern speech acts can be very complex. There are, however, four maxims that can be regarded as general principles in all speech acts. Maxim of quantity. If you are asked something, you are expected to give neither too little nor too much information. If you don’t abide by this maxim, you will usually be regarded as uncooperative. If your answer doesn’t convey all of the information asked for, the listener has incomplete data, whereas too much information distracts the listener. Maxim of relevance. Imagine asking somebody: “What time is it?” and getting the answer: “I’ve been to Switzerland three times.” This answer clearly lacks all relevance in the given context. Maxim of manner. This refers to the importance of details within the chronological order they are presented. “First comes first” is a principle that is violated in the following examples; the phrases that violate the maxim of manner are marked. “For the station, you turn left at the next crossing. Then you walk for half a mile. Down the street is a subway. Use it to cross the street. Turn left again. The subway’s walls are painted yellow. From that point, you’ll be able to see the station.” “Germany is located in the center of Europe. You’ll find Hessen in the center of Germany. Kassel is a city in the north of Hessen. There’s a university in Kassel.

Hessen is also famous for Frankfurt. At Kassel university, there’s a language department.” Maxim of quality. This maxim refers to the truth or falseness of a statement. If a speech act lacks this principle, it is a lie. Successful communication rests on the assumption that the other is telling the truth, i.e. earnest about her/his statements. Hence this maxim is the most important. It doesn’t really matter if other maxims are violated, as long as the quality of the speech act is assured. Note that the maxim of quality refers to the conscientiousness of the speaker, in other words, it is secondary if she/he is mistaken or not. A statement such as “I think Marx was right” is qualified if the person really does think Marx was right; the question then of whether Marx really was right or not is another subject matter. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 70 There are cases, as you may know from your own experience, where even these cooperative principle can be legitimately violated. Some lies are necessary due to cultural conventions. You would not reject a birthday present given to you by your best friend, saying it was Kitsch, even if you did think it was Kitsch. This leads us a step further, to the indirect speech act. 13.2.4 INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS In these speech acts one or more maxim is violated, however, since both participants of the speech act recognize the violation the speech act as a whole is seen to follow cooperative principles. The example given above belongs to this type as, although the listener may not overtly recognize the violation, he/she would potentially tolerate the violation. As such speech acts that violate these maxims are seen to follow these principles

indirectly. The following applies to the indirect speech act: 1 _ At least one maxim of the speech act is violated. 2 _ The literal meaning of the locution differs from the illocutionary force conveyed by it. 3 _ Hearer and speaker recognize due to the context, that 2 (through 1) is the case and, both assuming that they both acknowledge this vice versa, view their communication as cooperative and proceed their conversation. 4 _ The indirect speech act has thus been identified and the intended meaning of the locution has been constructed by the interlocutors with the help of their knowledge of the context. In the following, you will find some examples: Jeff: “Am I late?” John: “The boss went crazy.” Jeff: “All right, I’ll go straight to his office and apologize.” Here John seems to ignore Jeff’s question and thereby violates the maxim of relevance. John’s remark on the angry boss and, following that, John’s reply to that, confirms that both John and Jeff have identified the illocutionary act, i.e. they both know that what is of interest is the consequences of Jeff being late, not the denotative meaning of his being late. As such John’s speech act is an indirect speech act; i.e. as a whole it is cooperative. Mary: “Are you finished with your work sheet?” Charley: “Is Rome in Spain?” The answer seems to have nothing to do with the question; again the maxim of relevance is

violated. Both participants, however, rely on shared knowledge. The basis of the indirect speech act here is that two questions are being compared. The natural answer as to the question whether Rome was in Spain is “no”. This answer then is being transferred to the first question. Recognition of this procedure in both parties then allows the indirect speech act to be cooperative Sometimes maxims are violated due to politeness. If you ask somebody “Can you shut the window?” you are actually saying: “This is a polite request. Please shut the window.” You are not really interested in the person’s capability of performing the act. Metaphors are also indirect speech events. Consider the utterance “Jane is a block of ice.” This violates the maxim of quality, since Jane most definitely does not consist of frozen water. However, literal meaning is not intended here. Listeners quite naturally attribute their associations of coldness to Jane and so arrive at the intended meaning. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 71

