Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-ouzou
Faculty of Letters and Languages
Department of English
Handout in Linguistics for First Year Students
Course in General Linguistics prepared by
Dr. Fodil Mohammed Sadek
Coping with Linguistics without anxiety
This handout has been elaborated for F1rst Year students in the
Department of English, Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou
who strive to come to grips with Linguistics.
The course will cover the totality of the First Year LMD programme. At the end of
each section, an assessment of students’ understanding ought to be performed by having
students answer the questions in the practice section.
A freshman student in a language department might find it rather appalling to enter a
linguistics lecture. This feeling is due to a number of reasons, some objective, but the others
totally subjective. Among the objective reasons advanced by new comers, is the fact that the
subject is new. Yes, but other subjects are equally new without appearing so dreadful.
Another reason relates to the metalanguage used by linguists to describe their subject. It is
true that linguistics is the only discipline that uses language as its own object of study, that is,
it uses language to talk about language. Therefore, it needs a specific terminology to
accurately account for the diversity of phenomena that compose its object of study. Another
objective reason concerns the fact that linguistics compels one to be aware of the way
language functions, thus, requesting users to be also aware of their own use of language. This
self-reflective use of language may sometimes appear daunting but soon, everyone finds
themselves self-reflecting on their own use of language and the anxiety gradually recedes. A
last point relating to the particular history of linguistics is the argument that linguistics is
sometimes seen as a sort of imperialist discipline mingling with several other disciplines
perceived as contiguous. All these points will be examined and detailed further while the
subjective reasons often evoked to make of linguistics a ‘monster’ discipline will be simply
overlooked.
This handout is destined students interested in linguistics and willing to make an
endeavour to understand and master a discipline which imposes itself whenever a serious
discussion involves reflection upon the use or uses of language to better account for human
interactions, human intellectual and cultural achievements, or, more simply human condition.
The handout starts by exploring the theoretical foundations of what was to become in the
Nineteenth Century the discipline named linguistics. It then provides an overview of the
different trends that retrace the evolution of this discipline over time and across schools of
thought, and ends with present-day questionings about the future of the discipline.
Course Outline
I) – WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
1 – Characteristics of human language
2 – Origins of language
II) – A BRIEF SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF LINGUISTICS
1 – Early developments (the Greeks – the Indians – the Romans, etc.)
2 – Later developments (Philologists and neo-grammarians)
3 – Comparative Linguistics: Language families and language types
a – The notion of family (Family relationships and the Proto-Indo-European family)
b – Language types (Isolating – Inflecting – Agglutinating)
III) - TWENTIETH CENTURY LINGUISTICS
1 – The European tradition
Linguistics as a scientific discipline
1 – The aims of linguistics
2 – The binary theory of F. De Saussure
Langue / Parole
Signified /Signifier
Paradigm / Syntagm
Diachrony / Synchrony
The branches of linguistics
1 - The ‘Langue’ components:
a) - the phonetico-phonological component
b) - the morpho-syntactic component
c) - the lexico-semantic component
d) – the pragmatic component
2 – the American tradition
a) - Anthropology and language
b) - The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
OTHER RELATED DISCIPLINES
1 – LANGUAGE and SOCIETY
A - Sociolinguistics
B - Language Contacts and Language Varieties (dialects – sociolects – idiolects)
2 – LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION
Language as a system of communication
Language as a functional system: The functions of language
Foreword
A freshman student in the field of linguistics always worries about the following
question which everybody would like to see answered: WHAT IS LANGUAGE?
Although it is not reasonable to pretend to fully answer this question, some helpful insight can
be provided, notably by resorting to several authors who have previously reflected on the
issue and who have provided handy answers. So what is language?
A simple query on Google would yield a number of documents ranging from mere
definitions to specialized articles all of which present language as being unique to humans and
as such, bearing specific characteristics. What are these characteristics of human language?
Standard definitions will comprise Hockett’s thirteen features which involve: vocal-auditory
channel – broadcast transmission and directional reception – rapid fading – interchangeability
– total feedback- specialization – semanticity – arbitrariness – discreteness – displacement –
productivity – traditional transmission – duality of patterning. The document can be reached
at this address: http://people.exeter.ac.uk/bosthaus/Lecture/hockett1.htm
Others, like Chomsky’s comprise the distinction between what he terms language
competence and language performance are more specifically related to language learning and
language acquisition. This issue will be dealt with in later on. For the time being, let us briefly
summarize the characteristics of human language. You will note that some of them are
mentioned by Hockett.
CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE
Language is commonly considered as the propriety of man as it constitutes the
cornerstone of the divide between man and other beings. Man uses language, other species do
not. Therefore, one can safely affirm that natural language as it is known and used by humans
is species-specific. Now, human language also displays amongst others, the following
characteristics:
1 – Human language is conventional and symbolic
Although there is no historical evidence to posit the following, it is largely admitted by
the linguistic community that language has come after many agreements between the
members of a given community who decide to assign specific names to particular things,
objects, concepts, etc. The names consist of a limited number of sounds combined in such a
way that they refer to one and only one object, concept, quality, etc. within a particular speech
community. For example, while community X names a particular object Y by using a specific
name or word Z, another may use a different name or word P or S to label the same object and
this explains the diversity of languages.
2 – Human Language is a social phenomenon
Language is social in that it is acquired in a social environment and its acquisition is
not possible without the participation of the members of the society. Once acquired, the
language is used to communicate with the other members of the speech community. This also
explains why a child born into a family living in place A, speaks a different language from
another child living in place B, while a child who has grown away from any language
community would speak no language at all. e.g the Wolf Child.
3 – Human Language is rule-governed
When using a language, people do not speak randomly but obey certain rules in order
to communicate effectively. The rules are phonological, grammatical, lexical, and pragmatic.
An example of a phonological rule in English would be: No word can start from the
succession of the following sounds / mbp/ but can with the following cluster / str /.
4 – Human Language is creative
The uses of language are various, and the range of possible sentences is infinite
despite the limited number of phonological elements present in a given phonological system.
Actually, a user of English uses 44 sounds and can build an endless number of words and
sentences by combining them differently following the rules of the language mentioned
above.
5 – Human Language is context-dependent
The context in which communication takes place (place, social stakes, relation with
the people involved, etc.) determines the type of language to be used (familiarity, politeness,
formality, humour, etc.) The type of language we use to talk to friends differs more or less
importantly from the one we use to talk to people we are not familiar with.
6 – Human language can be manifested mainly through two main media
These are the verbal and the written one. Yet, one can presently notice the appearance
on the Internet of a language which displays the features of both speech and writing. This
cyber-language is inventing new rules and new uses for a language like English which
challenge the classical distinction between the properties of speech and those of writing.
7 - Human language is characterized by its double articulation
We owe André Martinet the sharpest distinction between human and non-human
languages through his formulation of the double articulation of language. According to
Martinet, language is first articulated into meaningful units (words/monemes) that make up
sentences, before the second articulation consisting in the articulation and combination of the
contrastive units (sounds/phonemes) which form words takes place. This property of human
language distinguishes it from the rest of all other languages be they natural or artificial. Of
course, there are other characteristics but these seem to be the most relevant.
References:
David Crystal : The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. CUP 1987
Hockett, C.F. (1960). The origin of speech. Scientific American, 203, 88-96.
Some sites that deal with the origin of language:
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/langorigins.html
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test1materials/origin_of_language.htm
http://www.trueorigin.org/language01.asp
Practice:
Other characteristics of human language are not mentioned in the lecture. Find at least three
other ones and explain them.
THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE
Another challenging issue concerns the origin of language. How did it come into
being? How come that we, humans use language while no other species does? etc.
The first questionings
Several sources report that there have been many explanations as to the origin of
language prior to any scientific theory. Even today, there exist in many cultures, etiological
myths and other stories pertaining to the origin of language. These myths have similarities,
recurring themes, and differences, having been passed down through oral tradition. Some
myths have a religious origin, others are just storytelling. Some tales say a creator of some
form endowed humans with language from the beginning, and others count language among
later gifts, or curses. One of the oldest examples is the epopee of Gilgamesh and the most
famous language myth is the Tower of Babel. The myth explains that God punished humanity
for arrogance and disobedience by confusing people’s tongues.
Two main theories about language origin
So far, two main views dispute their arguments about the origin of language, and you will find
more information in the references part at the end of the handout.
1 – The discontinuity trend: It regards the origin of language as a sudden event, and
comprises the religious and mythical viewpoints on languages. To this trend, language
appeared unexpectedly as a result of a gift from a god or some mythical creature to the benefit
of man. Greek mythology, Buddhism, the three monotheistic religions, and several cultures
around the world share this explanation. This trend explains that before God or some
mythological creature offered language to humans, there was no language and nothing is
known of how humans communicated before this sudden event.
2 – The continuity trend: Taking an evolutionary stance, it considers language as a
continuous evolution over time. It assumes that the emergence from the Australopithecus of
the Homo-Sapiens who, by taking an upright position over time, provoked a certain number
of decisive and enduring effects: This upright position gave Homo-sapiens a new visual
perspective as it allowed him to stand up and look at things horizontally, thus improving both
his two-dimensional scope and the extent of his sight. It also freed his two hands, permitting
Homo-sapiens to use them for other purposes like the preparation of tools for hunting or
gathering, or for the realization of other handy actions. It increased the volume of his skull
and later, of his brain. Ultimately, this upward position led the larynx to be lowered thus
permitting the utterance of a wider range of speech sounds which later evolved into
phonological systems. These in turn, fostered cultural productions and rituals different from
all other species.
