What is Linguistics?

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What is Linguistics?

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Title: What is Linguistics?

1
Chapter One Invitations to Linguistics
2
1. Why Study Language?
3
1.1 Some myths about language

Language is only a means of communication.
Language has a form-meaning correspondence.
The function of language is to exchange
information.
English is more difficult to learn than Chinese.
Black English is not standard and should be
reformed.

4
1.2 Some fundamental views about L

Children learn their native language swiftly,
efficiently and without instruction.
Language operates by rules.
All languages have three major components a
sound system, a system of lexicogrammar and a
system of semantics.
Everyone speaks a dialect.
Language slowly changes.

Speakers of all languages employ a range of
styles and a set of jargons.
Languages are intimately related to the societies
and individuals who use them.
Writing is derivative of speech.

6
2. What is Language?

Language is not to be confused with human
speech, of which it is only a definite part,
though certainly an essential one. It is both a
social product of the faculty of speech and a
collection of necessary conventions that have
been adopted by a social body to permit
individuals to exercise that faculty.
--Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) Course in
General Linguistics (1916)

Language is a purely human and non-instinctive
method of communicating ideas, emotions and
desires by means of voluntarily produced
symbols.
--Edward Sapir (1884-1939)
Language An Introduction to the
Study of Speech (1921)

A language is a system of arbitrary vocal
symbols by means of which a social group
co-operates.
--Bernard Bloch (1907-1965) George Trager
(1906-1992) Outline of Linguistic Analysis
(1942)
A language is a system of arbitrary vocal
symbols by means of which the members of a
society interact in terms of their total
culture.
--George Trager The Field of Linguistics (1949)

From now on I will consider language to be a set
(finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in
length and constructed out of a finite set of
elements.
--Noam Chomsky (1928- ) Syntactic Structures
(1957)

Language is the institution whereby humans
communicate and interact with each other by means
of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary
symbols.
--Robert A. Hall (1911-1997) Introductory
Linguistics (1964)
Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols
used for human communication.
--Ronald Wardhaugh Introduction to Linguistics
(1977)

The question What is language? is comparable
with -- and, some would say, hardly less profound
than -- What is life?, the presuppositions of
which circumscribe and unify the biological
sciences... it is not so much the question itself
as the particular interpretation that the
biologist puts upon it and the unravelling of its
more detailed implications within some currently
accepted theoretical framework that nourish the
biologist's day-to-day speculations and research.
So it is for the linguist in relation to the
question What is language??
--John Lyons (1932- ) Language and Linguistics
(1981)

... in a sense all definitions of language
are, by themselves, inadequate, since, if they
are to be more than trivial and uninformative,
they must presuppose ... some general theory of
language and of linguistic analysis.
--R. H. Robins (1921-2000) General Linguistics
(1989)

Language is a form of human communication by
means of a system of symbols principally
transmitted by vocal sounds.
--Stuart C. Poole An Introduction to Linguistics
(1999)

Language is a means of verbal communication.
It is instrumental in that communicating by
speaking or writing is a purposeful act.
It is social and conventional in that language is
a social semiotic and communication can only take
place effectively if all the users share a broad
understanding of human interaction including such
associated factors as nonverbal cues, motivation,
and socio-cultural roles.
-- Our textbook (2006)

15
3. Design Features of Language

Language distinguishes human beings from animals
in that it is far more sophisticated than any
animal communication system.

16
Human language is unique

Arbitrariness

Duality

Creativity

Displacement

17
3.1 Arbitrarines

Saussure the forms of linguistic signs bear no
natural relationship to their meaning
Arbitrary relationship between the sound of a
morpheme and its meaning, even with onomatopoeic
words
The dog barks wow wow in English but ??? in
Chinese.

Arbitrariness at the syntactic level language is
not arbitrary at the syntactic level.
He came in and sat down.
He sat down and came in.
He sat down after he came in.
The link between a linguistic sign and its
meaning is a matter of convention.

