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Lecture one
Traditional definitions of linguistics: typical subfields of linguistics
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Traditional definitions of linguistics.
- Recognizing and revising such definitions.
- An overview of typical subfields of linguistics.
- Approaches to language studies/linguistics: synchronic, diachronic, etc.
- Introducing modern linguistics with its up-to-date interdisciplinary fields.
Sources/References
- Meyer, Charles F. (2009). Introducing English Linguistics.
- Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook
What is Linguistics?
Linguistics is often (but not usually) defined as 'the scientific study of language or of
particular languages' (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary). Bauer (2007) likewise states
that 'a typical dictionary definition of linguistics is something like ‘the science of language’.
However he (ibid) believes that such a definition is not always helpful, for a number of
reasons:
• Such a definition does not make clear in what respects linguistics is
scientific, or what is meant by science in this context.
• Such a definition masks the fact that it is, for some linguists, controversial to term their
subject a science.
• Such a definition fails to distinguish linguistics from related fields such as philology.
• The word ‘science’ may carry with it some misleading connotations.
A rather looser definition, such as ‘linguistics is the study of all the phenomena involved
with language: its structure, its use and the implications of these’, might be more helpful,
even if it seems vaguer.
It is thus important to note that although there is no one and the same definition of the term
'linguistics', it generally studies, tackles and investigates different aspects of human
language in a systematic and scientific manner.
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What does linguistics cover ?
Linguistics deals with human language. This includes deaf sign-languages, but usually
excludes what is often termed BODY-LANGUAGE (a term which itself covers a number of
different aspects of the conscious and unconscious ways in which physiological actions and
reactions display emotions and attitudes).
Human language is just one way in which people communicate with each other, or gather
information about the world around them. The wider study of informative signs is called
SEMIOTICS, and many linguists have made contributions to this wider field.
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One obvious way of studying language is to consider what its elements are, how they are
combined to make larger bits, and how these bits help us to convey messages. The first part
of this, discovering what the elements are, is sometimes rather dismissively termed
TAXONOMIC or classificatory linguistics. But given how much argument there is about
what the categories involved in linguistic description are, this is clearly an important part of
linguistics, and is certainly a prerequisite for any deeper study of language.
The study of the elements of language and their function is usually split up into a number of
different subfields.
1. PHONETICS deals with the sounds of spoken language: how they are made, how they
are classified, how they are combined with each other and how they interact with each other
when they are combined, how they are perceived. It is sometimes suggested that phonetics
is not really a part of linguistics proper, but a sub-part of physics, physiology, psychology
or engineering (as in attempts to mimic human speech using computers). Accordingly, the
label LINGUISTIC PHONETICS is sometimes used to specify that part of phonetics which
is directly relevant to the study of human language.
2. PHONOLOGY also deals with speech sounds, but at a rather more abstract level. While
phonetics deals with individual speech sounds, phonology deals with the systems which
incorporate the sounds. It also considers the structures the sounds can enter into (for
example, syllables and intonational phrases), and the generalisations that can be made about
sound structures in individual languages or across languages.
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3. MORPHOLOGY deals with the internal structure of words – not with their structure in
terms of the sounds that make them up, but their structure where form and meaning seem
inextricably entwined. So the word cover is morphologically simple, and its only structure
is phonological, while lover contains the smaller element love and some extra meaning
which is related to the final <r> in the spelling. Another way of talking about this is to say
that morphology deals with words and their meaningful parts.
4. SYNTAX is currently often seen as the core of any language, although such a prioritising
of syntax is relatively new. Syntax is concerned with the ways in which words can be
organised into sentences and the ways in which sentences are understood. Why do
apparently parallel sentences such as Pat is easy to please and Pat is eager to please have
such different interpretations (think about who gets pleased in each case)?
5. SEMANTICS deals with the meaning of language. This is divided into two parts,
LEXICAL SEMANTICS, which is concerned with the relationships between words, and
SENTENCE SEMANTICS, which is concerned with the way in which the meanings of
sentences can be built up from the meanings of their constituent words. Sentence semantics
often makes use of the tools and notions developed by philosophers; for example, logical
notation and notions of implication and denotation.
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6. PRAGMANTICS deals with the way the meaning of an utterance may be influenced by
its speakers or hearers interpret it in context. For example, if someone asked you Could you
close the window?, you would be thought to be uncooperative if you simply answered Yes.
Yet if someone asked When you first went to France, could you speak French? Yes would
be considered a perfectly helpful response, but doing something like talking back to them in
French would not be considered useful. Pragmatics also deals with matters such as what the
difference is between a set of isolated sentences and a text, how a word like this is
interpreted in context, and how a conversation is managed so that the participants feel
comfortable with the interaction.
7. LEXICOLOGY deals with the established words of a language and the fixed
expressions whose meanings cannot be derived from their components: idioms, clichés,
proverbs, etc. Lexicology is sometimes dealt with as part of semantics, since in both cases
word-like objects are studied.
In principle, any one of these levels of linguistic analysis can be studied in a number of
different ways.
• They can be studied as facets of a particular language, or they can be studied across
languages, looking for generalisations which apply ideally to all languages, but more often
to a large section of languages. The latter type of study is usually called the study of
LANGAUGE UNIVERSALS, or LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY if the focus is on particular
patterns of recurrence of features across languages.
They can be studied as they exist at some particular time in history (e.g. the study of the
morphology of fifteenth-century French, the
study of the syntax of American English in 2006, the phonetics of the languages of the
Indian subcontinent in the eighteenth century) or they can be studied looking at the way the
patterns change and develop over time. The first approach is called the SYNCHRONIC
approach, the second the DIACHRONIC or historical approach.
They can be studied with the aim of giving a description of the system of a particular
language or set of languages, or they can be studied with the aim of developing a theory of
how languages are most efficiently described or how languages are produced by speakers.
The first of these approaches is usually called DESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS, the second
is often called THEORITICAL LINGUISTICS.
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They can be treated as isolated systems, although all speakers talk in the same way as each
other at all times, or they can be treated as systems with built-in variability, variability
which can be exploited by the language user to mark in-group versus out-group, or to show
power relations, or to show things as diverse as different styles and personality traits of the
speaker. The latter types are dealt with as part of SOCIOLINGUISTICS, including matters
such as DIALECTOLOGY.
We can study these topics as they are in the adult human, or we can study the way they
develop in children, in which case we will study LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Perhaps
more generally, we can view the development of any of these in the individual human, that
is we can take the ONTOGENETIC point of view, or we can consider the way each has
developed for the species, taking the PHYLOGENETIC point of view.
Finally, most of these facets of linguistics can be studied as formal
systems (how elements of different classes interact with each other, and how the system
must be arranged to provide the outputs that we find in everyday language use).
Alternatively, they can be studied in terms of how the use to which language is put in
communication and the cognitive functions of the human mind shape the way in which
language works (iconicity, the notion that language form follows from meaning to a certain
extent, is thus a relevant principle in such studies). This is the difference between FORMAL
and FUNCTIONAL approaches to language.
In principle, Bauer (2007) argues, each of these choices is independent, giving a huge range
of possible approaches to the subject matter of linguistics.
Many people are less interested in the precise workings of, say, phonology than they are in
solving problems which language produces for humans. This study of language problems
can be called APPLIED LINGUISTICS though a word of warning about this label is
required. Although there are people who use the term applied linguistics this broadly, for
others it almost exclusively means dealing with the problems of language learning and
teaching. Language learning (as opposed to language acquisition by infants) and teaching is
clearly something which intimately involves language, but often it seems to deal with
matters of educational psychology and pedagogical practice which are independent of the
particular skill being taught. Other applications of linguistics may seem more centrally
relevant. These include:
(NB: the following will be detailed and be the subject matter of the next lecture).
What does linguistics cover ?
- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
- FORENSIC LINGUISTICS
- LANGUAGE POLICY
- LEXICOGRAPHY
- MACHINE TRANSLATION
- SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY (CLINICAL LINGUISTICS included)
- SPEECH RECOGNITION (VOICE RECOGNITION included)
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- SPEECH ANALYSIS
- TEACHING
Other subfields of linguistics include the following:
- AREAL LINGUISTICS
- COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS
- COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS (CORPUS LINGUISTICS included)
- EDUCATIONAL LINGUISTICS
- ETHNOLINGUISTICS (ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS included)
- MATHEMATICAL LINGUISTICS
- SOCIOLINGUISTICS
- PSYCHOLINGUISTICS
NEUROLINGUISTICS
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Lecture two
Modern linguistics with its up-to-date applications and subfields
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Modern linguistics with its up-to-date applications and subfields (a continuation of the
previous lecture).
