Branches of Linguistics PDF

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Unit 1 Moisés A. Bittner Phonetics and Phonology Autumn Term What is Linguistics?  It is 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 into ...

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Unit 1

Moisés A. Bittner Phonetics and Phonology Autumn Term

What is Linguistics?  It is 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 into use? (Performance/Language Processing)

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Language ‘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)

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‘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)

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Importance of Language  The most important tool ever invented.  Distinguishes us from other creatures.  Provides a medium to think effectively,

communicate interpersonally and collaborate with other people in work.

 Impossible to imagine a world without language.

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Languages of the World

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Hierarchy of Language  Texts/discourses  Sentences/utterances  Clauses  Phrases

 Words  Morphemes  Syllables  Phonemes

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Main Branches of Linguistics  Phonetics  Phonology  Morphology

 Syntax  Semantics

Semiotics*

 Pragmatics

* the study of sign and symbol systems.

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Phonetics  Phonetics is about the physical aspect of sounds. It studies the

production, transmission, and perception of speech sounds called phones in all living languages, including:  Production of speech, that is how speech sounds are actually made:

Articulatory Phonetics  Transmission of speech sounds (physical characteristics such as colour, loudness, amplitude, frequency): Acoustic Phonetics.  Perception of the sounds by human brain: Auditory Phonetics.  Phonetic transcriptions are done using the square brackets [ ].  φonos (phonos: sounds) and ikos (ikos: treatise, science, or study).

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Phonology  Phonology studies the sound system of specific languages.  It is about the abstract aspect of sounds and it studies the phonemes.  Phonemic transcriptions adopt the slash / /.  Phonology is about establishing what are the phonemes in a given language, i.e. those sounds that can bring a difference in meaning between two words.  φonos (phonos: sounds), and logos (logos: study)

 Phoneme (from the Greek: φώνημα, phōnēma, ‘a sound uttered’) is

the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances in spoken language. /tS/ 9

Morphology  Studies the formation of words from smaller units

called morphemes.  Morpheme: minimal meaningful language unit. (-ed, -ing)

 Grapheme(s): written symbol to represent speech.

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Syntax  The syntax of a language deals with the grammatical

structure of a language.  Grammar is the structural foundation of our ability to

express ourselves.  Descriptive

grammar: structure actually used by speakers and writers.  Prescriptive grammar: structure that should be used. 11

 Rules that govern the formation of sentences from words.

 Syntactic phrases include:  Noun Phrase : a tall man, the bus  Verb Phrase : travel around, hit the ball  Prepositional Phrase : in the class, at the club  Adjective Phrase : Very good, nice girl  The Grammatical Rules:  SVO: eg. English  SOV: eg . Hindi

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Semantics  Study of language meaning.  The study of conventional, ‘compositional meaning’.  Concerned with not only the meaning of words, but

also that of morphemes and of sentences.  Lexical semantics study how and what the words of a

language denote. 13

Semantic Relations Exempli gratia:      

Pretty and attractive are synonyms. Good and bad are antonyms. Animal is a hypernym of mammal which is a hypernym of dog. Dog is a hyponym of mammal which is a hyponym of animal. Bark is a meronym of tree which is a meronym of forest. Forest is a holonym of tree which is a holonym of bark.

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Pragmatics  Pragmatics is the study of meaning in context.  Pragmatics pays heed to social conventions and cultural norms –

such as those of politeness, formality, and familiarity – and also to prosody, intonation, facial expressions, and gestures, all of which can vary considerably from one context to the next.

 Pragmatics, then, is a very broad and multifaceted field concerned with

the communicative functions of language.

 Essentially it is the study of language meaning and use in context:

interpersonal, social, cultural. It takes into account what a speaker means, implies, and aims to communicate with an utterance. So it is a particularly important area for language learners. 18

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References  Adapted from: Verma, Apurv & Prasad, Ashish, 2012. Branches of Linguistics. Available at:

http://es.slideshare.net/dapurv5/branches-of-linguistics-11652624

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics  http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Linguistics  http://linguistics.wfu.edu/Some_basics.html  https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-linguistics/what-

is-linguistics

 http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/a-pragmatic-note

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