19
3.2 Duality

The property of having two levels of structures,
such that units of the primary level are composed
of elements of the secondary level and each of
the two levels has its own principles of
organization
Primary units words (meaningful) consist of
secondary units sounds (meaningless).

Hierarchy of language stratification as the
infinite use of finite means.
Sounds gt syllables gt morphemes gt words gt phrases
gt clauses gt sentences/utterances gt
texts/discourses

21
3.3 Creativity

Language is resourceful because of its duality
and its recursiveness. We can use it to create
new meanings.
Words can be used in new ways to mean new things,
and can be instantly understood by people who
have never come across that usage before.

Birds, bees, crabs, spiders, and most other
creatures communicate in some way, but the
information imparted is severely limited and
confined to a small set of messages.
Because of duality the human speaker is able to
combine the basic linguistic units to form an
infinite set of sentences, most of which are
never before produced or heard.

The recursive nature of language provides a
potential to create an infinite number of
sentences. For instance
He bought a book which was written by a teacher
who taught in a school which was known for its
graduates who ...

24
3.4 Displacement

Human languages enable their users to symbolize
objects, events and concepts which are not
present (in time and space) at the moment of
communication.
Thus, we can refer to Confucius, or the North
Pole, even though the first has been dead for
over 2550 years and the second is situated far
away from us.

Animal communication is normally under immediate
stimulus control. For instance, a warning cry of
a bird instantly announces danger.
Human language is stimulus-free. What we are
talking about need not be triggered by any
external stimulus in the world or any internal
state.

The honeybee's dance exhibits displacement a
little bit he can refer to a source of food,
which is remote in time and space when he reports
on it.
A dog cannot tell people that its master will be
home in a few days.
Our language enables us to communicate about
things that do not exist or do not yet exist.

Displacement benefits human beings by giving us
the power to handle generalizations and
abstractions. Once we can talk about physically
distant thing, we acquire the ability to
understand concepts which denote non-things,
such as truth and beauty.

28
4. Origin of language

The Divine origin
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.
(Gospel, John 1 1)

And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one,
and they have all one language and this they
begin to do and now nothing will be restrained
from them, which they have imagined to do.
(Genesis, 11 6)

30
4.1 The bow-wow theory

In primitive times people imitated the sounds of
the animal calls in the wild environment they
lived and speech developed from that.
Onomatopoeic words seem to be a convenient
evidence for this theory. But they are very
different in the degree of resemblance they
express with the natural sounds.
This theory lacks supportive evidence.

31
4.2 The pooh-pooh theory

In the hard life of our primitive ancestors, they
utter instinctive sounds of pain, anger and joy.
As for evidence, we can only cite the universal
use of sounds as interjections.
What makes the theory problematic is that there
is only a limited number of interjections in
almost all languages.
Besides, interjections such as Oh, Ah, Oops bear
little relationship with the sound system of a
language and therefore are not good evidence.

32
4.3 The yo-he-ho theory

As primitive people worked together, they
produced some rhythmic grunts which gradually
developed into chants and then into language.
We do have prosodic use of rhythms in languages,
but rhythmic grunts are far different from
language in its present sense. The theory is
again at most a speculation.

The by-now fruitless search for the origin of
languages reflects people's concern with the
origin of humanity and may come up with
enlightening findings in future.
One thing we can say for certain is that language
evolves within specific historical, social and
cultural contexts.

34
5. Functions of language

Linguists talk about the functions of language in
an abstract sense, that is, not in terms of using
language to chat, to think, to buy and sell, to
read and write, to greet, praise and condemn
people, etc.
They summarize these practical functions and
attempt some broad classifications of the basic
functions of language.

For Jakobson, language is above all for
communication.
While for many people, the purpose of
communication is referential, for him (and the
Prague school structuralists), reference is not
the only, not even the primary goal of
communication.