- Understanding the relationships between such applications and subfields and language use
in real life.
- Modern terms used in today's linguistics (scattered throughout the lecture).
Sources/References
- Meyer, Charles F. (2009). Introducing English Linguistics.
- Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook.
Introduction
Throughout the previous lecture and so far, we have come to recognize the denominations
(names/classifications) of modern linguistic applications as well as up-to-date subfields of
modern linguistics. To illustrate this couple of points, Bauer (2007) states that "Other
applications of linguistics may seem more centrally relevant. These include:
Artificial Intelligence
Turing (1950) suggested that a machine should be termed intelligent when humans could
interact with it without realising they were not interacting with another human. Among
many other problems, this involves the machine being able to produce something akin to
human language.
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Forensic Linguistics
This deals with the use of language in legal contexts, including matters such as the
linguistic techniques of cross examination, the identification of speakers from taperecordings, and the identification of authorship of disputed documents.
Language Policy
Some large organisations and nations have language policies to provide guidelines on how
to deal with multilingualism within the organisation.
Lexicography
The creation of dictionaries; although some people claim that this is not specifically to do
with linguistics, it is a linguistic study in that it creates vocabulary lists for individual
languages, including lists of things like idioms, and in translating dictionaries provides
equivalents in another language.
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Machine Translation
The use of computers to translate a written text from one language to another.
Speech and Language therapy
Speech and language therapists deal with people who, for some reason, have not acquired
their first language in such a way that they can speak it clearly, or with the re-education of
speakers who have lost language skills, e.g. as the result of a stroke. The linguistic aspects
of this are sometimes called CLINICAL LINGUISTICS.
Speech Recognition
The use of computers to decode spoken language in some way; this may include computers
which can write texts from dictation, phone systems which can make airline bookings for
you without the presence of any human, or computers which can accept commands in the
form of human language. More specifically, VOICE RECOGNITION can be used for
security purposes so that only recognised individuals can access particular areas.
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Speech Analysis
The use of computers to produce sound waves which can be interpreted as speech.
Teaching
It is clear that second- and foreign-language teaching
involve, among other things, linguistic skills, but so does much mother-language teaching,
including imparting the ability to read and to write. At more advanced levels, teaching
students to write clearly and effectively may involve some linguistic analysis.
Another way of looking at what linguistics covers is by taking the list of topics given at the
head of this section as being some kind of core, and then thinking of all the types of
‘hyphenated’ linguistics that are found.
Areal Linguistics
Deals with the features of linguistic structure that tend to characterise a particular
geographical area, such as the use of retroflex consonants in unrelated languages of the
Indian subcontinent.
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Comparative linguistics
Deals with the reconstruction of earlier stages of a language by comparing the languages
which have derived from that earlier stage.
Computational Linguistics
Deals with the replication of linguistic behaviour by computers, and the use of computers in
the analysis of linguistic behaviour. This may include CORPUS LINGUISTICS the use of
large bodies of representative text as a tool for language description.
Educational Linguistics
Investigates how children deal with the language required to cope with the educational
system.
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Ethonlinguistics
Deals with the study of language in its cultural context. It can also be called
ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS.
Mathematical Linguistics
Deals with the mathematical properties of languages or the grammars used to describe those
languages.
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Neurolinguistics
Deals with the way in which linguistic structures and processes are dealt with in the brain.
Psycholinguistics
Deals with the way in which the mind deals with language, including matters such as how
language is stored in the mind, how language is understood and produced in real time, how
children acquire their first language, and so on.
Sociolinguistics
Deals with the way in which societies exploit the linguistic choices open to them, and the
ways in which language reflects social factors, including social context.
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Conclusion
We can finish by pointing out that the history of linguistic thought is itself a fascinating area
of study, since ideas about language are closely related to the philosophical fashions at
different periods of history, and often reflect other things that were occurring in society at
the time.
Although we have so far discussed a big number of linguistic applications and subfields,
Bauer (2007), as an instance, states that Even this overview is not complete. It indicates,
though, just how broad a subject linguistics is.
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Lecture three
Linguistic applications and subfields and language use in real life
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Chomsky's influence on linguistics/grammar.
- Competence and performance.
- Transformational-generative grammar.
Grammaticality and acceptability.
Sources/References
- Kasher, Asa (ed.) (1991). The Chomskyan Turn. Cambridge MA and Oxford: Blackwell.
- Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook ---------------- (2001).
Morphological Productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Meyer, Charles F. (2009). Introducing English Linguistics.
Chomsky's influence
Noam Chomsky is the world’s most influential linguist. His influence can be seen in many
ways, from the expansion of linguistics as an academic subject in the wake of his early
work on the nature of grammars to the way in which even linguists who do not agree with
him define their position in relation to his. His ideas have attracted many brilliant people to
take up linguistics and contribute to the study of language. It has become common to talk of
a ‘Chomskyan revolution’ in linguistics beginning in the late 1950s or early 1960s as the
influence of his teaching permeated the way in which language was viewed and was
discussed. If the term ‘revolution’ may be a little over-dramatic, linguistics certainly took
what Kasher (1991: viii) calls a ‘Chomskyan Turn’ at that point.
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Competence and performance
Chomsky also distinguishes between the speakers’ actual knowledge of the language, which
is termed COMPETENCEE, and the use of that knowledge, which is termed
PERFORMANCE… Any piece of text (spoken or written) represents a performance of
language, which will match the speaker’s competence more or less inaccurately. Thus
performance is often taken as a poor guide to competence, but competence is the object of
study for the linguist.
As with so many of the claims Chomsky makes, this one has been the subject of criticism,
some focusing on the structured nature of variation within performance and the
correspondingly variable nature of competence, some focusing on the performance as a
body of evidence whose close analysis can lead to a more sophisticated appreciation of how
the speaker-listener’s competence might be structured (the first of these criticisms comes
from sociolinguists, the second from corpus linguists and psycholinguists). It also seems
that it can be difficult to tell whether a particular phenomenon is best seen as a matter of
competence or a matter of performance, despite the apparently clear-cut division between
the two (see e.g. Bauer 2001: 29-32).
Generativism and transformationalism
Chomskyan grammar in the early days was regularly termed ‘generative transformational’,
and while the label is less used today, the principles remain unchanged.
The term ‘generate’ in generative is to be understood in a mathematical sense, whereby the
number one and the notion of addition can be used to generate the set of integers or where
2n can be used to generate the sequence 2, 4, 8, 16…. In linguistics a generative grammar is
one which contains a series of rules… which simultaneously (a) confirm (or otherwise) that
a particular string of elements belongs to the set of strings compatible with the grammar and
(b) provide at least one grammatical description of the string (if there is more than one
description, the string is ambiguous) (see Lyons 1968: 156).
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The first thing to notice about this is that a generative grammar is a FORMAL grammar. It
is explicit about what is compatible with it. This is in direct contrast to most pedagogical
grammars, which leave a great deal of what is and is not possible up to the intuition of the
learner. In practice, this often leads to disputes about how much the grammar is expected to
account for. To use a famous example of Chomsky’s (1957: 15), is 'Colourless green ideas
sleep furiously'.
to be accepted as a sentence generated by the grammar, on a par with 'Fearless red foxes
attack furiously' (and, significantly, different from Furiously sleep ideas green colourless,
which the grammar should not generate)? If so, its oddness must be due to some semantic
or pragmatic compatibility problems which are not part of the syntax. Alternatively, should
the grammar specify that sleep is not compatible with furiously and that abstract nouns
cannot be modified by colour adjectives (although, having said that, I have seen the
expression green ideas in use, where green meant ‘ecologically sound’)? In 1957 Chomsky
was clear that the grammar would and should generate this sentence, despite its superficial
oddity. McCawley (1971: 219) supports this view, claiming that ‘A
person who utters [My toothbrush is alive and is trying to kill me] should be referred to a
psychiatric clinic, not to a remedial English course.’ Despite such problems, the explicitness
of Chomskyan grammar is one of its great strengths. It has led to computational approaches
to linguistics in which (partial) grammars are tested by implementing them on computer,
and such approaches have implications for the eventual use of natural languages by
computer systems.
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The second thing to notice is that although the rules in linguistics are usually stated as
operations which look as though they are instructions to produce a particular string, in
principle they are neutral between the speaker and the listener, merely stating that the string
in question does or does not have a coherent parse.
