Exam Questions - Introduction to General Linguistics PDF

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Topics from within the scope of which the exam questions will be formulated 1. Why do we study language? What is language? Where is language? -- in society – sociolinguistics, sociology of language; in the individual – psycholinguistics; in the brain – neurolinguistics We study language in order to understand how it changes in time, what causes it to change, and what every single piece has anything to do with the rest of them. Knowing as much gives us the power to use it to our adventage in the best possible way. - лична интерпретация след четенето, нз дали няма още, което да се допълни (Marti) 2. Language and Linguistics. General overview. Scope and basic issues. Object-language vs. metalanguage. Type vs. token -- An object language is a language which is the "object" of study in various fields including logic, linguistics, mathematics, and theoretical computer science. The language being used to talk about an object language is called a metalanguage. Expressions in a metalanguage are often distinguished from those in an object language by the use of italics, quotation marks, or writing on a separate line.  the type–token distinction is a distinction that separates a concept from the objects which are

particular instances of the concept. For example, the particular bicycle in your garage is a token of the type of thing known as "The bicycle". 3. General Linguistics. Branches in the study of language. School vs. branch. Basic branches of internal and external linguistics -- To external Linguistics Saussure refers factors of geographical language spreading, conquests, migration, language politics which influence the correlation of dialects within a language, the formation of a literary language, etc. However, external factors, in Saussure’s mind, don’t touch upon an internal language system, arc not determining as they do not deal with the very device of language, its internal structure. The primary attention is paid by Saussure to internal Linguistics, stressing that internal is everything that somehow modifies system.

4. Major contemporary models and schools in the study of language – Structuralism, Functionalism, Chomskyan (Formal) linguistics, Cognitive linguistics. 5. The nature of the linguistic sign – Saussurean structuralism and Piercean semiotics. 6. Level theories in the study of language. Levels and units of linguistic analysis in the structuralfunctional paradigm (E. Benveniste). The concept of “rank”. -- This concept incorporates all the problematic issues of the relations between meaning and form, and the identified levels of linguistic analysis. Rank should be interpreted along the lines of sense, i.e. rank is the functional value of a linguistic element according to which we can distinguish a formally identical element as belonging to different strata or being a member unit of separate levels. concept of rank; Levels and units of linguistic analysis in the structural-functional paradigm (Emil Benveniste) levels of speech: the level of discourse; the textual level levels of language: the kategorematic level; the phraseme level; the lexical level; morphological level pre-sign levels: phonemes; merisms (substitutable but not segmentable) Emil Benvenist - the most outstanding proponent of the level theory of language distinguishes a sub or pre-meaningful level, which he calls the merismatic level and levels of inherently meaningful elements. Phonemes are claimed not to have any autonomous meaning - they are sense-distinguishers. They are functional elements in the construction or generation of meaning. As far as some of them tend to bring