14. Text linguistics

14.1 What is text linguistics? So far, we have dealt with the term “text” quite freely. You may or may not have realized, however, that the use of this term is not quite that simple. None of the branches of linguistics we are looking at in this course regards the complete entity of texts as their primary subject matter in the way text linguistics does. Instead, they focus rather on, e.g., the nature and function of morphemes and words within texts on a very abstract level. Sentences are examined

with syntax, and word as well as sentence meaning are discerned by semantics. Although all of these domains deal with parts of texts, namely sounds, words and sentences, they fail to generate a broader understanding of the substantial and unique import of texts as such. This we can only understand when observing how texts are produced, presented, and received. Whereas our inquiry so far was geared towards the structure of language, we are now going to ask: ‘In what way do processes in text production, that is: decision and selection and their impact on communicative interaction generate structure?’ This approach to linguistics, that is of regarding complete texts as entities of inquiry, is still fairly young, having come into being only in the 1970’s. It is also referred to as text linguistics. However, the origin of this regard for texts goes way back to Ancient Greece and Rome, where philosophers founded the science of rhetoric. This science cultivates speech and examines the complete text for its applicability for an oral presentation and its overall effect and persuasive potential. As a discipline rhetoric received high esteem and was acknowledged as one of the main branches of science. This cultivation for spoken speech continued on even up to the Middle Ages, where the church implemented it for its aims. As a science of texts, rhetoric shares many concerns with text linguistics. Some assumptions are: The accessing and arranging of ideas is open to systematic control. The transition from idea to expression can be consciously trained. Among the various texts which express a given configuration of ideas, some are of a higher quality than others.

Texts can be evaluated in terms of their effects on the audience. Texts are vehicles of purposeful interaction.” You may remember some of these notions from our chapter on pragmatics, however, while the emphasis then was on the use of language, it is now the whole text which is of interest.

14.2 The principles of textuality What constitutes a text? Usually, we do not think about how we produce or understand speech, i.e. the texts for speech. Still, there are basic principles that structure texts and it is, for example, thanks to our intuitive compliance to these principles that we still know what a discussion is all about even after ten minutes of talking. Also, you do not have to return to the first pages of a book whenever you start reading the next chapter, because you know that the text proceeds. You can even refer to other texts written in other books or taken from other media, such as newspapers. These constructive elements of texts are known as textuality. They help us in recognizing where texts start, where they end and how to perceive a text as an entity. 14.2.1 COHESION Texts are regarded as stable systems the stability of which is upheld by a continuity of occurrences. This means that elements re-occur throughout the text system and can thus be interreLINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 72 lated. Our short term memory does not lend itself for storing information on a larger scale. The continuity of occurrences thus serves to refresh this short term memory, creating a basis for a long term memory to function. Whereas cohesion within a sentence is constituted by

syntax, it is this factor of the continuity of occurrences that makes for cohesion within a text. As you can already guess, cohesion is established by means of syntax. The way sentences are constructed help in establishing cohesion. The following features belong to the re-occurrences that make for the cohesion of texts: 14.2.1.1 Recurrence The direct repetition of elements is called recurrence. It can fulfill many functions. However, whenever applied, the phenomenon of recurrence must be derived from a comprehensible motivation. The phrase “I met Sally and I met Sally.”, for instance, seems awkward as there is just no reason for repeating the same element. One function recurrence fulfills is, as mentioned above, the enhancement of memory. In the recurrence of the following example, emphasis is the primary function. “The other day, I met Sally. I mean, you know Sally. This Sally Atkins from the linguistics department. She’s a nice person, good old Sally.” Recurrence can also be used as a means to repudiate the assumptions of the other, as in the following example: “I guess you love snow, ice, and the whole of wintertime!” — “Good grief! I certainly don’t like snow, nor ice, and definitely not wintertime!” In poetic texts, recurrence is often used to emphasize the emotional peak of poems, as in the famous recurring last line of almost every stanza in Edgar Allan Poe’s “Raven”: “Quoth the raven: nevermore.” In this example, the recurrence also helps to establish a strong connection among the various stanzas. The reader may expect the same line to occur again.