Grammaticality and acceptability
In principle, something is GRAMMATICAL if it is generated by the grammar, and
ungrammatical if it is not. Since we do not have complete generative grammars of English
(or any other language) easily available, this is generally interpreted as meaning that a
string is grammatical if some linguist believes it should be generated by the grammar, and
ungrammatical otherwise. Given what was said above, it should be clear that there is a
distinction to be drawn between strings which are grammatical and those which are
ACCEPTABLE, that is, judged by native speakers to be part of their language. 'Colourless
green ideas sleep furiously' is possibly grammatical, but may not be acceptable in English
(though poems have been written using the string). There’s lots of people here today is
certainly acceptable, but it might not be grammatical if the grammar in question requires the
verb to agree with the lots (compare Lots of people are/*is here today). Although the
asterisk is conventionally used to mark ungrammatical sequences (this generalises on its
meaning in historical linguistics, where it indicates ‘unattested’), it is sometimes used to
mark unacceptable ones.
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Lecture four
Language, Semantic, Phonological, Syntactic and Absolute universals
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Language universals.
- Semantic universals.
- Phonological universals.
- Syntactic universals.
- Absolute universals – universal tendencies; implicational – non implicational universals.
Sources/References
- Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook.
- Ipsen, Guido (1999). The Interactive MultiMedia Linguistics for Beginners Textbook.
Language universals
Nearly five thousand languages are spoken in the world today. They seem to be quite
different, but still, many of them show similar principles, such as word order. For example,
in languages such as English, French, and Indian, the words of the clause take the order of
first the subject, then the verb, and then the direct object.
There even exist basic patterns or principles that are shared by all languages. These patterns
are called universals.
When the same principles are shared by several languages, we speak of language types.
There are several examples for universals.
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Semantic universals
There are semantic categories that are shared by all cultures and referred to by all
languages- these are called semantic universals. There are many examples of semantic
universals. Let's discuss two of them:
One semantic universal regards our notion of color. There exist eleven basic color terms:
black, white, red, green, blue, yellow, brown, purple, pink, orange, and gray. The pattern
that all languages universally abide by, is that they do not entertain a notion of a color term
outside of that range. This means, any imaginable color is conceived of as a mixture, shade,
or subcategory of one of these eleven basic color terms. As a result, one way of classifying
languages is by color terms. The eleven color terms are not in usage equally among the
languages on Earth. Not all languages have all basic color terms. Some have two, some
three, and some four. Others have five, six, or seven, and some have eight to eleven. Those
with two color terms always have black and white, those with three black, white, and red,
and those with more have additional basic color terms according to the order in the list
given above. This is a universal pattern. The languages which have the same basic color
terms in common belong to the same language type. Hence, we find seven classes of
languages according to this scheme.
Semantic universals
Another semantic universal is the case of pronouns. Think of what it is you do when you
talk to someone about yourself. There is always the "I", representing you as the speaker,
and the "you", meaning the addressee. You could not possibly do without that, and neither
could a speaker of any other language on earth. Again, we find a universal pattern here.
Whenever you do not talk about yourself as a person, but as a member of a group, you use
the plural "we". English is restricted to these two classes of pronouns: singular and plural,
each in the first, second, and third person. All languages that evince this structure are
grouped into one language type. There are other languages that make use of even more
pronouns. In some languages, it is possible to address two people with a pronoun, that
specifically indicates, not just their being plural, but also their being 'two' people; this is
then the dual pronoun.
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Other examples are languages that have pronouns to refer to the speaker and the addressee
together, called inclusive pronouns. Exclusive pronouns refer to the speaker together with
people other than the addressee. However, these are not among the European languages.
Phonological universals
Different languages may have very different sets of vowels. If you are familiar with a few
foreign languages, you may find it difficult to believe there are universal rules governing
the distribution of vowels, but they do exist. Remember our example of basic color terms: A
similar pattern could be drawn on the basis of the vowel system. Languages with few
vowels always have the same set of vowel types. And if a language has more vowels, it is
always the same type of vowel that is added to the set. These vowels may not always sound
exactly the same, but they are always created at the same location in our vocal apparatus.
Syntactic universals
Remember the word order of English I mentioned above. Hmhm, you say: that cannot be a
universal rule, since you know other sentences from English and possibly from other
languages which do not follow this order. You are right, but the order subject, verb, object
(SVO) may be defined as the basic order of English sentences. In other languages there are
different "basic" orders, such as Japanese (SOV) or Tongan (VSO), a Polynesian language.
After an extensive study, one can define two different sets of basic orders that languages
follow: First SVO, VSO, SOV and second VOS, OVS, OSV. What is the difference? In the
first set the subject precedes the object, in the second set it follows the object. Since the first
set is the one which applies to the basic structures of far more languages than the second
one does, the universal rule is that there is an overwhelming tendency for the subject of a
sentence to precede the direct object among the languages of the world.
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Absolute universals
Universal tendencies; implicational – nonimplicational universals.
Of course, not all universals can be found in all languages. With so many tongues spoken, it
would be hard not to find any exceptions. Most languages have not even been the .subject
of extensive research as of yet. However, some rules appear without exception in the
languages which have been studied so far. We call these absolute universals. If there are
minor exceptions to the rule, we speak of universal tendencies or relative universals. In
saying this, we take for granted that exceptions may be found in future surveys among
languages which have remained unexplored up to the present day.
Sometimes a universal holds only if a particular condition of the language structure is
fulfilled. These universals are called implicational. Universals which can be stated without a
condition are called non implicational. In other words, whenever a rule "If ... then ..." is
valid, the universal appears in the structure of the respective language.
There are thus four types of universals: implicational absolute universals, implicational
relative universals, nonimplicational absolute universals, and non implicational relative
universals. The final determination of which type a universal belongs to is dependent on
intensive field research.
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Lecture five
Language acquisition and disorders
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Language acquisition and disorders.
- Child language acquisition.
- Language development and maturation.
Sources/References
- Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook.
- Ipsen, Guido (1999). The Interactive MultiMedia Linguistics for Beginners Textbook.
Introduction
The need for understanding the way a person acquires his or her language (including
whether first/native languages or second/foreign languages) in addition to the mental
processes thereby people proceed to grasp and perceive language is one of the main
concerns of the LANGUAGE ACQUISITION activity. Below you are introduced to main
ideas of language acquisition (Ipsen: 1999).
Language acquisition and disorders
A part from the general historical development of languages, there is another, rather
personal development in each of us when we acquire a language. We undergo child
language acquisition, development, and maturation. We acquire second, third, fourth or
even more languages in school or when we travel abroad. Another feature of personal
linguistic developments are language disorders due to malfunctions of certain areas of the
brain…. (to be developed in the following lectures)
N.B.: Refer to lecture 2 because what is mentioned above has to do with some of the
findings of Neurolinguistics. This branch of linguistics investigates the relationship between
the brain and language.
Child language acquisition
Children have to learn language from scratch, although the capability to speak is inherent in
everyone. There are certain milestones and stages of language acquisition during the child's
first months and years.
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MILESTONES
I: 0–8 weeks. Children of this age are only capable of reflexive crying. We also call this the
production of vegetative sounds.
II: 8–20 weeks. Cooing and laughter appears in the child's vocal expression. III: 20–30
weeks. The child begins with vocal play. This includes playing with vowels (V) and
consonants (C), for example: "AAAOOOOOUUUUIIII".
IV: 25–50 weeks. The child begins to babble. There are two kinds of babbling, a)
reduplicative babbling CVCV, e.g., "baba", and b) variegated babbling, e.g., VCV "adu".
V: 9–18 months. The child starts to produce melodic utterances. This means that stress and
intonation are added to the sound chains uttered.
After having passed these milestones, children are, in essence, capable of pronouncing
words of the natural language.
STAGES
From this time on, children start to produce entire words. There are three stages, each
designating an increasing capability to use words for communicative purposes:
I: Single words and holophrases. Children may use a word to indicate things or persons,
e.g., "boo" (=book), or "mama". Also, a single word is employed to refer to entire contexts.
At this stage, "shoe" could mean "Mama has a nice shoe", "Give me my shoe" or even "I
want to wear my new red shoes when we go for a walk"!
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II: The next stage is the usage of two word phrases. This stage is also called telegraphic
speech. It begins around the second birthday, maybe sooner or later, depending on the child.
Examples are "Dada gone", "cut it", "in car", "here pear". At this stage, children design socalled pivot grammars. This means that the child has a preference for certain words as the
pivotal (axis) words, implementing a variety of other words at different points in time to
create phrases.
III: The child begins to form longer utterances. These lack grammatical correctness at first
and are perceived as, though meaningful, rather rough assemblies of utterances. Examples
are "dirty hand wash it", "glasses on nose", "Daddy car coming", or even "car sleeping bed",
which a boy uttered, meaning that the car was now parked in the garage.