3 – The case of animal communication: e.g. the bees
Among animals, the bees have the most remarkable communication system. Honeybees live in highly structured communities where efficiency of communication is essential for
the survival of the colony. The purpose of communication is mainly concerned with food
collection. (Discovery of food sources, distance and direction to the hive, the taste of the
nectar etc.), and the related information is conveyed through the shape and the amount of
energy spent in the dance. (in eight, in semi-circle, straight, etc.).
Despite all this creativity and efficiency in communication between the bees, their
system is limited and cannot represent other objects or complex ideas, feelings… which are so
vital in human communication. The same goes with other systems (ants, apes, etc.).
One common language?
As concerns the issue of the existence of a common language from which all other
languages have diverged, D. Crystal mentions three different stances:
a) – The view that all languages have diverged from a common source, the result of
cultural evolution or divine intervention, known as monogenesis. The existence of
differences between languages is then explained as the result of people moving
apart, in waves of migration around the world. In this view language universals
would be interpreted as evidence of common origin.
b) – The opposite view that language emerged more or less simultaneously in several
places, is known as polygenesis. Language universals and other similarities
between languages, are then explained by pointing to the similar constraints which
must have operated upon the early speakers (in terms of both their physiology and
their environment), and by the likelihood that, as groups came into contact, their
languages would influence each other – a process known as convergence.
c) – There is also a third possibility, given the vast time-scale involved. All of the
languages that now exist may indeed have diverged from a common source, but
this may have been just one line of descent from an earlier era when several
independent languages emerged.
It needs to be noted however that this remains a hypothesis which needs to be
sustained by strong evidence.
References:
David Crystal (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, CUP
Practice:
1 - A number of authors pretend that Hebrew is the mother of all languages. Surf the internet
to obtain the necessary documentation and discuss this point in group. Each group ought to
defend their standpoint in front of the class.
2 – Can you find other explanations as to the origin of language?
A brief history of linguistics
THE GREEK TRADITION
LANGUAGE BETWEEN NATURE AND CONVENTION
Alongside the Indians’, the Greeks’ contribution was essential to the emergence and
development of linguistic study. The emphasis will be put on the Greek contribution and then
other sources will be mentioned. Indeed, refreshing an old debate, Plato was the first author to
present the quarrel between ‘the Naturalists’ and ‘the Conventionalist’ in a dialogue entitled
‘Cratylus’. The book presents two opposite standpoints.
The naturalists’: to this trend, language came into being naturally, and therefore an
intrinsic relationship links words to things. The naturalists consider that language has its
origins in eternal and immutable principles outside man himself (and the rules are therefore
inviolable). To this trend, as humans we came into being within a language community which
inherited its language from its predecessors and its users will transmit it to the coming
generations without alterations.
The conventionalists’: to this trend, language originates as a product of convention,
so that the relationship between words and things is arbitrary. The conventionalists regard
language as the result of customs and tradition. (It can only be the result of a tacit agreement
or social contract among the members of the community). As it was made by men, its rules
can be broken by men.
Both Plato and Aristotle paid attention to grammar. For example, we owe Plato the
fundamental division of the Greek sentence into a nominal and verbal component, ónoma or
noun, and rhéma, or verb, which remained the primary grammatical distinction underlying
syntactic analysis and word classification in all future European linguistic descriptions.
As defined by Plato, nouns were terms that could function in sentences as subjects of a
predication, and verbs were terms which could express the action or quality predicated. i.e.
the subject of a predication names the thing about which something is said, and the predicate
is that part of the sentence which says something about the subject. This can be illustrated in
the following diagram.
Theme / Subject
Predicate
What we talk about
What we say about it
Substance (Nouns, pronouns)
Activity ( Result of the transformation involving
Verbs and adjectives)
Two observations can be made on this classification:
1 – The division of the major grammatical categories was made on logical grounds
2 – Verbs and adjectives belonged to the same class.
Aristotle was more of a conventionalist as according to David Crystal he considered
that the reality of a name lies in its formal properties (its shape), its relationship to the real
world being only secondary and indirect for to him, No name exists by nature, but only by
becoming a symbol. This clearly emphasizes the conventional/symbolic aspect of language.
Aristotle also kept the platonic distinction between nouns and verbs, but added the
conjunctions, to which belonged all the other words that were not members of the two classes.
He observed however, that the names of many ‘things’, were either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’
in Greek, and introduced the term ‘intermediate’ to refer to the third gender. Another advance
made by Aristotle was his recognition of the category of tense in the Greek verb.
The Stoics centred their philosophy on language. One of the most fundamental
distinctions they made was that between form and meaning “that which signifies” and “that
which is signified”. This important distinction was to be taken over by two eminent language
investigators later, namely Saint Augustine in the Fourth century and De Saussure in the
twentieth. The Stoics also insisted on the lack of correspondence between “proper nouns”
semantically by reference to individual quality as against general quality or common nouns,
and put the adjective in the same class as nouns. They significantly developed what is now
called inflection. They also distinguished between “active” and “passive”, and between
“transitive” and “intransitive” verbs.