In his famous article, Linguistics and Poetics,
he defined six primary factors of any speech
event, namely
speaker, addressee, context, message, code,
contact.
In conjunction with these, Jakobson established a
well-known framework of language functions based
on the six key elements of communication, namely

referential (to convey message and information),
poetic (to indulge in language for its own sake),
emotive (to express attitudes, feelings and
emotions),
conative (to persuade and influence others
through commands and requests),
phatic (to establish communion with others)
metalingual (to clear up intentions and meanings).

They correspond to such communication elements as
context, message, addresser, addressee, contact
and code respectively.
Jakobson's views of the functions of language are
still of great importance.

39
Context REFERENTIAL
Addresser EMOTIVE (e.g. intonation showing anger) Message POETIC (e.g. poetry) Addressee CONATIVE (e.g. imperatives and vocatives)
Contact PHATIC (e.g. Good morning!)
Code METALINGUAL (e.g. Hello, do you hear me?) Code METALINGUAL (e.g. Hello, do you hear me?) Code METALINGUAL (e.g. Hello, do you hear me?)
40

Halliday proposes a theory of metafunctions of
language, that is, language has ideational,
interpersonal and textual functions.

Ideational function constructs a model of
experience as well as logical relations,
interpersonal function enacts social
relationships and textual function creates
relevance to context.

In his earlier works, Halliday proposed seven
categories of language functions by observing
child language development
Instrumental
Regulatory
Representational
Interactional
Personal
Heuristic
Imaginative

Still other classifications employ different
categories and use different terms, but all share
a lot in common about the basic functions of
language.
Below is a summary of the major functions of
language.

43
5.1 Informative function

Language is the instrument of thought and people
often feel need to speak their thoughts aloud.
The use of language to record the facts is a
prerequisite of social development. The
informative function is indeed a crucial function
of language.
It is also called ideational function in the
framework of functional grammar.

Halliday notes that
Language serves for the expression of content
that is, of the speaker's experience of the real
world, including the inner world of his own
consciousness. ... In serving this function,
language also gives structure to experience, and
helps to determine our way of looking at things,
so that it requires some intellectual effort to
see them in any other way than that which our
language suggests to us.

45
5.2 Interpersonal function

By far the most important sociological use of
language, and by which people establish and
maintain their status in a society.
In the framework of functional grammar, the
interpersonal function is concerned with
interaction between the addresser and addressee
in the discourse situation and the addresser's
attitude toward what he speaks or writes about.

For example, the ways in which people address
others and refer to themselves (e.g. Dear Sir,
Dear Professor, Johnny, yours, your obedient
servant) indicate the various grades of
interpersonal relations.

Attached to the interpersonal function is its
function of expressing identity. For example,
the chanting of a crowd at a football match,
the shouting of names or slogans at public
meetings,
the stage-managed audience reactions to TV game
shows
They all signal who we are and where we belong.

Language marks our identity, physically in terms
of age, sex, and voiceprints psychologically in
terms of language, personality and intelligence
geographically in terms of accents and dialects
ethnically and socially in terms of social
stratification, class, status, role, solidarity
and distance.

The interpersonal function is such a broad
category that it is often discussed under various
other terms as in the following performative,
emotive, expressive and phatic functions of
language. They seem to emphasize different
aspects of the interpersonal function.

50
5.3 Performative function

This concept originates from the philosophical
study of language represented by Austin and
Searle, whose theory now forms the back-bone of
pragmatics (Chapter 8). For example,
I now declare the meeting open.
I bet you two pounds it will rain tomorrow.

The performative function of language is
primarily to change the social status of persons,
as in marriage ceremonies, the sentencing of
criminals, the blessing of children, the naming
of a ship at a launching ceremony, and the
cursing of enemies.
The kind of language employed in performative
verbal acts is usually quite formal and even
ritualized.

52
The performative function can extend to the
control of reality as on some magical or
religious occasions.

For example, in Chinese when someone breaks a
bowl or a plate the host or the people present
are likely to say ???? as a means of controlling
the invisible forces which the believers feel
might affect their lives adversely.

