Introduction ILinguistic Approach & Traditional Grammar

LING 301 Intro to LinguisticsSejin Oh

Who we are and why we’re here

■ Let’s know who we are first. – Is it your first LING course?

– Have you taken or are you taking other LING courses?

■ Now, let’s talk about why we’re here.

■ Topics that interest you about language.

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Language and Linguistics

■ Language is at the heart of all things human.

– All normal human beings have at least one language, and it is difficult to

imagine much significant social, intellectual, or artistic activity taking place

without the opportunities for communication offered by language.

■ Linguistics

Study of how language works-– how it is used, how it is acquired, how it changes

over time, how it is represented in the brain.

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Specialization for Language■ A special capacity for language in human is not found in any other species

■ Our speech organs are primarily concerned with breathing and eating but they have

also all become highly specialized for use in language (dual functions – next slide).

(Lungs, Vocal cords, Tongue, Teech, Lips and Nose)

■ Human beings are also equipped for the perception of speech.

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Dual functions of the speech organs

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Organ Survival function Speech function

Lungs to exchange CO2 and oxygen to supply air for speech

Vocal cords to create seal over passage to lungs to produce vibrations for speech sounds

Tongue to move food to teeth and back into throat

to articulate vowels and consonants

Teeth to break up food to provide place of articulation for consonants

Lips to seal oral cavity to articulate vowels and consonants

Nose to assist in breathing to provide nasal resonance duringspeech

What, precisely, is language? ■ The breadth and diversity of human thought and experience place great demands

on language.

■ Because there are always new things to say, new experiences to report, and new

challenges to confront, language has to be creative!

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A Creative SystemFreedom to produce and understand new words and sentences

■ Create verbs from nouns in English (whatsapp me!, Let’s skype tonight! google it!)

However, there is systematic constraints

■ [Constraint 1] A new verb is rarely coined if a word with the intended meaning already exist.

a. Jail the robber (put the robber in jail)b. Prison the robber ???

The well-established verb imprison already has the meaning that the new form would have.

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■ [Constraint 2] When a verb is created from a time expression, it must be given a very specific interpretation, paraphrasable as ‘to be somewhere for the period of time X’.

a. Julia summered in Europe! -> ‘to be in Europe for the summer’b. Bob vacationed in California. -> c. Harry wintered in Mexico. ->d. Harry and Julia honeymooned in Hawaii. ->

e. Philip one o’clocked at the airport. f. Jerome midnighted in the streets. g. Andrea nooned at the restaurant.

e.f,g -> express points in time rather than extended periods of time

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■ [Constraint 3] The word should contain the combination of sounds that English permit. a. psapr b. bfli c. flib d. prasp e. traf f. ftra

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Some other constraints determine how new words can be created from already existing forms with the help of special endings.

New automic particle named soleme entered the English language

■ Something with the properties of a soleme could be calledsolemic

■ To make something solemic is To solemicize

■ and call this process solemicization

■ How to pronounce ‘c’ in slemicize and solemic, respectively?[s] in solemicize and [k] in solemic

■ Where to put the stress? a) SOlemicize b) soLEmicize c) solemiCIZEb) soLEmicize

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Linguistic Competence■ Speakers of a language are able to produce and understand an unlimited number

of utterances, many of which are novel and unfamiliar.

■ Obviously speakers must in some sense ‘know’ the rules of their languages.

■ Although the speakers operate according to the rules, they are usually not consciously aware of them.

=> Linguistic competence is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language.

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Grammar in linguistics■ In investigating linguistic competence, linguists focus on the mental

system that allows human beings to form and interpret the sound, words, and sentences of their languages.

■ Linguist call this system a grammar.

The components of grammar:– Syntax: sentence formation– Morphology: word formation– Semantics: the interpretation of words and sentences– Phonetics: the articulation and perception of speech sounds– Phonology: the patterning of speech sounds

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■ The grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of their language -- rules for combining sounds into words (called phonology), rules of word formation (called morphology), rules for combining words into phrase and phrases into sentences (called syntax), as well as the rules for assigning meaning (called semantics).

■ The grammar, together with a mental dictionary (called lexicon in which we store specific information about all the words that we use: how they are pronounced, what they mean, etc.) represents our linguistic competence.

■ To understand the nature of language we must understand the nature of grammar.

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Grammar in linguistics

Traditional Grammar: Prescriptive approach

■ When you hear the word ‘grammar’ the sort of approach you may think of is prescriptive approach.

■ Prescriptive approach– You must not say ‘I didn’t see nobody.’ – You must say ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

■ The prescriptive approach has injunctions like ‘you must not end a sentence with a preposition’ or ‘you must not have double negatives’

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Linguistics: descriptive approach■ Linguistics takes a descriptive approach to language.