Dionisius Thrax (100 BC), a student of Aristarchus, wrote the first formal grammar
of Greek which became a standard for over one thousand years. Drawing from a great number
of predecessors including Chrysippus of Soli, Appolonius, and the Sophists, he recognized the
adverb, the participle, the pronoun, and the preposition. All Greek words were classified in
terms of case, gender, number, tense, voice, mood, etc.
The Téchné begins with an exposition by Dionysios of the context of grammatical studies as
this was seen by the Alexandrians. He writes: ‘Grammar is the practical knowledge of the
general usages of poets and prose writers. It has six parts: first, accurate reading (aloud) with
due regard to the prosodies; second, explanation of the literary expressions in the works; third,
the provisions of notes on phraseology and subject matter; fourth, the discovery of
etymologies; fifth, the working out of analogical regularities; sixth, the appreciation of literary
composition which is the noblest part of grammar.
As Greek phonology is based on the pronunciation of the letters of the Greek alphabet,
Greek grammar concentrated mainly on the written language, mostly the Attic Greek of the
classical authors, though always with a proper attention to its implication of utterance in
reading aloud. The linguist John Lyons, coined the expression “the classical fallacy” to
qualify the ancient Greek approach towards language which considers that:
a) – the spoken language derived from the written one, and notably because they
considered the word ‘grammar’ as corresponding to ‘the art of writing’.
b) - the language of the 5th century Attic writers was considered as ‘more correct’ than
the colloquial speech of their time, and that the ‘purity’ of a language is ‘maintained’
by the usage of the educated, while it is ‘corrupted’ by the illiterate, thus ignoring that
these terms can only relate to a selected standard.
References:
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/cratylus.html
http://schmidhauser.us/2010-birth.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
Practice: Referring to the privileged status of writing, John Lyons coined the term: the
Classical Fallacy. Discuss and Comment this coinage in relation to other languages than
Greek.
Other important traditions
THE INDIAN TRADITION
Contemporary to the Greek philosophers, Indian and Chinese thinkers were also
leading an intense linguistic activity the Far east. In India, more than in Greece where
language change was considered as corruption, the Hindu priests believed that one of the
requirements for religious ceremonies to be successful was the necessity to reproduce
accurately the original form of their Vedic hymns. The discrepancy between the actual
pronunciation of the ancient Vedas and the required standard was so important that the whole
language had to be reconsidered. In religious matters, language change, which concerned both
the pronunciation and grammar of Sanskrit, was considered as profanation of the sacred texts.
Panini (4th and 5th BC), acknowledged as the greatest Indian grammarian, mentions a
large number of predecessors. He set about reformulating the rules of Sanskrit in its three
components: pronunciation, lexis and grammar. As other Hindus, Crystal writes, he sought to
establish the facts of the old language clearly and systematically so to produce an
authoritative text. Panini’s grammar of Sanskrit has frequently been described, from the point
of view of its exhaustiveness, its internal consistency, and its economy of statement, as far
superior to any grammar of any language yet written. The main part of the grammar, which is
a highly technical work and can be interpreted only with the help of the commentaries of his
successors, consists of about 4000 rules and lists of basic forms to which reference is made in
the rules.
The rules are ordered in sequence in such a way that the scope of a particular rule is
defined or restricted by the preceding rules. Further economy is achieved by the use of
abbreviations and symbols. The work is remarkable for its detailed word-formation rules and
phonetic descriptions. Several concepts of modern linguistics derive from this tradition (place
of articulation, the concept of voicing, the influence of sound in connected speech, etc.). As in
Greece, the distinction was made between noun (as subject) and verb (as predicate). Other
parts of speech such as preposition and particle were recognized too.
THE ROMAN TRADITION
The nature and achievement of the Late Latin grammarians can best be appreciated
through a consideration of the work of their greatest representative, Priscian who taught Latin
grammar in Constantinople at the beginning of the sixth century. Though he drew much from
his Latin predecessors, his aim, like theirs, was to transfer as far as he could the grammatical
system of the Techné, and that of Appolonius writing to Latin.
Crystal notes that Greek influence was supreme in every sphere of Roman scholarship,
art, and literature. The Romans adopted Greek culture and Greek methods of education. Latin
grammarians were almost wholly dependent on their Greek models and this influence can be
seen in Priscian’s and Varro’s works on Latin language. Crystal points out that Varro
achieved the codification of Latin under the headings of etymology, morphology and syntax.
The typical grammar of Latin was organized in three sections, as was that of D.