about definite aesthetic or sensual associations they are held to possess paralinguistic, psychosemantic affective meaning generated on the principle of synaesthesia. Unit - an easy-to-isolate, autonomous, selfidentical, repetitive and ready-to-use entity which can function as an integrant and can be analyzed into linguistically relevant constituents (i.e. is segmentable). Two are the major methods used for isolating and defining linguistic units: segmentation and substitution. On the basis of their applicability Benvenist isolates the lowest and the highest levels so that the organic semeiotic language appears as being progressively (or productively) infinite and repressively (or in a reductionist perspective) finite. In his analysis Benvenist recognises on the presign level two sublevels - the phonemic one (whose units are your good acquaintances the phonemes) and the hypophonemic or merismatic (that of the distinctive features which are substitutable but are not segmentable). With the second we leave the realm of linguistic phenomena and enter the world of technicalities, physics and physiology. The major problematic issues are due to the regrettable fact that we can never strip form from meaning and at the same time can never perceive meaning unless its presented to our senses in a given material manifestation. Because of the discrete character of language as a semiotic system the elements contract two major types of relations between them - the relations between the elements belonging to one and the same level are distributional, those between units from different levels are integrative. A unit should be recognised as distinctive of a level if and only if it can be shown to turn into the integrant (or integral element) of the unit of the level higher in the hierarchy. Being an integrant is not identical to having sign-character. Merisms are only integrative in nature. They cannot be decomposed into anything that could possibly have linguistic relevance. Sentences on the other hand can hardly be thought of as having integrative power. They can’t constitute units of a higher level of the language system. They only form the building elements of the products of the system - texts. Decomposition reveals to us the formal make-up of units, integration points to the meaningful components of the units as signs. The form of a linguistic unit is defined as its property of being decomposable into constituents from a lower level. The sense of a linguistic unit is its property of being able to integrate units of a higher level. Sentences contain signs but are themselves no signs. They are messages. The defining property of a sentence is its being a predicative structure. The predicative function is realised in propositions. But since proposition is a term of logic and refers to the conceptual content only, in linguistics we speak of the kategorematic level (Gr. kategorema=Lat. praedicatum). A sentence is not a member of a formal class, so it is not a unit of the language system. In the framework of the level theory of a sign is the minimal constitutive unit of a sentence which can be identified as the same in other contexts and can be replaced by others without meaning transformation by other units in a fixed context. 7. Structural Saussurean linguistics. Basic notions. The dichotomies. System and structure

8. Functional linguistics (Halliday). Language as a chain of choices. The three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Grammar 9. Language and Communication. Design features of language. Functions of language. Functions of language: Nominative – as the name suggests, naming things. There is a whole science called onomastics dealing with this function of language Informational – the function whereby announcements are made, statements are formulated and opinions expressed. This is the function which allows people to talk about entirely new things. Emotive=Expressive – the function which allows the speaker to embed their feelings and attitudes in their speech. Directive – that is the function whereby language can exert immediate influence on somebody. Vocatives, imperatives, questions.

10. The cognitive basis of language. Language as a semiotic system. Linguistic units and conceptual categories. Grammatical encoding vs. lexical encoding.  Conceptual categories Language resides, not in dictionaries, but in the minds of the speakers of that language. Therefore, in order to understand the nature of language, we will also have a look at our conceptual world and how it has shaped the signs. The notion of concept may be understood as “a person’s idea of what something in the world is like”. Conceptual categories are concepts of a set as a whole. Whenever we perceive something, we automatically tend to categorize it. Thus, the world is not some kind of objective reality existing in and for itself but is always shaped by our categorizing activity, by our human experience. Conceptual categories are linguistic categories 11. Form, meaning and function in language. Ambiguity. 12. Meaningful building blocks: morphology. Types of morphemes. Derivational vs. inflectional morphology. Parts of speech. Grammatical categories; parts of speech membership and sensitivity to grammatical categories. Grammatical markers (means of encoding grammatical meanings). --Stark: In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished. In fusional languages and polysynthetic languages, this is often not the case. In the Latin word amo, "I love", for instance, the suffix -o marks indicative mood, active voice, first person, singular, present tense. Latin is a highly fusional language. Markers should be distinguished from the linguistic concept of markedness. An unmarked form is the basic "neutral" form of word, typically used as its dictionary lemma, such as – in English – for nouns the singular (e.g. cat versus cats), and for verbs the infinitive (e.g. to eat versus eats, ate and eaten). Unmarked forms (like the nominative case in certain languages) tend to be less likely to have markers, but this is not true for all languages (compare Latin). Conversely, a marked form may happen to have a zero affix, like the genitive plural of some nouns in Russian. аз това съм намерила -- Derivation is the morphological process which creates a word with a new meaning and/or category. Compounding - A compound is a morphologically complex word that is formed through combination of two or more free morphemes (roots). Derivational affixes: Form a word whose meaning is different from the meaning of the root or stem to which it attaches. Example: teach + -er = teacher Can change the lexical category (i.e. change a noun to a verb, change a verb to a noun, etc Ous- poison = NOUN poisonous= Adj Derivational vs. inflectional morphology Derivational morphemes generally: 1) Change the part of speech or the basic meaning of a word. Thus -ment added to a verb forms a noun (judg-ment). re-activate means "activate again." 2) Are not required by syntactic relations outside the word. Thus un-kind combines un- and kind into a single new word, but has no particular syntactic connections outside the word -- we can say he is unkind or he is kind or they are unkind or they are kind, depending on what we mean. 3) Are often not productive -- derivational morphemes can be selective about what they'll combine with, and may also have erratic effects on meaning. Thus the suffix -hood occurs with just a few nouns such as brother, neighbor, and knight, but not with most others. e.g., *friendhood, *daughterhood, or *candlehood. Furthermore "brotherhood" can mean "the state or relationship of being brothers," but "neighborhood" cannot mean "the state or relationship of being neighbors." 4) Typically occur between the stem and any inflectional affixes. Thus in governments,-ment, a derivational suffix, precedes -s, an inflectional suffix.

