Introduction To Linguistics PDF

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS [LIN101] Language is everywhere, where man exist, language exist. Language is the raw material of a linguist, it serve as a natural resources from God. Language is the tools a linguist have to work on. Everything about linguistics is language. Linguistics is the scientif...

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS [LIN101] Language is everywhere, where man exist, language exist. Language is the raw material of a linguist, it serve as a natural resources from God. Language is the tools a linguist have to work on. Everything about linguistics is language. Linguistics is the scientific study of human languages. It studies all aspect of human language. To a layperson, the concept of linguistics is the ability to speak a number of languages. However linguistics has nothing to do with the number of language a person can speak, as a linguist, you may be competent in only one language, but you are familiar with the rules that govern language in general, and have linguistics knowledge about aspects that are common to most languages. On the other hand, your ability to speak more than one language means that you are a “polyglot” and not a linguist. WHO IS A LINGUIST: A linguist is an individual who engages himself in language study. Linguists are professionals or language specialist, who are equipped to analyze any language, regardless whether they speak the language or not. A linguist can collect data on languages that do not have written forms and propose letters of alphabet [orthography] for such language. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF LINGUISTICS To study human language Description of human language To write phonetic manual Comparing and constracting different languages Devising orthorgraphy for unwritten language Revising orthorgraphy for written language Preservation of language from extinction Compilation of dictionaries BRANCHES/SCOPE/AREAS OF LINGUISTICS Linguistics as a study cover various areas of human language which are usually discussed under two broad areas namely; 1. MICRO LINGUISTICS / THEORETICAL LINGUISTICS / DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS 2. MACRO LINGUISTICS / APPLIED LINGUISTICS MICRO LINGUISTICS: its also refer to theoretical linguistics, it show the basic constituents of a language. It’s the branch of linguistics that study the theoretical aspect of a language, it involve description of language, the analysis of language and the principles for different languages. The fields that are generally considered the core of micro linguistics, which are called [level of language analysis] are; PHONETICS PHONOLOGY MORPHOLOGY  SYNTAX SEMANTICS PHONETICS: This is the branch of linguistics that deal with the study of human speech sound. It study speech sound in general, all possible utterances human can produce. It has three branches, which are; ARTICULATORY PHONETICS: Its concerned with the speech sound productionthrough the organs of speech. ACOUSTIC PHONETICS: Its concerned about the transmission of speech sounds from the speaker to the listener. i.e how the speech sounds move through the air waves. AUDITORY PHONETICS: its concerned about the perception of speech sound through the mammalian ear. PHONOLOGY: its one of the branches of linguistics that deal with how speech sound are patterned or combine together in a particular language. It’s the arrangement of speech sound in a given language. MORPHOLOGY: It’s the study of internal structure of words. It deal with formation of word in a language. It’s concerned with how words are being form. SYNTAX: It deal with the grammatical arrangement of words in a language. How words are arranged to form phrase and sentence. SEMANTICS: It is the study of meaning in a language. MACROLINGUISTICS: It’s the branch of linguistics which involve the application of theoretical linguistics to the analysis of language in used. It’s the practicalization of theoretical linguistics to solve language problem. The sub-field that comes under this lebel include;- SOCIO LINGUISTICS HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS ETHNO LINGUISTICS / ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS PSYCO LINGUISTICS FORENSIC LIGUISTICS NEURO LIGUISTICS CLINICAL LINGUISTICS SOCIO LINGUISTICS: It is made up of two words, socio and linguistics, it’s the way language is being used in a society. It’s the study of language in its social and cultural context. Speakers of a particular language varies in the way they speak because of there society. HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS: It was developed in the 19 century, when linguists were concerned with the historical development of language. The aim of such investigation was to arrive at general hypothesis about how language changes over time,and it is known as [DIACRONIC LINGUISTICS]. It is concern with how language change over time. ETHNO LINGUISTICS: It is a field of linguistics which study language in relation to a particular ethnic group. Its often associated with regions where ethnicity plays a major role in language description. PSYCO LINGUISTICS: It is the study of psycological factors that enable human toacquire, used and understand language. It also study how child acquire their firstlanguage [L1]. It is the