Thrax. The first section would define the scope of grammar as the art of correct speech and of
the understanding of the poets, and would deal also with letters and syllables. The second
section would treat of the parts of speech, and give, in greater or less detail, the variations
they underwent according to tense, gender, number, case, etc. Finally, the third section would
consist of a discussion of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ style, warnings against common ‘faults’ and
‘barbarisms’, and examples of the recommended ‘figures of speech’.
THE MIDDLE AGES
Latin was not only the language of the liturgy and the scriptures, but was also
considered as the universal language of diplomacy, scholarship and culture. It was primarily a
written language and, insofar as it was written, each country developed its own pronunciation.
As was previously mentioned, the scholastic philosophers, like the Stoics, were interested in
language as a tool for analyzing the structure of reality. It was therefore the question of
meaning or ‘signification’ to which they attached the greatest importance. It was the task of
‘speculative grammar’ to discover the principles whereby the word, as a sign, was relate, on
the one hand to the human intellect, and, on the other, to the things it represented, or
‘signified’. It was assumed that these principles were constant and universal, and the
differences between languages were thought to be superficial, hiding the existence of a
universal grammar.
According to the speculative grammarians, the word did not directly represent the
nature of the thing it signified. It represented it, as existing in a particular way, or ‘mode’ – as
a substance, an action, a quality, etc. – and it did this, by having the forms of the appropriate
part of speech. Grammar was therefore a philosophical theory of the parts of speech and their
characteristic ‘modes of signifying’.
This period also saw a development of western lexicology and progress in the field of
translation as Christian missionary activity increased. Several major grammars and
dictionaries were produced as well as descriptive works on Arabic pronunciation in Eastern
Europe. For a long time, these works remained unknown in Western Europe. Opportunities
for contact with the Greek, Arabic and Hebrew linguistic traditions only came later, as a result
of the crusades.
The translation of Greek works into Arabic was fundamental for Europeans to learn about the
Greek heritage and authors like Abu Al Aswad Ad Duali and Seebawayh were real landmarks
in this field.
THE RENAISSANCE
Through voyages, conquests, trading and colonization from the sixteenth century
onward, Europe became acquainted with a wide variety of languages. Information on
languages from Africa, Asia and America became available in the form of word lists,
grammars, dictionaries, and religious texts, and attempts at classifying these languages
followed. Large-scale word collection for language comparisons were a notable feature of the
centuries after the Renaissance and led to the development of comparative grammar.
The rediscovery of the Classical world that came with the ‘revival of learning’, as well
as the discoveries of the new world, together with the dissemination of print literature,
transformed the field of study. Missionary work produced a large quantity of linguistic
material, especially from the Far East. The Chinese linguistic tradition was discovered. Arabic
and Hebrew studies progressed. The Renaissance scholars took Cicero’s usage as their model
of ‘good Latin style’. From Cicero, they derived their ideal of ‘humanism’ as opposed to
’barbarism’. Holding that the literature of Classical antiquity was the source of all ‘civilized’
values, they concentrated their energies upon the collection, and publication of the texts of
Classical authors. Once again, grammar became an aid to the understanding of literature and
to the writing of ‘good Latin’. There was also a more systematic study of European languages,
especially of the Romance family. The vernacular languages of Europe were studied and their
grammars written in great numbers. In fact, the first grammars of Italian and Spanish date
from the fifteenth century.
However, language still meant the language of literature. Major dictionary projects
were launched in many languages. Academies came into being. This period also witnessed:
-
the breakdown of Latin as a universal medium of communication, and its
replacement by modern languages
-
the development of ‘general grammars’ based on universal principles (Port Royal.)
The first statement about the historical relationship between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin
was made, ushering in the science of Comparative Philology which will later pave the way to
modern linguistics.
References:
Vivien A. Law: History of Linguistic Thought in the Early Middle Ages, 1993 John
Benjamins
http://mcgregor.continuumbooks.net/media/1/history_outline.pdf
http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Panini.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics
Even Hovdhaugen. Foundations of Western Linguistics. Universitetsforlaget, Oslo, 1982.
Alan J. Nussbaum: Indo-European Linguistics, Greek and Latin Language and Linguistics,
Homer, Old Latin. Journal of Latin Linguistics. Volume 13, Issue 2,
David Crystal (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, CUP
http://mcgregor.continuumbooks.net/media/1/history_outline.pdf
Practice:
Other equally important traditions have not been mentioned above, as for example, the
Muslims’ achievements in translating Greek works into Arabic. With your group partners,
mention some of their most significant results.
Comparative and historical linguistics in the 19th century
In order to understand the link between European languages and other non-European
languages, one has to consider the impact of Sir William Jones who declared in 1786 the
following
“The Sanskrit language whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful
structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more
exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity,
both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar than could possibly
have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philosopher can
examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some
common source, which, perhaps no longer exists”.
This observation is generally considered as the first statement linking Sanskrit to
European languages, thus initiating the quest for a common origin of European languages in
the hypothesized proto-Indo-European family of languages.