There are many phonological and grammatical features of speech development, all of which
cannot be listed here. A characteristic of children's early language is the omission of
consonants at the beginning, ending, or in consonant clusters in words. Examples: "boo"
instead of "book", "at" instead of "cat", or "ticker" instead of "sticker". Children learn
grammatical morphemes, commonly referred to as "endings", in a certain order. They often
start with the present progressive "-ing", as in "Mama talking". More complex forms, such
as the contractible auxiliary be (as in "Pat's going") are learned at a later point in time.
Language development and maturation
Parents from different cultures behave differently towards their children as far as linguistic
education is concerned. In some areas of the world, people think that baby talk, or
Motherese hems linguistic development. There are also cultures where parents talk to their
children as they would to adults), or where they do not put so much thought into how to
teach their children language at all. When taking a closer look, no particular advantages or
disadvantages can be found.
Children's language is creative, but rule-governed. These rules comprise the seven operating
principles of children's language. These principles correspond to the essential
communicative needs of a child. One main aspect in all principles is the predominant use of
the active voice, the passive voice requiring a more complex understanding of concepts.
• The instrumental principle serves to indicate the personal needs of the child. These are the
"I want" phrases.
• The regulatory principle helps to demand action of somebody else: "Do that."
• "Hello" is the utterance - among others - which represents the interactional principle. It is
very important for establishing contact.
• The personal principle carries the expressive function. "Here I come" is a proper
substitution for many phrases.
• The heuristic "Tell me why"-principle is very important because once the child is able to
form questions, language helps in the general learning process.
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• The imaginative principle comes in when the child wants to impart his or her dreams or
fantasies. It is also what applies when the child pretends
Information is also important for children's communication. To tell others about the own
experience soon becomes important.
Another major step in language development is taken when the child learns how to write.
Again, there are several stages:
I: Preparatory. Age approx. 4–6 years.
The child acquires the necessary motorical skills. Also, the principles of spelling are
learned.
II: Consolidation. Age approx. 7 years
When the child begins to write, its writing reflects its spoken language. This does not only
refer to the transcription of phonetic characteristics, but also to word order and sentence
structure.
III: Differentiation. Age approx. 9 years
Writing now begins to diverge from spoken language; it becomes experimental. This means
that the writing of the child does not have to reflect speech. The child learns to use writing
freely and sets out to experiment with it.
IV: Integration. Age approx. mid-teens
Around this age, children/teens develop their own style. A personal voice appears in the
written language and the ability to apply writing to various purposes is acquired.
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Lecture six
Second language acquisition
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Second language acquisition.
- New terminology: Source Language 'SL' ,Target Language 'TL', Language 2 'L2' etc.
- Features of 'interlanguage'/interlanguage stage
. Sources/References
- Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook.
- Ipsen, Guido (1999). The Interactive MultiMedia Linguistics for Beginners Textbook.
Second language acquisition
Some aspects of second language acquisition are similar to first language acquisition. The
learner has already acquired learning techniques and can reflect on how to learn best.
However, learning languages depends on the personality, age, intelligence, and active
learning strategies of the learner.
The learners of a second language (L2) start out with their own language, which we call
source language. They are on their way to learn a target language (TL). All that lies inbetween we call interlanguage. All L2 speakers are on some stage of interlanguage.
Beginners are closer to their source language (SL), experts of L2 are closer to the target
language. And if we don’t continue with our studies, our interlanguage competence may
even decrease. People who have lived in foreign countries for a long time are often so close
to the target language that they hardly differ from native speakers. There are some features
of interlanguage which are worthwhile to look at. They play an important role in the
learning process. Everybody experiences their effects in language learning.
Fossilization
At a certain stage the learner ceases to learn new aspects of the TL. Although perhaps
capable to express himself/herself in a grammatically correct way, the learner here does not
proceed to explore the great reservoir of language any further in order to express
himself/herself in a more refined and sophisticated manner.
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Regression
The learner fails to express himself/herself in areas (phraseology, style or vocabulary) that
he or she had mastered at an earlier point in time.
Over generalization
The learner searches for a logical grammar of the TL that would cover every aspect of the
language, or seeks to find every aspect of existing grammars confirmed in the living
language. In doing so, the learner draws on aspects of the target language already earned
and overuses them.
Over elaboration
The learner wants to apply complex theoretical structures to contexts that may call for
simpler expression.
Interference from L1 (or L3), with phonological interference being the most common
example. Syntactic interference and semantic interference are also possible, e.g., so-called
false friends. These are words that exist in the source language as well as in the target
language. However, their meaning or use might differ substantially, as in the German
"Figur" vs. the French "figure" (="face"), or the English "eventually" vs. the German
"eventuell" (="possibly").
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Variable input
This refers to the quality of education in the TL, the variety and extent of exposure to the
TL and the communicative value of it to the learner. This is why the design of learning
material and contact with many TL native speakers plays a vital role in learning a new
language.
Organic and/or cumulative growth
There can be unstructured, widely dispersed input which is not always predictable. This is
structured by the learner in progressive building blocks.
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Lecture seven
Principal language disorders and examples of language disorders/errors
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Language disorders.
- Principal language disorders.
- Examples of language disorders/errors.
Sources/References
- Bauer, Laurie (2007). The Linguistics Student's Handbook.
- Ipsen, Guido (1999). The Interactive MultiMedia Linguistics for Beginners Textbook.
Language disorders
The principal language disorders are aphasia, anomia, dyslexia, and dysgraphia. Usually,
language disorders are caused by injuries or malfunctions of the brain. Neurologists were
able to locate those areas of the brain that play a central role in language production and
comprehension by examining patients whose brains had suffered damages in certain areas.
APHASIA
This is a disorder in the ability to process or produce spoken language. Two scientists,
Broca and Wernicke, were able to locate two areas of the brain responsible for these
activities.
• Broca's area. In 1864 the French surgeon Broca was able to locate a small part of the
brain, somewhat behind our left temple. This area is responsible for the organization of
language production. If it is damaged, the patient usually knows what (s)he wants to say but
can't organize the syntax. More nouns than verbs are used. There is hesitant speech and
poor articulation. Comprehension and processing are usually not impaired.
• Wernicke's area. Carl Wernicke identified another type of aphasia in 1874. He located a
part of the brain behind the left ear where he found comprehension of language to take
place. Speech production and syntax are generally possible with Wernicke's patients.
However, comprehension and, also to some extent, production is impaired, and patients
show the tendency to retrieve only general nouns and nonsense words from their mental
lexicon and to lose specific lexis, or vocabulary. They do not seem to be aware of their
problem and thus do not react to treatment easily.
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Both Broca's and Wernicke's areas are located in the left half of the brain. The executive
centers, however, are located in the right hemisphere. A separation of the two halves of the
brain effects the capability of converting linguistic information into action, or vice versa.
Apart from the types of aphasia identified by Broca and Wernicke, there are also other
kinds of aphasia.
• Jargon. In "neologistic jargon aphasia", patients can only produce new approximations of
content words (nouns), they will never hit the exact word. In general, messages are hard to
understand and often completely incomprehensible or not decodable by listeners, although
the speakers have good syntax.
• Conduction. Patients understand what is being said to them, however, they are unable to
repeat single words and make other errors when speaking. However, they are aware of their
errors. In this kind of aphasia, it is neither Broca's nor Wernicke's area that is damaged, but
the connection between them.
• In transcortical aphasia, there is a weakness in comprehension. The best preserved feature
is the ability to repeat heard phrases. Therefore, the processing of language is impaired, but
the patient is able to hear and pronounce the acoustic chain.
• Global aphasia has the worst effects on the patient. All language abilities are seriously
impaired in this case. Both Wernicke's and Broca's areas are damaged.
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ANOMIA
Anomia is the loss of access to certain parts of the lexis. Anomia patients are unable to
remember the names of things, people, or places. There is often a confusion between
semantically related words. Undoubtedly, you will have experienced this phenomenon
yourself! We are all prone to it at times. It usually increases with age, although pure anomia
is a much more acute state and is not related to aging.
DYSLEXIA
This is a disorder of reading where the patient is not capable to recognize the correct word
order. Patients also tend to misplace syllables. There is also an over generalization of the
relation between printed words and their sound value. For example, a patient may transport
the pronunciation of "cave" = /keIv/ to "have" = */heIv/ instead of /h?v/.
DYSGRAPHIA
Dysgraphia is a disorder of writing, mainly spelling. Patients are not able to find the correct
graphemes when putting their speech into writing. Also, they are not able to select the
correct order of graphemes from a choice of possible representations.
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Errors
Errors in linguistic production are not a malfunction caused by disease. They occur
frequently and are part of the communication process. Here are examples of the usual types
of errors made:
• Anticipation. Sounds appear in words before their intended pronunciation: take my bike ?
bake my bike. This error reveals that further utterances were already planned while
speaking.