interface between psycology and linguistics FORENSIC LINGUISTICS: It’s the application of linguistics knowledge to solve legal issue, crime issue, court cases. It is concern with the language of the written law. Including the language use in the judicial process from the stage of arrest, through the interview, trial, charges and sentencing stage. NEURO LINGUISTICS: It’s the study of the neural mechanism in the brain, that is resposible for language comprehension, production and acquisation. It focused on investigating how the brain implement the processes that psyco linguistics propose in producing and comprehending language. The two neural mechanism resposible for language acquisation and comprehension are [Broca and wernicke] CLINICAL LINGUISTICS: It is the application of linguistics theory and principles to solve communication impairment in children and adults.. LANGUAGE AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS Language is as old as man. Language can simply be define as a means of transferring information, ideas, thought, feelings,to one another through the use of vocal tract or gestures. It’s the process where the encoder encode his/her ideas or information for decoder to decode with the use of speech organs or gestures. Language is primarily a means of conveying meaning from one person to another. It is human vocal sounds or graphic respresentation of signs and symbols for communication purpose. CHARACTERISTICS OF LANGUAGE LANGUAGE IS UNIVERSAL: Language is everwhere in the word. Where man exist, language exist because communication will need to take place, and communication can’t occur without language. LANGUAGE IS ARBITRARY: Its arbirary in the sence that, there is no inherent relation between the words of a language and the meaning they convey. E.G, there is no special reason while a female adult is called ‘woman’ in english, femine in french, ‘aurat’ in urdu. LANGUAGE IS CULTURALLY TRANSMITTED: Language is not in-born, it is not inheritence, but culturally transmitted. The environment determined the language you acquire and speak. LANGUAGE IS SYMBOLIC: Language consist of various sound symbols and their graphological counterpart that are employed to denote some objects, occurences and meaning. LANGUAGE IS SYSTEMATIC: Although language is symbolic, yet the symbols are arranged in a particular system. All language have their system of arrangements. LANGUAGE IS VOCAL: Language is primarily spoken. It is made up of vocal sounds produced by articulatory mechanism in the vocal tract. LANGUAGE IS DYNAMIC: Language its not stagnant, it changes from time to time, and language can also die. LANGUAGE IS PRODUCTIVE: Language has creativity and productivity. New words are being produce in every language across the globe. New expression and sentence can be produced. Human language is infinite. LANGUAGE IS STRUCTURAL: Every language has its own form of arrangement, in term of word order. E.G, yoruba language and english attest S.V.O, while arabic language attest V.S.O. FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE It perform informative function It perform emotive function It perform expressive function It perform declarative function Its used to settle dispute ANIMAL COMUNICATION Animal can be defined as any behaviour on one animal [sender] that tranfer information to other animals [reciever] and has an effect on the current or future behaviour of another animal. Animal use various forms to communicate, these forms are; Facial expressions; like dogs, cats, e.tc Gestures like peacocks Touches like ants, monkey, elephant Vocalization like birds, cow, lion, e.t.c DIFFERENT TYPES OF ANIMAL COMMUNICATION Lion ---- Roar to indicate hunger and pain Dog ---- Bark to indicate danger and yell to indicate pain Bedcock--- sings Bees ---- Dance to indicate availabilityof food, e.g round and sickle dance Spider --- it use elaborate gestures. Ants----- touches to send information The most important things here is that, they still pass information to each other. Animal communication is genetically transmitted unlike human language that is culturally transmitted. The communication is either intra specie or inter specie. REASONS FOR ANIMAL COMMUNICATION For preying For feeding For escaping For migration For mating Defending of territory To announce danger RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY 1) Phonetics and phonology are two different fields of linguistics which are related to one another. Phonetics is the concrete study of sounds. On the other hand, phonology is the abstract study of sounds. 2) Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the pronunciation of speech sound, however they both handle it differently. 3) When phonetics is a world phonology is a country. Phonology provide the raw material for the building of phonology 4) Where phonetics stop, phonology begins 5) Roach (1992:81) defines phonetics as the scientific study of speech. The central concern in phonetics are the discovery of how speech sounds are produced, how they are used in spoken language, how we can record speech sounds with written symbols, and how we hear and recognize different sounds. While Phonology, on the other hand, states “the study of the sound systems of languages. The most basic activity in phonology is phonemic analysis, in which the objective is to establish what thephonemes are in a language. 