Tadeusz Piotrowski

1
Tadeusz Piotrowski

• Introduction to Linguistics
• Lecture
• Autumn Spring 2004/2005

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Basics

• Form
• lecture
• attendance required
• Exam
• A comprehensive final exam will cover material
  from the entire course.
• It will be oral (questions and answers).

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Readings

• Textbooks
• Matthews, P.H. Linguistics A Very Short
  Introduction. Oxford University Press 2003
• Widdowson, H.G.. Linguistics. Oxford University
  Press 1996
• Kognitywne podstawy jezyka i jezykoznawstwa ed.
  Elzbieta Tabakowska Universitas 2001
• Additional readings
• class announcements

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Linguistics

• Linguistics
• An introduction to the scientific study of
  language
• Lingua
• Latin language/tongue
• Language
• linguistic
• lingual

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The Subject of the Course

• The scientific study of human language
• in particular, some aspects of human language and
  its structure
• Some features of language make it probably unique
  in the biological world and in other sciences
• Moreover, language is creative and complex in a
  way that should be carefully studied.

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Aspects of Language

• We will be concerned with the objective study of
  language
• not with claims about how language should be
  made by so-called experts
• By language here we mean roughly the system of
  principles that account for linguistic
  expressions
• languages that actually exist (or existed) and
  are used by people

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Aspects of Language cont.

• Our discussion will be concerned with basics
• valid for all languages as we know them
• it will be theoretical
• theories in linguistics
• theories in the sciences
• it will be theoretically neutral
• language vs a language

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Communication questions

• Is language important to people?
• language is universal
• every human society ever known has language
• anu human being can speak
• even mentally retarded
• every human society has complex language
• cultural inventions or technology vary in
  complexity from culture to culture
• there is no primitive language
• do animals have language?

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Communication questions

• Do animals communicate?
• Do animals have systems of communication?

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Dogs
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Bee language
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Body language
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Communication questions

• What distinguishes language from other systems of
  communication?

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Animal and human communication

• Animal communication
• reactive
• set
• Human linguistic communication
• pro-active
• creative

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Design features

• What makes language pro-active
• so-called design features
• Arbitrariness
• Duality

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Design features arbitrariness

• Arbitrariness
• The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural
  resemblance to their meaning
• The link between meaning and form is a matter of
  convention

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Arbitrariness

• ?
• ??????
• ???
• ??????
• ? -- ??
• chien
• Hund

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Arbitrariness

• The forms of linguistic signs bear no natural
  resemblance to their meaning
• There is no necessary connection betwenn form and
  meaning.
• The link between them is a matter of social
  convention.

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Arbitrariness

• What about onomatopoeia?
• Definition
• the formation or use of words that imitate the
  sound associated with the thing or action in
  question, for example hiss and buzz
• the murmuring of innumerable bees
• the murdering of innumerable bees
• Onomatopoeia is also arbitrary
• Animal sounds have different names in various
  languages

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Duality

• Two levels of structure in language
• A relatively small number of elements
• at one level can enter into thousands of
  different combinations to form
• units of meaning at the other level
• Meanigless elements combine to produce
• meaningful units

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Duality

• A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q,
  R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z

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Duality
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Duality

• NAME
• MANE
• AMEN

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Duality

• Letters
• Sounds
• Any representation

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American Sign Language
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Mudrassymbolic gestures and postures forming a
specialized sign-language
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abstract

• language is abstract
• not concrete not relating to concrete objects
  but expressing something that can only be
  appreciated intellectually

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abstract

• language does not depend on the medium it is
  expressed in
• medium
• phonic
• graphic
• gestural
• any other