• In preservation errors, the opposite is the case. Sounds are "kept in mind" and reappear in
the wrong place: pulled a tantrum ? pulled a pantrum
• Reversals (Spoonerisms) are errors where sounds are mixed up within words or phrases:
harpsichord ? carpsihord
• Blends occur when two words are combined and parts of both appear in the new, wrong
word: grizzly + ghastly ? grastly
• Word substitution gives us insight into the mental lexicon of the speaker. These words are
usually linked semantically. Give me the orange. ? Give me the apple.
• Errors on a higher level occur when the structural rules of language above the level of
pronunciation influence production. In the below example, the past tense of "dated" is
overused. The speaker "conjugates" the following noun according to the grammatical rules
of "shrink-shrank-shrunk": Rosa always dated shrinks ? Rosa always dated shranks.
• Phonological errors are the mixing up of voiced and unvoiced sounds: Terry and Julia
?Derry and Chulia
• Force of habit accounts for the wrong application of an element that had been used before
in similar contexts. For example, in a television broadcast by BBC, the reporter first spoke
about studios at Oxford university. When he then changed the topic to a student who had
disappeared from the same town he said: "The discovery of the missing Oxford studio"
instead of "The discovery of a missing Oxford student."
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Lecture eight
Social context as affecting language use. Lexical Semantics, Reference, Pragmatics
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Social context as affecting language use.
- Grammatical vs. Pragmatic meaning.
- Sentence vs. Utterance.
- Lexical Semantics, Reference, Pragmatics.
Sources/References
Charles F. Meyer (2009). Introducing English Linguistics
Introduction
In this lecture, we try to explore how the social context in which language is used affects
human communication. It begins with a discussion of the need to distinguish grammatical
meaning from pragmatic meaning, i.e. meaning as a part of our linguistic competence vs.
meaning derived from our interactions in specific social contexts. Because the discussion in
this lecture will be centered on pragmatic meaning, it is also necessary to distinguish a
sentence from an utterance, the primary unit upon which the study of pragmatic meaning
is based. These are basic notions or terms when studying what is linguistically called
speech act theory, a theory that formalizes the notion that what people actually intend their
utterances to mean is often not clearly spelled out in the words that they speak or write.
In July of 2005, John Roberts was nominated to be a justice on the Supreme Court of the
United States. Newspaper accounts of the nomination described Roberts as being a “strict
constructionist”: someone who applies a literal interpretation to the language of the United
States Constitution. Commenting on this description of Roberts, the noted literary and legal
theorist Stanley Fish (2005) argued that Roberts was not really a proponent of “strict
constructionism” but of “textualism,” the belief that interpretation involves “sticking to the
meanings that are encoded in the texts and not going beyond them.” To illustrate the
limitation of this view of interpretation, Fish notes that if a wife asks her husband Why
don’t we go to the movies tonight?
The answer to that question depends on the history of the marriage, the kind of relationship
they have, the kind of person the husband thinks the wife is. The words themselves will
not produce a fixed account of their meaning [emphasis added].
What Fish is arguing in this statement is that communication does not exist in a vacuum: to
engage in a conversation, for instance, we do not simply decode the meanings of the words
that people speak but draw upon the larger social context in which the conversation takes
place. To understand the larger point that Fish is making, it is first of all necessary to
distinguish grammatical meaning from pragmatic meaning.
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Grammatical vs. pragmatic meaning
In his description of the sentence Why don’t we go to the movies? Stanley Fish is
distinguishing meaning at two levels. On one level, how we interpret the sentence is
determined by the meaning of the individual words that it contains. To make sense of this
sentence, we need to know, for instance, what words such as go and movies mean; that we
refers outside the text to the speaker and addressee; that the indicates that a specific movie
is being referred to; and so forth. At this level, we are within grammar studying what is
known as semantics: how words have individual meaning (lexical
semantics) and can be used to refer to entities in the external world (reference). Semantics
is one component of grammar, and is therefore part of our linguistic competence. As Fish
correctly observes, however, interpretation of a sentence goes beyond understanding its
meaning at the level of grammar. We need to understand the entire social context in which a
sentence was uttered, a different level of interpretation that is studied within pragmatics,
which explores the role that context plays in the interpretation of what people say.
Although many linguists agree with this view of the relationship between grammar and
pragmatics, others believe that the boundary between grammar and pragmatics is not this
discrete. For instance, Fillmore (1996: 54) notes that “this view yields a subtractive view of
pragmatics, according to which it is possible to factor out of the full description of linguistic
activities those purely symbolic aspects which concern linguistic knowledge independently
of notions of use or purpose.” The problem with making a clear divide between grammar
and pragmatics, Fillmore argues, is that this view ignores the role that conventionality plays
in language, i.e. that our interpretation of a sentence such as Could you please pass the salt?
as a polite request is as much a matter of the social context in which this sentence is uttered
as the fact that in English, yes/no questions with verbs such as can or could have been
conventionalized as markers of polite requests (e.g. Can you spare a dime? Could you help
me with my homework?).
37
Sentence vs. utterance
Many people mistakenly think that complete sentences are the norm in both speech and
writing. However, as Carter and Cornbleet (2001: 3) correctly observe, “We do not set out
to speak in sentences – in fact, in informal speech we rarely do that – rather, we set out to
achieve a purpose which may or may not require full, accurate sentences.” To illustrate this
point, consider the short excerpt below taken from an actual conversation:
Speaker A: Lots of people are roller skating lots of people do rollerblade.
Speaker B: Just running around the city.
Speaker A: Uh mainly in Golden Gate Park.
Sentence vs. utterance
Speaker A’s first turn contains two grammatical sentences: constructions consisting of a
subject (lots of people in both sentences) and a finite verb (are and do, respectively). In
contrast, Speaker B’s turn and Speaker A’s second turn do not contain sentences: B’s turn
contains a construction centered around the verbal element running; A’s turn is a
prepositional phrase. But while these turns do not contain complete sentences, they are
nevertheless meaningful. Implied in B’s turn, for instance, is that those who are roller
skating are “running around the city” and in A’s turn that they are skating “mainly in
Golden Gate Park.” Therefore, when discussing pragmatics, linguists tend to avoid labels
such as sentence, instead preferring to describe the constructions under discussion as
utterances, a category that includes not just sentences but any construction that is
meaningful in the context in which it occurs.
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Lecture nine
Text types & language functions
Sources/References
- Malmkjr, Kirsten (1995) The Linguistics Encyclopedia.
- Newmark, Peter (1988) A Textbook of Translation.
Text Types:
Correlating a text type with the language functions the text performs is very important in
understanding the text. It is important for readers, learners and, undoubtedly, translators.
Generally language functions refer to type of linguistic structures and the
information/meanings they carry included in a text. Scholars have tried to classify texts–
known as text typology– according these language functions. The idea of classifying texts
according to their language functions originally started with Karl Bühler's organon model
(1934) which divides language functions into three types:
- Referential (i.e., informative)
- Expressive
- Appellative (the use of language to make the receiver feel or do something, corresponding
to 'operative' in Reiss's– another German scholar– terminology).
Reiss - the German scholar referred to above - has even tried to systematize the process of
translation, and its evaluation, by dividing texts into three types according to the language
functions they assume, hence choosing the translation method that suites each type.
However, her text typology has been criticized for its confinement to just three types of
language functions. It is a weakness that later scholars have tried to overcome.
Nord (1997, 40) - being one of the founders of functionalism.
observes:
Here we will add a fourth function, which seems to be lacking in Buhler’s model: the phatic
function, which we adapt from Roman Jakobson’s model of language functions (1960).
These four basic types of function can be broken down into various sub-functions.
Types of language functions
1- The Referential Function
The referential function of an utterance involves reference to the objects and phenomena
of the world or of a particular world, perhaps a fictional one. It may be analyzed
according to the nature of the object or referent concerned. If the referent is a fact or state
of things unknown to the receiver (for example, a traffic accident) the text function may
consist in informing the reader; if the referent is a language or a specific use of language,
the text function may be metalinguistic; if the referent is the correct way of handling a
washing machine or of bottling fruit, the text function may be directive; if it is a whole
field that the receivers are to learn (for example, geography) the function may be
didactic. Of course, this list of sub-functions cannot pretend to be exhaustive…
The referential function is mainly expressed through the denotative value of the lexical
items present in the text. Certain references are presumed to be familiar to the receivers
and thus not mentioned explicitly.