6) Another definition by Widdowson (1996:42). He claims that "the study of how the sounds of speech are actually made, is the business of phonetics.” He continues (1996:42) “the study of phonemes and their relations in sound systems is the business of phonology”. 7) Another definition is introduced by Kelly (2000:9). He declares: The study of pronunciation consists of two fields, namely phonetics and phonology. Phonetics refers to the study of sounds. A phonetician usually works in one or more of the following areas: physiological phonetics, articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, auditory phonetics and perceptual phonetics. He goes on defining phonology along with phonetics(2000:9) “if phonetics deals with the physical reality of speech sounds then phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with how we interpret and systematize sounds. Phonology deals with the system and pattern of the sounds which exist with particular language" 8) Another definition is stated by Yule (2006:30). He states that “phonetics is the general study of the characteristics of speech sounds” whereas, phonology, (2006:43-4), " is essentially the description of the system of patterns of speech sounds in a language. He continues that ”because of their theoretical status, phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of the sounds in language rather than phonetics that is concern with the actual physical articulation of speech sounds." 9) Sloat, Taylor & Hoard (1978:1) introduce phonology as “the science of speech sounds and sound patterns.” And they clarify their definition mentioning that a sound pattern we mean: 1) the set of sounds that occur in a given language 2) the permissible arrangement of these sounds in words and (3) the processes of adding or changing sound. Unlike phonetics they claim that ”the science of phonetics provides classifications of speech sounds. However they try to set a difference between both phonetic and phonology, “phonology employs these descriptions and classifications done by phonetic, to describe sound systems and explain sound processes. 10) In phonology, phonemic transcription is used and its enclosed with slant line / / while phonetic transcription is used in phonetics and its enclosed with square bracket [ ]. CONCLUSION In conclusion, we discover that both of them deal with speech sound both in different dimension. Phonetics deal with the description of speech sound while phonology deals with the organization of the speech sound being classify by phonetics. The central tothe study of phonology is phoneme PHONEME: phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit of word. Two sound are contrastive if interchanging the two can change meaning of the word. The number of phonemes in particular languages varies considerably, from a known minimum of ten in the Brazilian language Pirahã to a known maximum of 141 in the African language !Xũ. The average number seems to be about 25– 30.Phoneme symbols are always enclosed within slashes, and the symbol chosen for each phoneme is usually a phonetic symbol intended to suggest how that phoneme is most typically realized phonetically. Example in English /p/ - /b/: cap [kæp] and cab [kæb] A crucial point is that a single phoneme need not always get the same phoneticrealization. English /p/, for example, is phonetically an aspirated plosive [p ] in pin, buth an unaspirated plosive [p] in spin. Phonetically, then, we have [p in] and [spin], buth phonemically we have merely /pin/ and /spin/: the phonetic difference is predictable, and it ‘does not count’ in English. There is only one phoneme /p/ here, and English-speakers typically do not even notice the phonetic difference; we say that [p ] h and [p] are allophones of the phoneme /p/. ALLOPHONE: Allophones are the linguistically non-significant variants of each phoneme. They are different phonetic realization of phoneme. In phonology, an allophone is one of a set of multiple possible spoken sounds, used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. They are one of the phonetically distinct variants of a phoneme. Examples; the aspirated [t ] in ' op' and the non aspirated [t] in hT 'stop'. Allophones of English /l/ may be noticed if the 'light' [l] of leaf [ˈliːf] is contrasted with the 'dark' [ɫ] of feel [ˈfiːɫ]. The sound /t/ still same phoneme but different phonectic realization, in contrast to minimal pairs where we have two distinct phonemes in same environment and bring about change in meaning. MINIMAL PAIRS: Two words that are the same but differ only by a single sound in thesame position or environment and that have different meanings. A minimal pair is a pair of words with one phonemic difference only. In order to decide whether a pair of words is a minimal pair or not, you need to know what sounds make up the word, and you need to ignore the word's spelling. Examples: [sᴧm] ‘sum’ and [sᴧn] ‘sun’, [fɪl] ‘fill’ and [fɛl] ‘fell’, seal zeal FREE VARIATION: free variation is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or formsappearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers. Pronunciation of words may vary depending on the dialect and the speaker. Examples: economics, which may pronounced with /iː/ or /ɛ/ in the first syllable, or data, which