53
5.4 Emotive function

The emotive function of language is one of the
most powerful uses of language because it is
crucial in changing the emotional status of an
audience for or against someone or something.
It is a means of getting rid of our nervous
energy when we are under stress, e.g. swear
words, obscenities, involuntary verbal reactions
to a piece of art or scenery conventional
words/phrases, e.g.
God, My, Damn it, What a sight, Wow, Ugh, Oh.

It is also discussed under the term expressive
function. The expressive function can often be
entirely personal and totally without any
implication of communication to others.
For example, a man may say Ouch! after striking a
fingernail with a hammer, or he may mutter Damn
when realizing that he has forgotten an
appointment.

Exclamations such as Man! Oh boy! and Hurrah! are
usually uttered without any purpose of
communicating to others, but as essentially a
verbal response to a person's own feelings.
Such expressive utterances can also be a communal
response of a group of people who reinforce one
another's expressive use of language to show
their solidarity.

56
5.5 Phatic communion

Phatic communion refers to the social interaction
of language, originating from Malinowski's study
of the functions of language performed by
Trobriand Islanders. For example,

Mrs. P sneezes violently.
Mrs. Q Bless you.
Mrs. P Thank you.

We all use such small, seemingly meaningless
expressions to maintain a comfortable
relationship between people without involving any
factual content.
Ritual exchanges about health or weather such as
Good morning, God bless you, Nice day often state
the obvious. Yet they indicate that a channel of
communication is open if it should be needed.

Different cultures have different topics of
phatic communion.
According to David Crystal, the weather is not a
universal conversation filler as the English
might like to think.
Rundi women (in Burundi, Central Africa), upon
taking leave, routinely and politely say I must
go home now, or my husband will beat me.

Broadly speaking, this function refers to
expressions that help define and maintain
interpersonal relations, such as slang, jokes,
jargons, ritualistic exchanges, switches to
social and regional dialects.
We have to learn a large repertoire of such
usages if we are to interact comfortably with
different people.

60
5.6 Recreational function

The recreational function of a language is often
overlooked because it seems so restrictive in
purpose and supposedly so limited in usefulness.
However, no one will deny the use of language for
the sheer joy of using it, such as a baby's
babbling or a chanter's chanting.

In the Latin and Islamic worlds as well as in
some areas of China, there is widespread use of
verbal dueling, in which one singer begins a song
of usually few lines and challenges his opponent
to continue the content or provide a rejoinder in
a similar rhythm and rhyme scheme.
Such verbal duels may last for a few hours and is
performed for the sheer joy of playing on
language.

To take one example, the well-known
movie???features a scene of ?? (song dueling)
mostly for the sheer joy of playing on language.

If you observe a childrens play, you will find
the power of sound. Sometimes even nonsensical
lyrics perform a recreational function in the
game
the repetitive rhythms help to control the game,
and the children plainly take great delight in
it. Adults also have their way to appreciate
language for its own sake.

For instance, poetry writing gives them the
pleasure of using language for its sheer beauty.
Very close here to Jakobson's poetic function.

65
5.7 Metalingual function

Our language can be used to talk about itself.
To organize any written text into a coherent
whole, writers employ certain expressions to keep
their readers informed about where they are and
where they are going.

For instance, instead of saying
The lion chased the unicorn all round the town,
they say
All around the town the lion chased the unicorn.

A unicorn
67

This is the metalingual function of language and
meshes with the thematic function of language in
functional grammar.
It makes the language infinitely self-reflexive
We human beings can talk about talk and think
about thinking, and thus only humans can ask what
it means to communicate, to think, to be human.

68
6. What is Linguistics?