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The referential function is oriented toward objects in real or fictitious worlds. To carry
out the referential function, the receiver must be able to coordinate the message with their
model of the particular world involved. Since world models are determined by cultural
perspectives and traditions, receivers in the source culture may interpret the referential
function differently to those in the target culture. This gives rise to significant translation
problems.
Clearly, the referential function depends on the comprehensibility of the text. The
function poses problems when source and target readers do not share the same amount of
previous knowledge about the objects and phenomena referred to, as is often the case
with source-culture realities or realia.
2- The Expressive Function
Unlike Reiss's text typology, where the expressive function is restricted to the aesthetic
aspects of literary or poetic texts, the expressive function in my model refers to the sender's
attitude toward the objects and phenomena of the world. It may be subdivided according to
what is expressed. If the sender expresses individual feelings or emotions (for example, in
an interjection) we may speak of an emotive sub-function; if what is expressed is an
evaluation (perhaps a government decision) the sub-function will be evaluative. Another
sub-function might be irony. Of course, a particular text can be designed to carry out a
combination of several functions or subfunctions…
The expressive function is sender-oriented. The sender's opinions or attitudes with regard to
the referents are based on the value system assumed to be common to both sender and
receiver. However, in the standard form of intercultural interaction the sender belongs to the
source culture and the receiver belongs to the target culture. Since value systems are
conditioned by cultural norms and traditions, the value system of the source-text author may
be different from that of the target-culture receivers.
This means that an expressive function verbalized in the source text has to be interpreted in
terms of the source-culture value system. If it is verbalized explicitly (perhaps by means of
evaluative or emotive adjectives, as in 'cats are nasty, horrible things!'), the readers will
understand even when they disagree. But if the evaluation is given implicitly ('A cat was
sitting on the doorstep') it may be difficult to grasp for readers who do not know on what
value system the utterance is based (is a cat on the doorstep a good or a bad thing?). Many
qualities have different connotations in two different cultures, as can be observed in
national stereotypes. If said by a German, the sentence 'Germans are very efficient' probably
expresses a positive evaluation, yet it might not be so positive if said by a Spaniard.
Example: In India if a man compares the eyes of his wife to those of a cow, he expresses
admiration for their beauty. In Germany, though, a woman would not be very pleased if her
husband did the same.
3- The Appellative Function in Translation:
Directed at the receivers' sensitivity or disposition to act, the appellative function ('conative'
in Jakobson's terminology) is designed to induce them to respond in a particular way. If we
want to illustrate a hypothesis by an example, we appeal to the reader's previous experience
or knowledge; the intended reaction would be recognition of something known. If we want
40
to persuade someone to do something or to share a particular viewpoint, we appeal to their
sensitivity, their secret desires. If we want to make someone buy a particular product, we
appeal to their real or imagined needs, describing those qualities of the product that are
presumed to have positive values in the receivers' value system. If we want to educate a
person, we may appeal to their susceptibility to ethical and moral principles.
Direct indicators of the appellative function would be features like imperatives or rhetorical
questions. Yet the function may also be achieved indirectly through linguistic or stylistic
devices that point to a referential or expressive function, such as superlatives, adjectives or
nouns expressing positive values. The appellative function may even operate in poetic
language appealing to the reader's aesthetic sensitivity…
The appellative function is receiver-oriented… While the source text normally appeals to a
source-culture reader's susceptibility and experience, the appellative function of a
translation is bound to have a different target. This means the appellative function will not
work if the receiver cannot cooperate.
4- The Phatic Function in Translation:
The phatic function aims at establishing, maintaining or ending contact between sender and
receiver. It relies on the conventionality of the linguistic, non-linguistic and paralinguistic
means used in a particular situation…
Unconventionality of form strikes the eye and makes us think the author had a special
reason for saying something precisely in that way. A phatic utterance meant as a mere 'offer
of contact' may be interpreted as referential, expressive or even appellative if its form does
not correspond to the receiver's expectation of conventional behaviour. The phatic function
thus largely depends on the conventionality of its form. The more conventional the
linguistic form, the less notice we take of it. The problem is that a form that is conventional
in one culture may be unconventional in another.
Another feature of phatic utterances is that they often serve to define the kind of
relationship holding between sender and receiver (formal/informal,
symmetrical/asymmetrical). Here conventionality of form also plays an important part…
Except for purely phatic expressions or utterances, texts are rarely mono functional. As a
rule we find hierarchies of functions that can be identified by analyzing verbal or nonverbal function markers.
Summary
In regard to the above demonstration of language functions and hence text typology,
consider the figure below (Newmark: 1988: 40) which pinpoints four main elements: (a) the
language function; (b) the core of the translational process; (c) the author's status; (d) the
text type:
41
It is worth mentioning in regard to the above figure that Newmark has alternatively used the
terms 'informative' and 'vocative' as referents for Nord's 'referential' and 'appellative' though
both have depended on the same source, "Bühler's functional theory of language" (1934).
42
Lecture ten
Text Linguistics as a new subfield of linguistics
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- 'Text Linguistics' as a new subfield of linguistics.
- What is a text?
- The principles of textuality.
- Cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and
intertextuality
Sources/References
- Malmkjr, Kirsten (1995). The Linguistics Encyclopedia.
- Ipsen, Guido (1999). The Interactive MultiMedia Linguistics for Beginners Textbook.
Text linguistics
What is text linguistics?
Some have dealt with the term "text" quite freely although the use of this term is not quite
that simple. None of the branches of linguistics known to us regards the complete entity of
texts as their primary subject matter in the way text linguistics does. Instead, they focus
rather on, e.g., the nature and function of morphemes and words within texts on a very
abstract level. Sentences are examined with syntax, and word as well as sentence meaning
are discerned by semantics. Although all of these domains deal with parts of texts, namely
sounds, words and sentences, they fail to generate a broader understanding of the
substantial and unique import of texts as such.
This we can only understand when observing how texts are produced, presented, and
received…
Text linguistics
In what way do processes in text production, that is: decision and selection and their impact
on communicative interaction generate structure?' This approach to linguistics, that is of
regarding complete texts as entities of inquiry, is still fairly young, having come into being
only in the 1970's. It is also referred to as text linguistics. However, the origin of this regard
for texts goes way back to Ancient Greece and Rome, where philosophers founded the
science of rhetoric. This science cultivates speech and examines the complete text for its
applicability for an oral presentation and its overall effect and persuasive potential. As a
discipline rhetoric received high esteem and was acknowledged as one of the main branches
of science. This cultivation for spoken speech continued on even up to the Middle Ages,
where the church implemented it for its aims. As a science of texts, rhetoric shares many
concerns with text linguistics. Some assumptions are:
• The accessing and arranging of ideas is open to systematic control.
• The transition from idea to expression can be consciously trained.
• Among the various texts which express a given configuration of ideas, some are of a
higher quality than others.
43
• Texts can be evaluated in terms of their effects on the audience.
• Texts are vehicles of purposeful interaction."
You may remember some of these notions from our chapter on pragmatics, however, while
the emphasis then was on the use of language, it is now the whole text which is of interest.
The principles of textuality
What constitutes a text? Usually, we do not think about how we produce or understand
speech, i.e. the texts for speech. Still, there are basic principles that structure texts and it is,
for example, thanks to our intuitive compliance to these principles that we still know what a
discussion is all about even after ten minutes of talking. Also, you do not have to return to
the first pages of a book whenever you start reading the next chapter, because you know
that the text proceeds. You can even refer to other texts written in other books or taken from
other media, such as newspapers. These constructive elements of texts are known as
textuality. They help us in recognizing where texts start, where they end and how to
perceive a text as an entity. (Consider the following seven elements which should be
included in any entity called 'text').
1. Cohesion
Texts are regarded as stable systems the stability of which is upheld by a continuity of
occurrences. This means that elements re-occur throughout the text system and can thus be
interrelated. Our short term memory does not lend itself for storing information on a larger
scale. The continuity of occurrences thus serves to refresh this short term memory, creating
a basis for a long term memory to function. Whereas cohesion within a sentence is
constituted by syntax, it is this factor of the continuity of occurrences that makes for
cohesion within a text. As you can already guess, cohesion is established by means of
syntax. The way sentences are constructed help in establishing cohesion. The following
features belong to the re-occurrences that make for the cohesion of texts:
Recurrence
The direct repetition of elements is called recurrence. It can fulfill many functions.
However, whenever applied, the phenomenon of recurrence must be derived from a
comprehensible motivation. The phrase "I met Sally and I met Sally.", for instance, seems
awkward as there is just no reason for repeating the same element…
Junction
Events and situations are combined in texts. This action is called junction. Junctive
expressions are commonly known as conjunctions.
- Conjunctions link things of the same status: "and".