In 1808, F. Schlegel published his treatise On the Language and the Learning of the
Indians wherein he stressed the importance of studying the ‘inner structures’ of languages ‘i.e.
their morphology for the light that could be shed on their genetic relationships. It was indeed
the comparison of the inflexional and derivational morphology of Sanskrit and the other IndoEuropean languages, especially Latin and Greek, on which the early comparativists
concentrated.
In 1816, Frantz Bopp edited a book entitled “The Sanskrit Conjugation System” where
he studied the connections between Sanskrit, German, Greek, Latin, etc. He established that
all these languages belonged to the same family. In so doing, he understood that a language
can be enlightened by another, explaining the forms of one by resorting to the forms of
another. The discovery that languages could be compared with one another; that a bond or
relationship existed between languages often separated geographically by great distances;
that, as well as languages, there were also great language families, in particular the one which
came to be called the Indo-European family gave a significant impetus to research. However,
despite their contribution in opening up a new field of investigation, the comparativists did
not manage to found a true science of linguistics, because they never sought to define
precisely the nature of their object of study.
A characteristic of comparative philology is that their investigations were limited to
the Indo-European languages and their method was exclusively comparative. One of the great
defects, from a scholarly point of view, which is common to philology and the comparative
phase is a servile attachment to the letter, to the written language, or a failure to draw a clear
distinction between what might pertain to the real spoken language and what to its graphic
sign. Hence, it comes about that the literary point of view is more or less confused with the
linguistic point of view, and furthermore, more concretely, the written word is confused with
the spoken word; two superimposed systems of signs which have nothing to do with each
other, the written and the spoken, are conflated.
In the 1820s, Wilhelm von Humboldt observed that human language was a rulegoverned system, anticipating a theme that was to become central in the formal work on
syntax and semantics of language in the 20th century; of this observation, he said that it
allowed language to make infinite use of finite means.
About 1880, scholars in the United States began to record the hundreds of native
languages once found in North America. The concern with describing languages spread
throughout the world, and thousands of languages around the world have now been analyzed
to varying degrees. As this work was developing in the early twentieth century, mainly in
America, linguists were confronted with languages whose structures differed greatly from
those of known European languages. Scholars decided that they needed a theory of linguistic
structure and methods of analysis.
During the eighteenth century, and, in fact, since the renaissance, serious thought and
factual investigations had continued on the historical relations between languages and on the
historical or genetic families that could be discovered and established on these grounds. The
main interest had lain on the comparison of vocabularies and structures of modern European
languages with those of Latin, and in the obvious historical connection, whatever precisely it
might be, between Latin and the Romance languages.
LANGUAGE FAMILIES AND LANGUAGE TYPES
European colonialism led to the discovery of several indigenous languages in all parts
of the world and promoted language contacts. This in turn, favoured linguistic comparison
between languages. Indeed, linguistic activity was given a crucial impetus from the nineteenth
century on. In Europe, D. Crystal writes, the comparison groups of languages in a systematic
way already established the descent from Latin of Catalan, French, Italian, Occitan,
Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian, Spanish, etc. In the 19th century, Proto-Indo-European was
deemed to be the common language from which many languages from Eurasia have derived
and this intense linguistic activity paved the way to the rise of comparative linguistics which
dominated linguistic inquiry. David Crystal provides a valuable account of how linguistic
enquiry evolved over time in Europe, so let us follow him.
I) – THE COMPARATIVE METHOD:
It is a way of systematically comparing a series of languages in order to prove a
historical relationship between them. Scholars start by defining a set of formal similarities and
differences between the languages, and try to work out (or reconstruct) an earlier stage of
development from which all the forms could have derived. The process is known as “Internal
reconstruction”.
When languages have been shown to have a common ancestor, they are said to be
“cognate”. The clearest ceases are those where the parent language is known to exist. For
example, on the basis of the various words for ‘father’, in the Romance languages, it is
possible to see how they all derived from Latin word for ‘pater’. If Latin no longer existed, it
would be possible to reconstruct a great deal of its form, by comparing a large number of
words in this way. Exactly the same reasoning is used for cases where the parent language
does not exist, as when the forms of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, are compared to reconstruct the
Indo-European form *pəter.