14.2.1.2 Junction Events and situations are combined in texts. This action is called junction. Junctive expressions are commonly known as conjunctions. Conjunctions link things of the same status: “and”. Disjunctions link elements of an alternative status: “or”. Contrajunctions link elements of the same status which are incompatible: “but”. Subordinators link things where the status of one depends on the other: “because”, “since” 14.2.2 COHERENCE Whereas cohesion is the syntactical means of keeping a text together, there is also the meaning which interweaves the whole of a text. This meaning principle is called the coherence of a text. Coherence can happen only under the condition of a set of prerequisites. For one, speakers must have a common knowledge base that they draw from. Secondly, there must be a context which is important in respect to the meaning (as we have seen in the chapter on pragmatics, the meaning of phrases depends on the intention and situation. Concepts in texts may hence change their meaning regardless of their sememe.) Coherence, that is meaning, in texts, is in subsequence to these prerequisites determined by the so-called control centers, also called primary concepts, which are the pivots of the meaning structure of a text. Control centers are: LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 73 Objects: these have a stable identity, their core meaning does not change substantially. Persons, abstract concepts or things of any kind that are mentioned in a text play the role of objects.

Situations: are configurations of objects in the present state of affairs. Events: these are occurrences which change a situation. Actions: events intentionally brought about by an agent. An agent is not necessarily a person or living being. Any item can gain the status of an agent. In the sentence “The wave rolled up the beach”, ‘wave’ is the agent, performing the action of rolling. There is a far more elaborate set of secondary concepts, which range from the agent to the value of an entity, but we will not go into this in detail. Consider the example: “The big red bus approached the stop. Its roaring exhaust frightened the small children and old ladies. A conductor was at hand to provide the group with tickets. The sun shone at the scene.” The dominating control center of the first part is clearly an object: “the big red bus”. There is also an action, namely its approaching the bus stop. The next sentence just adds more information to the first, being attached directly to the primary concept by the cohesive means of pro-forms (“its”).

As you can see, the object control center happens to be the subject of the sentence as well. It is grammatically the most important part of the sentence. But the second part of the text is not so obviously coherent with the first part. What needs to be done to combine the two parts is called interference. By interfering, we fill gaps in the textual world with our knowledge from the real world. What makes us understand that the ‘conductor’ and ‘tickets’ can somehow be related to a bus exhaust, small children and old ladies is our common world knowledge. The ‘conductor’ is associated with the bus because this is

where he works, the other persons are probably commuters. The ‘scene’ must be the setting of the bus standing at the stop with a group of people waiting to get in, etc. Interferences are carried out intuitively by means of imaginative associations. However, empirical tests have shown that a slight degree of intuitive association takes place in all types of language processing. As thus it takes place not only when having to fill the gaps of explicitly textual worlds with real, experienced worlds. 14.2.3 INTENTIONALITY AND ACCEPTABILITY You can also read about this phenomenon in the chapter concerned with the Speech Act Theory. We will thus only rehearse the basic principles here: Cohesion and coherence are the most important principles of textuality. However, there are texts which are neither fully cohesive nor coherent. Hence, we must take the attitude of the language users toward the text into consideration. What is their intention? Presumably there is some planning involved in order to put the intention into words. Speakers may fail to clad their intention into a pattern both cohesive and coherent: “You know, I – where am I? Ah, yes, last night I visited Dan, and he – but you do know Dan, don’t you?” We all know such inconsistent sentences from our everyday experience. They derive from the change of intention during the utterance. The change may be caused by an internal reflection or by some external event, such as a frowning listener. Nevertheless, when listening and talking we follow a cooperative principle, which, in turn, places the text into an acceptable framework, even if their surface structure neglects cohesion and coherence.

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 74 14.2.4 INFORMATIVITY Informativity refers to whether the contents of a text is new or whether it was expected by the receiver. We differentiate here with the following features: Probability. Is the utterance probable? A sentence like: “I like Chinese food” is quite probable as far as statistical probability of correct sentences is concerned. But a sentence such as “All you foul dishes of the degenerate West, you cannot compete to my favorites from the East!” is much too unique to be statistically probable. Another aspect is contextual probability. When talking about food, for instance, a sentence like “And the new BMW is really nice to look at.” is grossly out of context and as thus improbable. Orders of informativity. If the predictability of intention, cohesion, and coherence is high, we speak of first-order informativity. An example is the “stop” traffic sign, the content and structure of which is very unambiguous and conventionalized. First-order occurrences are also called defaults: they are used very often, such as certain phrases. But in order to make texts more interesting, informativity of second or third order must appear. Usually, texts consist more or less of second-order occurrences. These are upgraded or downgraded in order to produce either more predictable or more interesting bits of text. In a short story or novel, the author will rather use downgraded, unpredictable text. This will keep the reader focused on the book. Text types. The rate of informativity differs in the many various text types, such as literary, poetic, and scientific texts. Naturally, in poetry, the number of third-order