The scientific study of human language
Aims of linguistic theory
What is knowledge of language? (Competence)
How is knowledge of language acquired?
(Acquisition)
How is knowledge of language put to use?
(Performance/language processing)

A grammar includes everything one knows about the
structure of ones language
Phonetics and Phonology (the sounds and the sound
system or patterns)
Lexicon (the words or vocabulary in the mental
dictionary)
Morphology (the structure of words)
Syntax (the structure of phrases and sentences
and the constraints on well-formedness of
sentences)
Semantics (the meaning of words and sentences)

70
7. Main branches of linguistics

Phonetics
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics

71
7.1 Phonetics

Phonetics studies speech sounds, including the
production of speech, that is how speech sounds
are actually made, transmitted and received, the
description and classification of speech sounds,
words and connected speech, etc.

We can approach it on various levels.
At one level, speech is a matter of anatomy and
physiology. We can study organs such as tongue
and larynx and their functions in the production
of speech.
At another level, we can focus on the speech
sounds produced by these organs by identifying
and classifying the individual sounds. This is
the domain of articulatory phonetics.

We can also investigate the properties of the
sound waves acoustic phonetics.
As speech is intended to be heard or perceived,
it is therefore possible to focus on the way in
which a listener analyses or processes a sound
wave auditory phonetics.

74
7.2 Phonology

Phonology studies the rules governing the
structure, distribution, and sequencing of speech
sounds and the shape of syllables. It deals with
the sound system of a language by treating
phoneme as the point of departure.
A phoneme is the smallest linguistic unit of
sound that can signal a difference in meaning.

75
7.3 Morphology

Morphology is concerned with the internal
organization of words. It studies the minimal
units of meaning morphemes and word-formation
processes.
Although many people think of words as the basic
meaningful elements of a language,many words can
be broken down into still smaller units, called
morphemes.

Morphemes serve different purposes. Some derive
new words by changing the meaning or the part of
speech, others only refine and give extra
grammatical information about the already
existing meaning of a word.
As morphemes are pairings of sounds with
meanings, there are many complexities involved,
forming a new field by the name morphophonology.

77
7.4 Syntax

Syntax is about principles of forming and
understanding correct sentences.
The form or structure of a sentence is governed
by the rules of syntax, which specify word order,
sentence organization, and the relationships
between words, word classes and other sentence
elements.

We know that words are organized into structures
more than just word order.
The children watched the firework from the hill
.
The children watched the firework from the
hill .
The chicken is too hot to eat.

79
7.5 Semantics

Semantics examines how meaning is encoded in a
language.
It is not only concerned with meanings of words
as lexical items, but also with levels of
language below the word and above it, e.g.
meaning of morphemes and sentences.

The following are what the key concepts look
like
semantic components
denotation of words
sense relations between words such as antonymy
and synonymy
sense relations between sentences such as
entailment and presupposition and others.

81
7.6 Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context. It
deals with particular utterances in particular
situations and is especially concerned with the
various ways in which the many social contexts of
language performance can influence
interpretation.
In other words, pragmatics is concerned with the
way language is used to communicate rather than
with the way language is internally structured.

It regards speech performance as primarily a
social act ruled by various social conventions.
Some key concepts such as reference, force,
effect, and cooperative principles may appear
commonsensical, yet pragmatics is just about one
of the most promising fields of linguistic
studies.

Take conversation for example.
Since language is transmitted primarily via the
speech mode, pragmatic rules govern a number of
conversational interactions, such as sequential
organization, repair of errors, role and speech
acts.
Organization of conversations includes taking
turns, opening, maintaining and closing a
conversation, establishing and maintaining a
topic etc.

84
8. Macrolinguistics

Linguistics is not the only field concerned with
language.
Other disciplines such as psychology, sociology,
ethnography, the science of law and artificial
intelligence etc. are also preoccupied with
language.

Although Saussure's goal was to establish the
autonomy of linguistics, giving it a well-defined
subject of study and freeing it from reliance on
other disciplines, with its coming of age
linguistics is developing interactive links with
other sciences.
The central goal of describing the underlying
system remains this is the province of general,
descriptive linguistics.