- Disjunctions link elements of an alternative status: "or".
- Contrajunctions link elements of the same status which are incompatible: "but".
- Subordinators link things where the status of one depends on the other: "because", "since".
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2. Coherence
Whereas cohesion is the syntactical means of keeping a text together, there is also the
meaning which interweaves the whole of a text. This meaning principle is called the
coherence of a text. Coherence can happen only under the condition of a set of
prerequisites. For one, speakers must have a common knowledge base that they draw from.
Secondly, there must be a context which is important in respect to the meaning (as we have
seen in the chapter on pragmatics, the meaning of phrases depends on the intention and
situation. Concepts in texts may hence change their meaning regardless of their sememe).
3. Intentioality and acceptability
Let's rehearse the basic principles here:
Cohesion and coherence are the most important principles of textuality. However, there are
texts which are neither fully cohesive nor coherent. Hence, we must take the attitude of the
language users toward the text into consideration. What is their intention? Presumably there
is some planning involved in order to put the intention into words. Speakers may fail to clad
their intention into a pattern both cohesive and coherent:
"You know, I – where am I? Ah, yes, last night I visited Dan, and he – but you do know
Dan, don't you?"
We all know such inconsistent sentences from our everyday experience. They derive from
the change of intention during the utterance. The change may be caused by an internal
reflection or by some external event, such as a frowning listener. Nevertheless, when
listening and talking we follow a cooperative principle, which, in turn, places the text into
an acceptable framework, even if their surface structure neglects cohesion and coherence.
4. Informativity
Informativity refers to whether the contents of a text is new or whether it was expected by
the receiver. We differentiate here with the following features:
- Probability. Is the utterance probable? A sentence like: "I like Chinese food" is quite
probable as far as statistical probability of correct sentences is concerned. But a sentence
such as "All you foul dishes of the degenerate West, you cannot compete to my favorites
from the East!" is much too unique to be statistically probable. Another aspect is contextual
probability. When talking about food, for instance, a sentence like "And the new BMW is
really nice to look at." is grossly out of context and as thus improbable.
- Orders of informativity. If the predictability of intention, cohesion, and coherence is high,
we speak of first-order informativity. An example is the "stop" traffic sign, the content and
structure of which is very unambiguous and conventionalized. First-order occurrences are
also called defaults: they are used very often, such as certain phrases. But in order to make
texts more interesting, informativity of second or third order must appear. Usually, texts
consist more or less of second-order occurrences. These are upgraded or downgraded in
order to produce either more predictable or more interesting bits of text. In a short story or
novel, the author will rather use downgraded, unpredictable text. This will keep the reader
focused on the book.
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- Text types. The rate of informativity differs in the many various text types, such as
literary, poetic, and scientific texts. Naturally, in poetry, the number of third-order
occurrences is much higher than in scientific texts.
5. Situationality
Texts must be relevant to the current situation in which they appear. We distinguish
between the following:
- Situation monitoring is being performed if the primary function of a text is to describe a
given situation as best as possible.
- Situation management means that a text is designed to fit into a situation as best as
possible.
Although texts have to be relevant to the situation in which they appear, the situation does
not have to be a real situation, i.e. it can be fictional. For example, in drama the audience is
drawn into a situation generated on the stage. Thus, when Hamlet says "All's not well...",
his monologue naturally does not mean that the audience is in Denmark, the setting of the
play. In short, literary texts have the prerogative to present alternative situations in which
they fit quite well.
6. Interextuality
No text is really independent, i.e. all texts relate to others in one way or another. The
expressions textual field or the text universe have been created by scholars to refer to this
textual network.
The principle of intertextuality is that the structure (i.e. those principles listed above) of
texts is determined largely by texts that have been received by authors or readers prior to
that. Citations or a re-use of texts is one of the more obvious ways in which this principle
applies. But intertextuality can also be detected in more subtler forms and occurs between
various text types as well.
In the narrower sense of texts within the framework of text linguistics, we speak of
intertextuality as the phenomenon of interference between various texts in a conversation.
Situation management and monitoring depend heavily on other texts which have been
uttered in the conversation. A receiver does not remain uninfluenced by these uttered texts
and interrelates them with his own textual production.
Summary
De Beaugrande and Dressier (1981: 3) define text as a communicative occurrence which
meets seven standards of textuality, namely cohesion and coherence, which are both textcentred, and intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and
intertextuality, which are all user-centred. These seven standards function as the
constitutive principles which define and create communication.
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Lecture eleven
Semiotics: its relation to linguistics
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Semiotics: its relation to linguistics
- Saussure
- Peirce
Sources/References
- Malmkjr, Kirsten (1995). The Linguistics Encyclopedia.
- Ipsen, Guido (1999). The Interactive MultiMedia Linguistics for Beginners Textbook.
Semiotics
What is semiotics? Newcomers in the field of languages often wonder what field this
discipline deals with. Well, we have an answer at hand that sounds both simple and
puzzling:
Semiotics is the science of signs.
And so you might ask 'But what is a sign'? When people talk about others "making" or
"giving signs", they usually refer to gestures. Then there are "signs" which help to guide
and regulate traffic. Wherever we go "signs" appear, such as words, books, architecture,
signs in people's behavior, etc. There are even events that are regarded as "signs".
As you can see from this brief survey, the term "sign" is used quite casually. Of course,
semiotics is not the science of how to perform gestures, or of ordinances or municipal
regulations for traffic signs. In terms of semiotics, signs always serve a communicative
purpose. Furthermore, signs are always part of a system of signs. The system of human
gestures or the system of traffic signs and their meaning could thus indeed be subject to
semiotic inquiry
Generally, signs consist of a sign vehicle and some meaning connected with it. So gestures
or traffic signs are interesting because of their meaning content.
Semiotics investigates a wide range of fields, starting from zoosemiotics and cultural
semiotics up to aesthetics and computer semiotics, to name only a few. Semiotic theory can,
in fact, be applied to almost any field since most processes in nature and culture rely on
communication, and with that, rely on signs that serve that communicative purpose.
In this lecture we will concentrate on the linguistic sign and semiotic models of the sign.
And of those there are quite a few. They differ mainly in one characteristic: Most models of
the sign are either dyadic or triadic models. This means that they show either two or three
sides, or apices. The most prominent example for the dyadic, or two-sided sign, is the one
developed by Ferdinand de Saussure. The three-sided, or triadic model of the sign, was
created by Charles Sanders Peirce and influenced semiotic theorists of the 20th century
more so than any other model.
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Saussure
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the founder of modern semiotics, designed a dyadic or
bilateral sign model. According to him, the sign is two-sided. Unfortunately Saussure did
not live to see his theory spread. His insights received their due recognition posthumously,
when his students published his theories that they had written down in their scripts. Luckily,
several versions of these scripts exist. This enabled the publishers to give a very detailed
survey of Saussure's theories.
The Two-Sided Sign
Saussure's idea of the sign is based upon a notion of duality. The word "dual" implies the
number of two. Hence, Saussure's sign shows two sides. In order to understand the more
complex construct of Saussure's, consider a trivial example: When you look at a thing, e.g.,
a tree, you instantly know the word that designates the thing. Words and things are
connected in our minds. The same goes for words you hear without seeing the respective
things. So when somebody tells you: "There's a tree in my father's garden", you know what
"tree" means in this context, even without ever having seen that tree.
This explanation, however, does not entirely meet Saussure's terminology. From his point
of view, language is an entirely psychological entity. Therefore, "things" in the real world
do not play any role in the model. Saussure so to speak focuses on what goes on in our
heads. So, neither the physical aspects of things nor those of sounds are considered. The
two aspects of the linguistic sign Saussure identified are therefore mental aspects: the ideas
or concepts of things and the mental images of sounds, both of which are stored in our
memory.
Concept and Sound Image
Concept and sound image, Saussure contended, cannot be separated. He compared them
with the two sides of a piece of paper: Just as one cannot cut the front side of a piece of
paper without cutting the back side as well, our mind is structured such that the concept
automatically evokes the sound image and, vice versa, that the sound image automatically
evokes the concept. Therefore, concept and sound image belong together and form a unity.
The following figures illustrate the idea of the two-sided sign: The figure on the left shows
the relationship between the terms concept and image acoustique. These two sides of the
sign are brought together by an ellipse encompassing them. The figure on the right
demonstrates this using an example.
Concept and Sound Image
Later, Saussure coined the term signified for concept, and the term signifier for sound
image (the original French terms are signifié-concept, signifiant-image acoustique). These
terms are interchangeable. The concept, or signified then, as mentioned above, is the
correlate of the sound-image, or signifier. Saussure claims here that these mental concepts
always abide to the ideal and prototypical features that the signifier ideally was to refer to.