occurrences is much higher than in scientific texts. 14.2.5 SITUATIONALITY Texts must be relevant to the current situation in which they appear. We distinguish between the following: Situation monitoring is being performed if the primary function of a text is to describe a given situation as best as possible. Situation management means that a text is designed to fit into a situation as best as possible. Although texts have to be relevant to the situation in which they appear, the situation does not have to be a real situation, i.e. it can be fictional. For example, in drama the audience is drawn into a situation generated on the stage. Thus, when Hamlet says “All’s not well…”, his monologue naturally does not mean that the audience is in Denmark, the setting of the play. In short, literary texts have the prerogative to present alternative situations in which they fit quite well. 14.2.6 INTERTEXTUALITY No text is really independent, i.e. all texts relate to others in one way or another. The expressions textual field or the text universe have been created by scholars to refer to this textual

15. Sociolinguistics

f you study language as it is spoken by humans in everyday life, including the variations from area to area in a country or within different levels of society, you are dealing with sociolinguistics – the study of language in society. The discipline is still quite young, having been founded only in the late 1960’s, but it now belongs to one of the

established branches of linguistic study. In the Anglo-Saxon countries, sociolinguistics receives high esteem, especially in England, where the study of dialects and variations in the stratified society are a never-ending subject of research.

15.1 Variation in language It is quite obvious that different people use different languages. This is a given fact which you can experience when you travel from one country to another. Also, there are variations within one single language community. There are various definitions of what a language community is. In general, we call a group of people using a common variant of a language a language community. For example, all people speaking a certain dialect of English are one speech community. However, speech communities can be discerned on other levels of society. There are male and female speech communities among the speakers of English. These differ due to the contrast of language use in men and women. On a social as well as a regional scale, such differentiations gain in weight. If you travel to Bavaria, people speak a kind of German which sounds quite different from the one spoken in Hamburg. A professor uses a different language than a janitor does. It then happens sometimes that values are attributed to these variations. People are considered to speak a “good” or “bad” English. The language of the teenage generation is sometimes valued as “declining”. Sometimes, exotic languages spoken in foreign parts of the world are labeled “inferior” by people who are convinced that European languages should be regarded as the

topmost standard. All these opinions are of no value to sociolinguistics. Rather, we try to classify various variants of languages by neutral features. Here are some of these basic features by which language variations can be classified. Standardization _. Is the language variation recognized/understood/spoken by a majority of speakers of one language community? Vitality _. Is the language variation still developing or has it become static/unchangeable? Historicity _. Does the language variation have a literate historical background? Note that this aspect does not mean the historical development of a variation. Autonomy _. Is the variation an autonomous state of a language, i.e., can it be studied on its own or is the language variety a daughter language? In the latter case, it is dependent on the mother language which must be studied as well. Reduction _. Is the variation a reduced form of a standard language, i.e., is its spectrum of features a part adopted from another variation that has a larger spectrum? Mixture _. Is the variation a mixture of several languages? ‘De facto’ norms . Is there a system of rules that govern the variation? These rules have to be acknowledged by all users. It must be recognizable whether these rules are violated. The following chart gives examples for variations of English. These variations are from all over the world and cover many centuries. This aspect of language variation, language change in the course of history, we have discussed when we talked about the history of the English language. At this point it is important to keep in mind that language change should not be equated with the decay of a language, a notion which seems to be

shared even more so by common, everyday people than by scholars. Language variations from all times and from all

I

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 77 areas prove to have highly elaborated structures. Furthermore, if language was decaying over the times, we would have arrived at a devastated state already. The attribute numbers in the following chart refer to the attributes listed above. Some of the language types and examples have not been explained yet; they will be explained in the following subchapters. network. The principle of intertextuality is that the structure (i.e. those principles listed above) of texts is determined largely by texts that have been received by authors or readers prior to that. Citations or a re-use of texts is one of the more obvious ways in which this principle applies. But intertextuality can also be detected in more subtler forms and occurs between various text types as well. In the narrower sense of texts within the framework of text linguistics, we speak of intertextuality as the phenomenon of interference between various texts in a conversation. Situation management and monitoring depend heavily on other texts which have been uttered in the LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 75 conversation. A receiver does not remain uninfluenced by these uttered texts and interrelates them with his own textual production.