II)- TYPES OF LINGUISTIC CLASSIFICATION:
There are two main ways of classifying languages: the genetic (or genealogical) and
the typological.
a) – the genetic classification: this is a historical classification, based on the
assumption that languages have diverged from a common ancestor. It uses early remains as
evidence, and when this is lacking, deductions are made, using the comparative method to
enable the form of the parent language to be reconstituted.
b) – the typological classification: this is based on a comparison of the formal
similarities which exist between languages. It is an attempt to group languages into structural
types, on the basis of phonology, grammar, vocabulary, rather than in terms of any real or
assumed historical relationship. For example, it is possible to group languages in terms of
how they use sounds – how many, and what kinds of vowels they have, whether they use
tones, clicks, and so on. Languages can also be classified in terms of whether their word order
is fixed or free, and which order is favoured. These, propounded by August Von Schlegel
(1767-1845) and others in the early 19th century, recognized three main linguistic types, on
the basis of the way a language constructs its words:
David Crystal classifies languages into three main types. They are as follows:
ISOLATING, ANALYTIC or ROOT LANGUAGES:
The words are invariable, and there are no endings. Grammatical relationships are
shown through the use of word order. Chinese, Vietnamese, and Samoan are clear cases. For
example, ‘I bought some oranges to eat’
in Beijing Chinese would be: Wό
Literally:
I
mãi
buy
jùzi
chi
orange
eat
INFLECTING, SYNTHETIC or FUSIONAL LANGUAGES:
Grammatical relationships are expressed by changing the internal structure of the
words – typically, by the use of inflectional endings which express several grammatical
meanings at once. Latin or Arabic are clear cases. For example, D. Crystal notes that the “o”
ending of Latin amo, ‘I love’, simultaneously expresses that the form is in the first person,
singular, present tense, active, and indicative mood.
AGGLUTINATIVE or AGGLUTINATING LANGUAGES:
Words are built up out of a long sequence of units, with each unit expressing a
particular grammatical meaning, in a clear one-to-one way. A sequence of five affixes might
be needed to express the meaning of ‘amo’. One for each category of person, number, tense,
voice and mood. Turkish, Finish, Japanese and Swahili form words in this way.
References:
The above documentation is from David Crystal’s (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of
Language, CUP.
Practice: Actually, English is at the same time an isolating, an inflecting and an agglutinative
language in some of its uses. Give an example of each case.
TWENTIETH CENTURY LINGUISTICS
Linguistics as a scientific discipline
The aims of linguistics
The aim of Linguistics is to form hypotheses, i.e: it aims at the construction of theories
meant as explanations of linguistic phenomena in a systematic way. For the theory to be
scientific, it should be systematic in that the explanation the theory proposes will handle all
the data which were first investigated, but will also handle further data besides. This also
means that a theory should transcend the data which it originally took into account. To be
complete, a theory must be exhaustive, economic, consistent, objective and explicit.
Another aim which linguistics tries to achieve, is to describe all known languages and
record their history. This involves tracing the history of language families and types, and, as
far as possible, reconstructing the present languages of each family.
Linguistics tries to determine the forces operating permanently and universally in all
languages, and to formulate general laws to which all specific historical phenomena can be
reduced.
Linguistics has to delimit and define linguistics itself as an object of study and tries to
distinguish it from other related fields like anthropology, ethnography, psychology, sociology,
Semiotics, etc.
The elaboration of such aims and principles is a sine qua non condition for a discipline to
pretend to be scientific. Yet, in addition to all this, Saussure redefined the object of study of
linguistics and elaborated his conceptualization in the form of a number of dichotomies and
his work was published posthumously by his students in the form of a book entitled ‘Le Cours
de Linguistique Générale’ .The book soon earned a great fame and became the source of what
was to be termed the European tradition and which will be the focus of the next lecture.
The European tradition
The ‘Cours de Linguistique Générale’ is widely held to be the foundation of modern
linguistics. Contrary to the aims and methods of the comparative philologists (focus on
written records and interest in historical analysis and interpretation), Saussure focussed on the
principles governing the structure of living languages. He expressed most of his central ideas
in the form of pairs of concepts or (dichotomies): langue/parole, signified/signifier,
diachrony/synchrony, paradigm/syntagms. In this respect, Saussure envisaged language
(human speech as a whole) to be composed of two aspects he labelled langue (the language
system), and parole (the act of speaking).
According to D. Crystal, Language is that faculty of speech, present in all normal
human beings, due to heredity, but which requires the environmental stimuli for proper
development. It is our facility to talk to each other. It happens to make use of an apparatus
which was not primarily made for this purpose, since each of our ‘vocal organs’ have other
biologically more primary functions than speech (lungs for breathing, nose for smelling, teeth
for chewing, etc.).
The dichotomies:
Saussure expressed the essence of his theory in the form of pairs of concepts called
dichotomies. Langue/parole; diachrony/synchrony; signifier/signified; paradigm/syntagm.
Let us start with the first pair of concepts: language as being composed of two entities
langue versus parole: Saussure, notes D. Crystal, considers langue to be the totality or the
‘collective fact’ of a language deducible from an examination of the memories of all the
language users. It is a storehouse: the sum of word-images stored in the minds of individuals.
Langue is something which the individual speaker can make use of but cannot affect himself.
It is a corporate social phenomenon, involving both the grammatical, phonological and
semantic system. Ultimately, langue has to be related to the actual usage of individuals for it
has no reality apart from its validity as a reflector of the system underlying acceptable usage
which a community manifests in its everyday speech.