But since language has both individual and social
aspects, it is naturally of interest to
psychologists and sociologists among others.
Therefore it is not surprising that we have some
branches of macrolinguistics that show an
interdisciplinary nature from their very names

87
8.1 Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics investigates the interrelation
of language and mind, for example, in processing
and producing utterances and in language
acquisition.
It also studies language development in the
child, such as the theories of language
acquisition, biological foundations of language,
and a profound aspectthe relationship between
language and cognition.

88
8.2 Sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistics is the study of the
characteristics of language varieties, the
characteristics of their functions, and the
characteristics of their speakers as these three
constantly interact and change within a speech
community.
An umbrella term which covers a variety of
different interests in language and society,
including the social functions of language and
the social characteristics of its users.

89
8.3 Anthropological linguistics

Anthropology and linguistics became closely
associated in the early days of anthropological
fieldwork when anthropologists enlisted the help
of linguists to study unwritten languages.
In contrast with other linguists, then,
anthropological linguists are interested
primarily in the history and structure of
formerly unwritten languages.

Because an unwritten language must be heard in
order to be studied, it does not leave any traces
once its speakers died off.
Anthropological linguists must begin in the
present, with comparisons of contemporary
languages.
Then they may draw inferences about the kinds of
change in language that may have occurred in the
past and that may account for similarities and
differences observed in the present.

91
8.4 Computational linguistics

Computational linguistics centers around the use
of computers to process or produce human language
(also known as natural language, to distinguish
it from computer languages).
To this field, linguistics contributes an
understanding of the special properties of
language data, and provides theories and
descriptions of language structure and use.

Some current application areas include
translating from one language to another (Machine
Translation), storing and finding relevant
documents in large collections of text (Corpus
Linguistics and Information Retrieval), and
carrying out various forms of computer mediated
communication.

93
9. Important distinctions in linguistics

Descriptive vs. prescriptive
Synchronic vs. diachronic
Langue parole
Competence and performance

94
9.1 Descriptive vs. prescriptive

Don't say X.
People don't say X.
The first is a prescriptive command, while the
second is a descriptive statement.
The distinction lies in prescribing how things
ought to be and describing how things are.

The reason why present-day linguists are so
insistent about the distinction between the two
types of rules is simply that traditional grammar
was very strongly normative in character, e.g.
You should never use a double-negative
You should not split the infinitive etc.

96
Humorous grammar rules

Never end a sentence with a preposition.
And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
No sentence fragments.

In the 18th century, all the main European
languages were studied prescriptively.
The grammarians tried to lay down rules for the
correct use of language and settle the disputes
over usage once and for all.
Some usages were prescribed to be learned by
heart, followed accurately or avoided altogether.
It was a matter of black or white, right or wrong.

These attitudes are still with us, though people
realize nowadays the facts of usage count more
than the authority-made standards.
The nature of linguistics as a science determines
its preoccupation with description instead of
prescription.

99
9.2 Synchronic vs. diachronic

A synchronic description takes a fixed instant
(usually, but not necessarily, the present) as
its point of observation. Most grammars are of
this kind.
Diachronic linguistics is the study of a language
through the course of its history.

100
9.3 Langue parole

Saussure distinguished the linguistic competence
of the speaker and the actual phenomena or data
of linguistics (utterances) as langue and parole.

101

While parole constitutes the immediately
accessible data, the linguist's proper object is
the langue of each community, the lexicon,
grammar, and phonology implanted in each
individual by his upbringing in society and on
the basis of which he speaks and understands his
language.

102
9.4 Competence and performance

This fundamental distinction is discussed by
Chomsky in his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax
(1965).
A language user's underlying knowledge about the
system of rules is called his linguistic
competence.
Performance refers to the actual use of language
in concrete situations.

103

Chomsky points out that this distinction is
related to the langue-parole distinction of
Saussure but he does not accept the view of
seeing langue as a mere systematic inventory of
items.
Competence is closer to the famous German
linguist Humboldt's conception, that is, it
should refer to the underlying competence as a
system of generative processes.

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