15.1.1 REGIONAL VARIATION IN LANGUAGE When we refer to language variations within an area occupied by a language community, we speak of dialects. They have not evolved on their own accord, however, contrary to popular opinion, they can influence or even give rise to a standard language. The Romance languages are an example for this development. Originally, the languages French, Spanish, and Italian were very much alike. They were all variations of Latin and a citizen of the late Roman period would have regarded them as dialects of the same Latin. Today, the Romance languages are much more distinct. We can still see that they are closely related to each other, but they are definitely not dialects. We find national variations here. The many peoples that inhabit Germany, for example, the Frisians,

Saxons, Bavarians, and many more each constitute a distinct group of people. But unlike the different language groups of the Romance languages, the varieties of German spoken from the north to the south of Germany are only regional variations of the same language. The variations remain regional, because the German peoples have maintained close ties with one another throughout history. In many areas it is the geography that allows a speech community to either merge or diverge. The vast mountain ridge of the Pyrenees dividing France and Spain, for example, separated the speech communities so that their linguistic development diverged. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 78 As you can see, languages distinguish themselves from one another or they may merge. Presently, the dialects of the German tongue are merging, for example. Some of its rare dialects have even become extinct. 15.1.1.1 Dialect vs. Accent These are two terms which should not be confused. While a dialect is a distinct variation of a language bound to geographical regions or a social stratification, the accent of a speaker is a blend of his linguistic background with his effort to pronounce the standard language or a distinct dialect of a completely different language group. The accent a person may show hence only occurs when he or she uses a language variety or a language different from their own. A person can speak French with an English accent, or Standard English with a West Midland accent. The variety of English the person is used to at her or his home is then the

dialect, e.g. “Black Country English” of the West Midlands. 15.1.1.2 Varieties of English There are variations in the English within any one English speaking country just as there are variations between the English of different English speaking countries. You are already aware of the different pronunciation of the /A:/ (British), /Q/ (American) respectively, as in “dance”. There are, however, many more differences. One of these is the vocabulary. There are different words used in both countries for the same things: American British elevator lift flashlight torch can tin truck lorry TV telly The various dialects within the countries are dependent on geographical regions. In order to locate them with more precision on a map, the usage of words or expressions is documented and evaluated throughout the country. These statistics then allow for marking the boundaries that separate the regional dialects. These boundaries are called isoglosses. Three dialects of North America, for example, North Midland, South Midland, and Southern can be identified by the variation of the standard word “bastard”. In the North, such a person is called a “come-by-chance”, in the Midlands an “old-field colt”, and in the South a “woods colt”. 15.1.2 SOCIAL VARIATION IN LANGUAGE A language variation may well reveal social rank. This applies to language variations of the whole country on a macro level as well as to regions on a micro level. In

the 1950’s, a linguist named Bernstein examined social differences in language. He could trace two profoundly different codes, namely the elaborated and the restricted code. 15.1.2.1 Elaborated vs. restricted code The restricted code is used by a certain social group only. Speakers of the restricted code wish to establish and maintain close contact with the group. They do not use it when in contact with representatives of other social groups. LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 79 Elaborated code is less personal and more formal. It applies to situations where the speaker cannot rely on the immediate sympathy or understanding of the group. In the following, you find differences in more detail.

15.1.2.2 Objections Consider the following example: 1) “The blokes what was crossing the road got knocked down by a car.” 2) “The gentlemen were crossing the road and a car knocked them down instantly.”