5) In English, may appear either as prefixes or suffixes: pre-arrange, arrange-ment. Inflectional morphemes: vary (or "inflect") the form of words in order to express grammatical features, such as singular/plural or past/present tense. Thus Boy and boys, for example, are two different forms of the "same" word; the choice between them, singular vs. plural, is a matter of grammar and thus the business of inflectional morphology. (Crystal, p. 90.) Inflectional Morphemes generally: 1) Do not change basic meaning or part of speech, e.g., big, bigg-er, bigg-est are all adjectives. 2) Express grammatically-required features or indicate relations between different words in the sentence. Thus in Lee love-s Kim: -s marks the 3rd person singular present form of the verb, and also relates it to the 3rd singular subject Lee. 3) Are productive. Inflectional morphemes typically combine freely with all members of some large class of morphemes, with predictable effects on usage/meaning. Thus the plural morpheme can be combined with nearly any noun, usually in the same form, and usually with the same effect on meaning. 4) Occur outside any derivational morphemes. Thus in ration-al-iz-ation-s the final -s is inflectional, and appears at the very end of the word, outside the derivational morphemes -al, -iz, -ation. 5) In English, are suffixes only. 13. Word formation. Basic and minor types of word-formation. Word formation and/or word creation. 14. Types of meaning – grammatical vs. lexical meaning; word meaning vs. sentence meaning (compositionality); denotative vs. connotative meaning. Meaning vs. reference. Basic approaches to the study of meaning 15. Paradigmatic sense relations: homonymy, polysemy, hyponymy, meronymy, oppositeness of meaning (all types) and synonymy. homonymy, polysemy, hyponymy, meronymy, oppositeness of meaning (all types) and synonymy. • Homonymy is the situation in which one word-form has two or more very different meanings, felt to be unrelated for example, the bank of a river, and the bank that gives or denies you overdraft facilities. Bank (1) and bank (2) are absolute homonyms. There are special cases of partial homonymy – sometimes the words sound the same but look different: for example, the waist that you attach your belt around versus the waste that you throw in the dustbin. These are homophones. Alternatively, words may look identical but sound different – thus you might weep a single tear if you tear your best jacket. These are homographs. • Polysemy: the existence of several meanings for a single word or phrase. Some words develop a whole family of meanings, each new meaning often forming yet another starting point for more definitions. If in a good dictionary you were to look up such words as "natural, good, loose, free", and "real"; you would be surprised at the number of meanings listed. Homonymy vs. polysemy: polysemous meanings are distinguished from homonimic ones because the former are somehow related (typically by semantic extension), whereas the latter are not: drive (cattle / a car). Sometimes this distinction is not clear: cool (fresh/calm), ear (organ / of corn). • Hyponymy: a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another word, its hypernym. For example, scarlet, vermilion, carmine, and crimson are all hyponyms of red (their hypernym), which is, in turn, a hyponym of colour. • Meronymy: Meronymy is a semantic relation used in linguistics. A meronym denotes a constituent part of, or a member of something. For example, 'finger' is a meronym of 'hand' because a finger is part of a hand, and ‘hand’ is the holonym. Similarly 'wheel' is a meronym of 'automobile'. • Synonymy: Synonymy refers to the relationship of similarity of identity in meaning. Synonyms are the words which have the same of very nearly the same essential meaning. • Complementaries: Complementaries constitute a very basic form of oppositeness and display inherent binarity in perhaps its purest form. Some definite conceptual area is partitioned by the terms of the opposition into two mutually exclusive compartments, with no possibility of 'sitting on the fence'.