– linguistics is interested in describing languages -- what it is that people say.

■ As linguists, we’re not interested in what people ought to say, but what they actually do say.

■ If someone says:“Nuh, I didn’t see nobody and I didn’t do nothing”, or “I done nothing”

■ Linguists don’t talk about this as being right or wrongWe’re interested in describing this utterance, working out what words the speaker used, what forms they have, what they mean, and what rules the speaker has used to put the words together in this way. We may also want to find out which other speakers talk like this, and under what conditions.

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Linguistics: description and explanation

Linguistics does two things:

1) It describes the phenomena observed in particular human languages, and in human language in general

2) It also attempts to explain why the phenomena described are as they are.

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1. Generality

■ All languages have a grammar.If a language is spoken, it must have a phonetic and phonological system; since it has words and sentences, it must also have a morphology and a syntax; and since these words and sentences have systematic meanings, there must obviously be semantic principles as well.

■ To an untrained observer unfamiliar languages sometimes appear to have no grammar simply because their grammatical systems are different from those of more frequently studied languages.

■ How about sign languages?

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2. Parity

■ All grammars are Equal■ Nonstandard varieties of English permit sentences ‘He ain’t here’. ‘He didn’t do

nothing’.■ There is no such thing as a good grammar or a bad grammar.

– All grammars do essentially the same thing: they tell speakers how to form and interpret the words and sentences of their language.

■ Linguists don't even think of trying to rate languages as good or bad, simple or complex. They investigate language in much the same way that other scientist study the song of humpback whale - with a view to simply figuring out how it works.

– Scientist won’t count how many errors the song of the humpback whales contains. The song of the humpback whale is whatever the humpback whale decides to sing.

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3. Universality

■ Grammars are alike in basic ways – The existence of principles and properties shared by all human languages

■ Any language that has an /f/ sound almost certainly has an /s/ sound as well

■ All languages have a vowel that sounds like the [a] in father.

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4. Mutability

■ Grammars change over time

■ The features of language that are not universal and fixed are subject to change over time.

E.g., English negative constructions He ne speketh nawt. ('He does not speak.')

■ Linguists reject the view that languages attain a state of perfection at some point in their history and that subsequent changes lead to deterioration and corruption.

■ As noted above, there are simply no grounds for claiming that one language or variety of language is somehow superior to another.

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5. Inaccessibility

■ Grammatical Knowledge is subconscious and not accessible to introspection (that is, you can't figure out how it works just by thinking about it).

■ How the word “or” work?a) Mary drank tea or coffee.

Either Mary drank tea, or she drank coffee-I don't know which.

b) Mary didn't drink tea or coffee.It seems to mean 'and'- 'Mary didn't drink tea and she didn't drink coffee'

■ Being able to interpret the sentences is not the same thing as knowing why they have the particular meanings that they do.

■ Speakers of a language know what sounds right and what doesn't sound right, but they are not sure how they know.

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Group Activity: brilliant brand name

■ Imagine that you work at brand naming company and your job involves investing new name for products. Let’s vote which name is most attractive!

■ For each product, create two names one that contains the combination of sounds that English permit and the other that English don’t permit.

1) Cosmetics (Mascara, Lip gloss, Show and Foundation)

2) Sports & Fitness (Balance ball, Stainless steel water bottle, Yoga mat)

3) Baby products (Car seat, Baby carrier, Diaper, Pacifier)

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Hawaiian Possessive■ English spoken in Hawaii involves the form of the possessive pronoun that shows up

in the following context.– That belongs to me. It’s mines.

Make a list of other possessive pronoun forms in standard English by filling in the spaces below.

That belongs to you. It’s ______.That belongs to him. It’s ______.That belongs to her. It’s ______.That belongs to us. It’s ______.That belongs to them. It’s ______.

What process in language change appears to be responsible for the form mines?

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■ you/yours

■ us/ours

■ him/his

■ them/theirs

■ her/hers

■ We can infer that the Hawaiian form mines is following a regular pattern in which the possessive pronoun ends in -s .

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Hawaiian Possessive

Group activity

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Based on the following information, can you predict the plural verb form of "maliu"?

Singular Verb Plural verbnofo 'he sits' nonofo 'they sit'moe 'he sleeps' momoe 'they sleep'alofa 'he loves' alolofa 'they love'savali 'he walks' savavali 'they walk'maliu 'he dies' ________ 'they die'

Answer: maliliu

HW1 (at the end of Ch1)

■ Exercise 1■ Exercise 3■ Exercise 5■ Exercise 6

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