Although the first sentence is not standard, it is, according to the above features, more elaborated than the second one in certain respects. There is a subordinate clause in the sentence while the second sentence consists of two main clauses. The use of subordinate clauses is held to be more elaborate. Still, the lexis, that is, word choice of the second sentence is located on a higher level. Elaborated code and restricted code seem to blur in our example. This phenomenon leads to the conclusions that everyone uses a restricted code, there is not an exact correlation between restricted-non-standard and elaborated-standard codes. However, the restricted code does not lend itself for logical, theoretical purposes, or for expressing a temporal succession of events. We find that it is due not only to the existence of different social classes, but also to diverging circumstances of people as individuals, that these different codes have come to develop. Middle class people, for instance, are confronted more often with theoretical topics, which is why they use the elaborated code more frequently than working class people do. On the strictly individual level, a person never forced to deal with more complex ideas may not use metalanguage, while others may seek complexity on their own accord. 15.1.2.3 Code switching LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 80 Humans are known to be flexible. They easily adopt the habits of their surroundings in order to fit into the respective social group. This is why we are able to switch codes. Watch yourself closely: you will find yourself using elaborated and restricted sentence

structures according to the situation: family, university, friends, etc. Each group seems to prescribe a certain code. 15.1.3 ETHNIC VARIATION IN LANGUAGE Variation in language among ethnic groups is somewhat similar to the one among social classes. Whether or not a person identifies him-/herself in the first place with his/her ethnic origin or with his/her social class may depend on many factors. One factor has to do with whether this ethnic group is a minority in that society – a person who belongs to an ethnic group that is a minority of that society is likely to identify him- or herself more with his ethnic group than with a social class. In any event Ethnic groups may speak a language which is different from that of the dominating society If ethnic groups speak the same language, it has a series of linguistic variables Examples are the Italian and Jewish groups in New York City. Most of these immigrants who arrived in New York in the 19th century never quite learned to speak English. Their children grew up with the English language as it was spoken in schools and in everyday life, however, their ethnic background left its marks on their English. It is for this reason that in the New York accents of both groups, some characteristics appear that cannot be found anywhere, by no member of any social class in the United States. One example is the high onglide of mid vowels in the words “dog” and “coffee”: /dog/ and /kofI/ became /dUog/ and /kUofI/. This high onglide is considered very poor language by other American speakers of English. The most outstanding example for ethnic variation in the English

language is Black English Vernacular BEV. It has been cultivated to the extent that this same dialect is spoken by Blacks throughout the United States. Obviously it is also the racial conflicts that continue on up to the present that have led this ethnic minority to distinguish themselves from white, main-stream America by language. One feature of Black English Vernacular is that verbal skills are valued very highly. What we know as rap, only recently made known to a wider public through pop music, has long been a means of poetic expression among blacks. Some street poets are able to do spontaneous rap rhymes of several hours’ length. 15.1.4 LINGUA FRANCA,

PIDGINS AND

CREOLES

These are special cases of variation which come to exist where people speaking various languages meet and need to communicate. ‘Lingua franca’ refers to any variation that evolves out of the need to facilitate communication among people whose mother tongues are different. The variation does not necessarily have to be the mother tongue of any one of the participants and does not have to be fully developed. One example is “air speak”, a variation of English spoken by pilots and flight personnel. The term lingua franca most probably derived from the name given to the simplified French dialect spoken by the crusaders in the Middle Ages: lingua franca, language of the Francs. This variety was widely used around the Mediterranean. ‘Pidgin’ is a variation deriving from the need of speakers of differing mother tongues to communicate within a restricted context, such as trade. In contrast to a Lingua Franca, a

pidgin Language derives by mixing various features of two or more languages. In most cases, the native languages of the people living in European colonies were mixed with the colonists’ languages. A pidgin is a language variety invented by the speakers. Therefore, there is no native speaker of a pidgin language; i.e. no speaker born into this language as LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 81 their mother tongue. Various Pidgin languages arose from the contact of whites with native people in the Americas and Africa as well as Asia. Among the qualities that all Pidgins have in common is that they evince a rather restricted vocabulary and lack tense markers. Their grammar is therefore elaborated to a minimal extent. Examples from NeoMelanesian or Tok Pisin are: “mi go” = “I go”, but also “I went”, “I will go”, etc. “mi lukim yu” = “I see/will see you”, etc. “gras bilong het” = “hair” ‘Creole’, etymologically derived from the native tribe of the Criollio, refers to a Pidgin variation that has become established and conventionalized to the extent that it can be called a language. For instance, if two people of different language communities marry, they will create a Pidgin variation. This, in turn, becomes the mother tongue of their children who elaborate this Pidgin with more grammatical features, such as case markers and an expansion of vocabulary. The language variety can then be called a Creole language. This phenomenon occurs on a wide scale wherever two cultures mix, as has happened during colonization. In the second and third generations, Creole languages tend