Hence, if anything (within the appropriate area) falls into one of the compartments, it cannot fall into the other, and if something does not fall into one of the compartments, it must fall into the other (this last criterion distinguishes complementaries from mere incompatibles). For example: dead:alive, true:false, obey: disobey, inside:outside. • Antonymy: Antonymy is used for oppositeness of meaning: words that are opposites are antonyms. They are the most extensively studied opposites. Examples: kind:cruel clever:dull pretty:plain polite:rude long:short fast:slow • Directionals: *Reversives: Reversives belong to a broader category of directional opposites which include straightforward directions such as up:down, forwards:backwards, into:out of, north: south, and so on, and extremes along some axis, top:bottom (called antipodals in Cruse (1986)). Reversives have the peculiarity of denoting movement (or more generally, change) in opposite directions, between two terminal states. They are all verbs. The most elementary exemplars denote literal movement, or relative movement, in opposite directions: rise:fall,advance:retreat, enter:leave. *Converses: Converses are often considered to be a subtype of directional opposites. They are also, paradoxically, sometimes considered to be a type of synonym. There are valid reasons for both views. Take the pair above:below, and three objects oriented as follows: A B C We can express the relation between A and B in two ways: we can say either A is above B, or B is below A. The logical equivalence between these two expressions is what defines above and below as converses. But since both are capable of describing the same arrangement, a unique situation among opposites, there is some point in thinking of them as synonyms conditioned by the order of their arguments. Consider now, however, A and C in relation to B: clearly A is above B and C is below B, hence above and below denote orientations in opposite directions, and are therefore directional opposites. *Antipodals: another type of opposites. they represent 2 extremes in 2 directions (start-finish, up-down). 16. Putting concepts together: syntax. Words, phrases, clauses and sentences. Hierarchicity, linearity, constituency (categoriality). Types of sentences and types of clauses Syntax is concerned with the means available in language for putting words together in sentences. It enhances the creativity of expression in language. The syntax of a language provides a ready-made system of principles for the construction (production by a speaker) and interpretation ( interpretation by the hearer) of novel sentences – sentences that have never before been uttered in the language and express new and old meanings in new ways. Syntactic units are grammatical items showing unified behaviour, that behave as indivisible wholes.Words, morphemes and sentences are syntactic units. So are the intermediate word- groups – clauses and phrases. The sentence is the largest linguistic unit showing grammatical structure, the largest unit over which grammatical rules or patterns apply. Sentences which contain just one verb, and specify a single event, are called simple sentences. Simple sentences can be joined together to form complex sentences, which refer to combination of events. A sentence made up of a string of words that observe the syntactic patterns of a language is grammatical; otherwise it is an ungrammatical string. Simple sentence – the most basic type of sentence, containing only one clause. E.g.: Run! The ice melts quickly. Compound sentences – they consist of two or more independent clauses (or simple sentences) joined by coordinating conjunctions. E.g.: Canada is rich Country, but still has many poor people. Special cases of compound sentences – sometimes coordinating conjunction can join two complex sentences or one simple and one compound, e.g.: The package arrives this morning, but I took it after I

returned from the shop. Complex sentences –they consist of one independent clause and at least one dependant clause. Unlike the compound sentences, complex sentences contain clauses that are not equal. E.g.: Despite he invited me to the party, I didn’t want to go. Sentences cannot be adequately described in terms as strings of units of various sizes and types. It is necessary to also recognize the grammatical relations or roles borne by the component units. These are characterized of both form and meaning. Grammatical roles fall into three general types according ...