can be pronounced as either /ˈdætə/ or /ˈdeɪtə/. either, in which "ei" can be pronounced as either /iː/ or /aɪ/, even by the same speaker. ASSIMILATION: is a common phonological process by which one sound becomes more like a nearby sound. Assimilation is an everyday occurrence in every human language. Assimilation usually occurs because two sounds share common features in place or manner. Thus, assimilation of consonants occurs when a consonant takes on features of another one. This can occur either within a word or between words. It includes progressive, regressive, coalescent, full and partial assimilation. for example, "handbag" is often pronounced [ˈhambag], /b/ becoming labialised as in "boot, That person is often pronounce as /ðæp ˈpɜːsən/, It could be better is pronounced as /kʊb bi ˈbetə/. When a sound adopts features of another sound, the process of articulation becomes much easier. This idea is confirmed by McMahon (2002, p.4) and Burleigh (2011, p.90). According to them, assimilation involves ease of articulation pressures and it is an important means of making pronunciation easier. Additionally, Eka et al. (2010, p64)provide three functions of assimilation: to save time, to anticipate other sounds and to ease articulation. Thus, one can conclude that the importance of assimilation is to make the process of speech easier. assimilation can occur within a word level or within word boundaries. PALATALIZATION: Palatalization is sometimes an example of assimilation. It involves change in the place or manner of articulation of consonants, or the fronting or raising of vowels. Example of palatalization in English, /t/-sound becomes ch-sounds, in word like projection. Project+ion. /t/ sound change to ch-sound. MORPHEME: Morpheme Can be define as the smallest meaningful grammatical unit of speech. The most basic component of grammatical analysis is the morpeme, it cannot be further broken down into smaller meaningful segments without changing its meaning. Any change in form of morpheme result in change in meaning. It may be a word, like “place” or “an,” or an element of a word, like in- and -ent in “independent.” The main difference between a morpheme and a word is that a morpheme sometimes does not stand alone, but a word, always stands alone. When a morpheme can stand alone, it is considered a root morpheme because it has a meaning of its own. (All word are morpheme but not all morpheme are word). A segment must possess three criteria before it can be considered a morpheme It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful segments without changing its meaning or leaving a meaningless remainder. It has relatively the same stable meaning in different verbal environments. TYPES OF MORPHEME Morpheme can be broadly divided into free and bound morphemes. FREE MORPHEME can stand alone independently with a specific meaning. It is a morpheme that can exist in isolation. For example, come, go, week. Free morpheme is also divided into two, which are Lexical and functional morphemes. Lexical Morpheme: They serve as the information carrier in a sentence. It for open class of word, new members of each class can be created easily. Such as Noun, verb, adjective. Examples: walk, drink, handsome, happy. Functional morphemes: it shows relationship among lexical morphemes. They belong to the closed class as new members are not accepted unlike lexical morpheme that accept new member. They include all functional words like pronouns, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Examples; and, but, or, inside, under, e.t.c. BOUND MORPHEME: it cannot stand alone. It is a dependent morpheme, it can't occur without being joined to a root. It is only meaningful when attached to a root. It's called affix. It's divided into inflectional and derivations morpheme. Derivational morpheme: Derivational morphemes tend to change the grammatical category of a word but not always.There can be multiple derivational morphemes per word and they can be prefixes, affixes, or suffixes. It alter the meaning of a word, when it being attached to the word. when combined with a root, it change the semantic meaning or the part of speech. Example; the word happiness, the addition of the bound morpheme (-ness) to the root (happy) changes the word from an adjective (happy) to a noun (happiness). Another example is in-depend-ent, the addition of prefix (in) and suffix (ent) Change the meaning. wonder become wonder-ful. It changes a word into an adjective Inflections morpheme: it change what a word does in terms of grammar, but does not create a new word. An inflectional morpheme is added to a noun, verb, adjective or adverb to assign a particular grammatical property to that word such as: tense, number, possession, or comparison. there are only eight "inflectional affixes" in English, and these are all suffixes. which serve a variety of grammatical functions when added to specific types of words. These grammatical functions are shown to the right of each suffix. -s noun plural -'s noun possessive -s verb present tense third person singular -ing verb present participle/gerund -ed verb simple past tense -en verb past perfect participle -er adjective comparative -est adjective superlative Determining inflections morpheme These do do not change the essential meaning or the grammatical category of a