to merge more and more with the dominating parent language. In former colonies, this is the respective European tongue. The Creole then merges into the so-called Post-Creole Continuum. At the end of the process, only traces of the original Pidgin or Creole languages remain. The language spoken then resembles the standard, usually a European language. In some countries, native languages are also official languages, but Creoles are mostly doomed to become extinct. 15.1.5 VARIATION IN LANGUAGE AND SEX In most languages of the world, men and women do not speak identically. In English, some words are used more often by females than by males and vice versa. Some of the “female” words are, for instance, “lovely, darling, cute”. Linguistic tests have also shown that boys prefer the /In/ to the /IN/ in words like “testing, riding, hiking”, while the opposite is valid for girls. In speaking, males tend to speak a variety that is diverging from the standard while women’s language tends to converge with the standard. This may even lead to overcorrections by female speakers. Hence our gender does seem to influence our way of speaking. The English as well as the German language is, furthermore, very male-dominated as masculine titles and pronouns are applied when references to a general public or an unknown addressee are made. An example is ‘chairman’, while it could just as well be a woman. The branch of feminist linguistics has thus evolved to explore these matters in more detail and to strip language of its discriminatory features. Some results are the he/she statements

which you find throughout this paper or the famous capital “I” in German words, like “StudentInnen”. Other novelties are “chairperson” instead of “chairman”. Policemen became police officers, etc.

15.2 Register and Style 15.2.1 STYLE Stylistics is a science which explores all the formal characteristics of language. Style then is a selection of a set of linguistic features from all the possibilities in the language. It includes, for example, word choice and grammar. We have a ‘feel’ of what has ‘no style’, or what it ‘out of style’, yet when trying to pinpoint just what it is that makes a text, speech, or anything for that matter, stylish, we may be at a loss for words. Stylistics tries to explore this matter. Style is something which is of importance to the speakers of a language. There is “good style” and “bad style”, “high” as well as “low” style, etc. These qualifications are commonly made by examining to what extent the possibilities of, say, grammar have been exploited by a

LINGUISTICS FOR BEGINNERS 82 speaker. A speaker performing incomplete sentences will not be regarded to have “good” style. An individual may use one particular style all his life, but there is also something called style shifting. This is in some aspects similar to code switching. People can adapt their style to any context. Some aspects of style can be the use of tenses (more past or more present), frequency of foreign words, amount of vocabulary. 15.2.2 REGISTER Linguists try to also observe and register the different occupational varieties or role relatives

of language. They are differentiated according to a various criteria and are then comprise a compendium of ‘registers’. Some of the aspects that are observed in a register are: Job relativity. Is written language used frequently? Is it broadcast spoken language? Length of sentences. Are there many subordinate clauses involved? What is the average amount of words per sentence? Specific vocabulary. Does the speaker use a certain amount of foreign words? Does he/she use a basic vocabulary or are there specialist words in the texts? Archaic language. Can we find old-fashioned pronunciation, word choice, etc. in the language variety? Appearance in writing, such as capital letters, etc. This is interesting for registers of the print media, such as newspapers, books, reports, written laws. Rules to save time. Are there acronyms? Military English, for example, is full of those. Abbreviations and elliptic sentences are further examples. Thematic ordering (first things first, etc.).

Is there a thematic structure in the register? Again, newspaper articles are a good example. The yellow press will first name the amount of a disaster’s victims, their age, family relations, etc. while a conservative magazine will most probably inform the readers about the cause, time, place, etc. By examining speech varieties, we can easily discern registers. Some registers in English are: Children’s programs. No subordinate clauses, simple sentences, slow voice, simple lexis. Scientific texts. Many adjectives, technical terms, long sentences, argumentation lines, present tense, special graphic presentation. Language at court (legal language).

Formal language, ancient words,

repetition of certain structures, formal, slow language. Letter writing. Colloquial expressions, emotional, handwriting, syntax approximates thought structure.