For instance, when we hear "arbor", or "tree", we do not think of a particular tree, such as a
birch tree, or the old oak tree in our backyard, but of an abstract concept that entails the
ideal, prototypical features of "tree", for example the trunk, branches, leaves, tallness, etc.
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The sound chain, i.e. the actual utterance, may have brought about this concept, however, it
is the "impression" of this sound chain in our minds that is of interest to Saussure. It is this
impression that he refers to with his term 'sound image' and he regards it, as mentioned
above, to be completely cut off from the physical world.
The relation between the concept and the sound image, furthermore, is an arbitrary one.
There is no natural, inherent connection between the two. Instead, we associate concepts
with sound images and vice versa following conventions.
A sign, with its signifier and signified, has to be, finally, acknowledged by a social group,
or language community in order to be regarded as a sign. That is to say, a random utterance
of one individual, although he or she may want it to signify something, may not have gained
sufficient acknowledgment to be regarded as a sign. This is because Saussure regarded
semiotics to be a social science. According to him, signs are collective entities.
Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was a contemporary of Saussure, unfortunately
however, neither of them had contact with or knowledge of the work of the other. While
Saussure's model has been recognized as important for linguistics in general and semantics
in particular, Peirce is considered one of the most important figures in the history of
semiotics. Some scholars regard him to be the founder of the modern theory of signs.
There are some profound differences between Saussure's and Peirce's views of the sign.
Saussure two-sided model of the sign claimed to regard language only (Remember 'the
world outside' was not a part of language for Saussure.). Peirce, in contrast, saw that 'world
outside' to be a part of the system of language and incorporated it into his triadic model of
the sign. Saussure's two-sided model is, furthermore, static in that it offers an explanation of
how a sign is structured and an analysis of its state. Peirce's model is dynamic in that it does
not regard the sign as a set entity and in that it takes the overall production process of signs,
semiosis, more so into consideration. This semiosis is, furthermore, a pragmatic procedure:
In this procedure everybody is seen to have his or her own view of the world and by using
signs to express this individual view, is seen to contribute to an endless generation of new
signs. It is easy to see why this makes for a much more dynamic understanding of language
as people's individual views of the world cannot be ascertained in a consistent, static
manner. This is the main, foremost difference between Saussure's and Pierce's approaches
to language. It is important to keep in mind that Peirce's model cannot be regarded merely
as an extention of Saussure's model. It is based on different notions of the sign altogether
and thus needs to be approached in its own terms.
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Lecture twelve
Speech Act Theory
The present lecture tackles the following points:
- Speech Act Theory.
- What are speech acts.
- Maxims of Speech.
Sources/References
- Malmkjr, Kirsten (1995). The Linguistics Encyclopedia.
- Ipsen, Guido (1999). The Interactive MultiMedia Linguistics for Beginners Textbook.
Speech acts
'Speech act' is a technical term in linguistics and the philosophy of language which goes
back, in its contemporary use, to John L Austin.
In the 1960's, Two linguists, Austin and Searle, made up a theory on how language serves
to perform action. Austin's famous book is hence called: How to do things with words.
When we communicate, we do not only intend to send some information to a receiver. In
fact, we are always acting in one way or another when we talk. This does not mean that we
perform some sort of play with our bodies, but that we are imparting something beyond the
mere surface structure of the utterance. Just consider your own everyday communication:
You do not merely 'seek and provide information', instead you declare, pronounce, give
orders, commiserate, approve, etc. Speech acts can be quite diversified.
Types of Speech Acts
- Representatives: these represent states of affairs, such as assertions, statements, claims,
hypotheses, descriptions, and suggestions. They are commonly regarded as being either true
or false.
- Commissives: these commit the speaker to something, such as promises, pledges, threats,
and vows.
- Directives: intend to make the hearer carry out some action: commands, requests,
challenges, invitations, entreaties, and dares.
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- Declarations: bring about the state of affairs: blessings, firings, baptisms, arrests,
marrying, declaring a mistrial.
- Expressives: these indicate the speaker's attitude, such as greetings, apologies,
congratulations, condolences, and thanksgivings.
- Verdictives: make assessments or judgements: ranking, assessing, appraising, condoning.
Locution, Illocution, Perlocution
A speech act has three aspects to it. Note that we are here not interested in the denotative
meaning, but rather in the connotative meaning, i.e. what is actually inferred, brought about,
and effected by the speech act.
• Locution. This is the acoustic utterance that can also be transcribed into phonetic
transcription. It is also called the utterance act. We referred to this earlier as the acoustic
chain.
• Illocution. Whenever you say something, you have an intention to say something. There
may be one or more intentions behind the utterance. We say that there are one or more
illocutionary acts in the speech act.
• Perlocution. This is the effect of the speech act on the hearer. There are two aspects of the
perlocutionary act. First, there is the effect that the sender wants to evoke in the listener,
and second, the effect that is finally achieved. An example is an order from someone
without authority: The effect that the sender wanted to evoke was obedience; what was
finally achieved, however, was disobedience.
But how is it that we know what illocutionary force is behind a speech act, i.e., how do we
know that somebody asking "Are you free tonight?" is not merely expecting a "yes/no"–
answer, but wants to line up a date with us.
We infer the illocutionary act of a statement from its context. This means that we presume,
for one, that a speaker always has some intention for wanting any information. The context
here 'boy-girl-evening-free time' allows the listener to deduce 'He wants to spend his time
with me.'. If the context were such that both the speaker and the listener have part-time jobs
at McDonalds, the illocutionary act could well be very different, namely "Could you take
my shift tonight ? (so that I could go on a date with someone else?)".
Whether a context counts as a valid context of a speech act usually rests on a number of
conditions that, together, render that context. There are also always a number of conditions
that have to be fulfilled so that a speech act can be interpreted as intended.
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"I now pronounce you husband and wife", for example, is valid only if the speaker is
entitled to wed couples, the two are willing and legally qualified to marry, all persons are
present in an appropriate environment, such as a church, or a court, and so on.
Most of these conditions are a matter of convention. In other words, whether a priest has the
authority to marry couples, rests on the Christian convention of entitling such people with
this authority. A promise is valid only if the convention of truthfulness is acknowledged by
the promising person. As such, a directive, such as the invitation, is subject to interpretation
according to different conventions of that specific condition. For instance, the invitation
"Call me whenever you want" has become, by convention, to function also as a way of
expressing a general willingness to help a person. The offer itself is thus usually not
expected to be taken up at 4:30 in the morning. The pledge "I'll pay you back as soon as I
get the money." on the other hand, is usually taken literally, i.e. our conventions for dealing
with money matters are usually literal.
The Cooperative Principle
As you can well imagine, sorting out the different conventions that govern speech acts can
be very complex. There are, however, four maxims that can be regarded as general
principles in all speech acts:
- Maxim of quantity: If you are asked something, you are expected to give neither too little
nor too much information. If you don't abide by this maxim, you will usually be regarded as
uncooperative. If your answer doesn't convey all of the information asked for, the listener
has incomplete data, whereas too much information distracts the listener.
- Maxim of relevance: Imagine asking somebody: "What time is it?" and getting the answer:
"I've been to Switzerland three times." This answer clearly lacks all relevance in the given
context.
- Maxim of manner: This refers to the importance of details within the chronological order
they are presented. "First comes first" is a principle that is violated in the following
examples; the phrases that violate the maxim of manner are marked.
"For the station, you turn left at the next crossing. Then you walk for half a mile. Down
the street is a subway. Use it to cross the street. Turn left again. The subway's walls are
painted yellow. From that point, you'll be able to see the station."
"Germany is located in the center of Europe. You'll find Hessen in the center of
Germany. Kassel is a city in the north of Hessen. There's a university in Kassel. Hessen is
also famous for Frankfurt. At Kassel university, there's a language department."
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- Maxim of quality: This maxim refers to the truth or falseness of a statement. If a speech
act lacks this principle, it is a lie. Successful communication rests on the assumption that
the other is telling the truth, i.e. earnest about her/his statements. Hence this maxim is the
most important. It doesn't really matter if other maxims are violated, as long as the quality
of the speech act is assured. Note that the maxim of quality refers to the conscientiousness
of the speaker, in other words, it is secondary if she/he is mistaken or not. A statement such
as "I think Marx was right" is qualified if the person really does think Marx was right; the
question then of whether Marx really was right or not is another subject matter.
There are cases, as you may know from your own experience, where even these cooperative
principles can be legitimately violated. Some lies are necessary due to cultural conventions.
You would not reject a birthday present given to you by your best friend, saying it was
Kitsch, even if you did think it was Kitsch.
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