word. Adjectives stay adjectives, nouns remain nouns, and verbs stay verbs. In English, all inflectional morphemes are suffixes (i.e. they all only attach to the end of words). There can only be one inflectional morpheme per word Different realization of a morpheme is called allomorph ALLOMORPH: Allomorph is an alternative realization of a morpheme. Examples is the plural marker -s and the past tense marker -ed, that can be realize in different ways -s is realize as [s] in word like cats -s is realize as [z] in word like Dogs -s is realize as [iz] in word like busses -ed is realize as [t] in word like asked -ed is realize as [d] in word like planned -ed is realize as [id] in word like added Relationship between morpheme and allomorph A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a language. An allomorph, on the other hand, refers to the different forms of a single morpheme. FUNCTIONS OF MORPHEMES It is used to construct a complete word It transforms the function of words It has the ability to change function It is used to change the meaning of words. It is used to derived a new words It is used to change the grammatical class of a word It is the meaning bearer in a sentence. MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESS A morphological process is a means of changing a stem to adjust its meaning to fit its syntactic and communicational context. Affixiation: Affixiation occurs when a morpheme is attached to a root. Affixes are bound morphemes that must be attached to a root morpheme, it may occur at the beginning of a root i.e prefix, at the end of a root i.e suffix, when it surround a root word i.e circumflex, and some are inserted into a root, i.e infix. In English language, affixiation is the primary morphological processing constructing word. For examples Prefix: it occur before a root word. e.g 'un'believable", un is attached at the beginning of a the word "believable" Suffix: it occur after a root word. It attached at the end of independent morpheme. e.g suffix 's' that occur at the end of a noun to form plurality, as in boy(s) farmer(s). Reduplication: it's the process when a whole word or part of word is repeated to form a new words. e.g "tomtom". Reduplication is divided into two types; partial and total reduplication. Partial Reduplication: it occur when part of the root word are repeated and attach either at the before a root word or after. e.g, walkie talkie. Total Reduplication: it occur when the entire root word are copied to derive a new word. The whole word are repeated to form new word. Examples in Yoruba language; gbomogbomo (kidnapper), panápaná (fire killer). Compounding: it is the process in which two or more separate free morphemes are joined together to form a new compound word. e.g blackboard, payroll, e.t.c Refashioning: it is also called 'loan translation' because the concept are name base on description, a whole phrase or sentence is brought together to form a single noun. It is common in Yoruba language. Examples are ile iwe - School Ile ifowopamo - Bank CLIPPING: Its the process where the form of word are reduce without altering the meaning of the word or grammatical class. It reduces word to part of the word, and it share same meaning with the full form of the word. It is divided into back clipping, fore clipping and middle clipping. Back clipping: it is the process where the beginning of the word is retained and the back was reduced. Examples: exam from examination Gas from gasoline fore clipping: it involves the reduction of word at the beginning and the back is retained. Exampes; Phone from telephone Site from website plane from aeroplane Middle clipping: it is the reduction at the both sides of a word and the middle is retained. Example; Fridge from refrigerator Basic Constituent Order - English sentence constituent order: [S[NP VP]] - If VP has object complement: [S [NP VP[V NP]]] - This is our familiar S.V.O (Subj Verb Object) Examples: John break the table. [s[NPJohn[VPbreak[NP[Dthe [Ntable]]]]]] Relationship between morphology and syntax Morphology and syntax are an integral part of linguistics. They are subdivisions of the study of languages and together with phonetics, semantics and phonology contribute to the understanding of how a language is formed. Morphology deals with the understanding of how words are formed while syntax is focused on the way sentences are developed. Basically morphology is the study of the structure of words, while Syntax studies the structure of sentences. Morphology studies words through the structure of the word and the memesthat make up the words. Syntax studies words through their contribution to themeaning and order of the whole sentence or in the context of a phrase in a sentence. Morphology contributes to the understanding of words through the root word or the suffix and prefix that may be added. Syntax analyzes the meaning of the words within the sentence structure. Morphology and syntax contribute to the study of linguistics through the analyzing of words and sentences. Although they are both involved with the influence of words in language, one study looks at the word as its model to be studied, while the other looks at studying the words within a sentence and how their order and structure influence the meaning of the sentence. COMPILED BY RIDOHBEST [LISA PRESIDENT 21/22]