This leads to the correlative Saussurean concept of parole, the actual concrete act of
speaking on the part of the individual: the controlled (or at least controllable) psychphysiological activity which is what we hear. It is a personal social activity which exists
beyond any particular manifestation in speech. Parole is of course the only object available
for direct observation by linguists. It is the only entrance gate to the world of langue. The
langue of a community is arrived at only by a consideration of a great number of paroles
(corpus).
Another dichotomy concern the pair of opposed concepts: diachrony and synchrony.
Indeed, Saussure draws a clear separation between a linguistic study based on history
(diachronic) and another based on a given state of language at a specific moment (synchrony).
Historically a language can be apprehended only as a permanently changing data whose inner
system is difficult to describe, while synchronically, language appears as a structured system
whose components can be isolated and studied separately. As a philologist, he personally
undertook several historical studies, but to set the basis of linguistics as a scientific discipline,
he decided that only synchronic studies were worth of interest. Saussure uses the analogy with
a game of chess to illustrate the difference between the two standpoints. If we walk into a
room where a chess game is being played, it is possible to assess the state of the game by
studying the position of the pieces on the board without necessarily knowing the specific
history of each move. However an effective knowledge of the rules of the game is necessary
to understand the stakes at play.
The other pair of concepts which make up the notion of sign is what Saussure labelled
the signifier and the signified. By signifier is meant the acoustic image and by signified the
concept. It should be made absolutely clear that what Saussure means by the signifier is not
the physical articulation of sounds, or the graphical aspects of writing. What is meant by
signifier, is the impact which the heard words, or the read words leave in our consciousness.
However, there could be no impact that is no signifier, if there is no physical means through
which the impact is left in our mind. As we can see, both are of a psychic nature and should
not be examined separately for they constitute one single unity: the sign. Therefore, by sign is
meant the establishment of a relationship between signifier and signified. Let us examine
what actually takes place during a linguistic interaction:
A says something to B in a code/language that B understands. What we actually mean
by A says something to B, is the utterance by A of a certain number of specific sounds,
belonging to a particular phonological system, organized in a particularly structured pattern
and pronounced in such a way that B makes sense of them. Three observations need to be
made now: a) – A pronounces the sounds in a highly precise manner and pauses at particular
moments thus conferring his speech a particular rhythm; b) – As B listens to A, he/she reconstitutes the sounds as B thinks A produced them. B identifies the various units making up
the meaningful structures (words) of languages and attributes to each of them a particular
meaning; c) – the attribution of meaning by B to the units of sounds uttered by A is the
personal responsibility of B. It should, by no means imply that A meant exactly the same
thing because of a hypothetical natural or intrinsic relationship between certain sounds and
their external meaning. This is what is meant by the arbitrariness of language. In effect, the
sign does not unite a thing (from the external world) and a name (language), but an acoustic
image (the one built in his mind by B after listening to A), and a concept (the one which B
attributes to the acoustic image and which is supposed to be the same as the one intended by
A). For example, when B who speaks English but not Berber hears the following succession
of sounds: / i: /, / z / , / I /, he/she, by habit attributes the meaning (=/= difficult ) to the unit
which form, while another person C who speaks Berber but not English, would attribute to
them the meaning of an insect ( the mosquito). This example clearly shows the arbitrariness in
the attribution of meanings to an equivalent succession of sounds by different speech
communities, and which definitely plead for the conventional nature of language.
The last dichotomy to study concerns the syntagmatic versus the paradigmatic aspects of
language. We learn on page 197 from the CLG, that in a given state of language, everything
lies on relationships of differences. These differences involve two dimensions syntagmatic
and paradigmatic.
In discourse, words entertain relationships resulting from the linear aspect of language. In
this respect, one cannot utter/write several units of language at the same time. The units of
language (phonemes) are articulated one after the other in the spoken chain. Placed in
syntagm, a term acquires its value only because it is opposed to another (preceding and
following it). eg: /leik/ /teik/ /laik/ /lait/ /feit/ /fait/ etc. The same principle holds for phrases
and sentences. Let us take the example of a person A uttering the following sentence to B:
“My sister might come tonight”.
Two main observations can be made concerning the structure of this sentence. a) – it has a
linear level concerning the length duration for its complete utterance. This aspect concerns the
effective pronunciation of each and every sound that makes up the different units which
compose the sentence. / maisistəmaitkʌmtənait /. The sentence amounts to five meaningful
utterances, themselves divisible into smaller contrastive units amounting to nineteen
phonemes. / mai/ into two units /m+ai/; / sistə/, into five units / s+i+s+t+ə/; / mait/ into three
units /m+ai+t/; / kʌm/ into three units /kʌm.; and / tənait/ into five units / t+ə+n+ai+t /. On the
syntagmatic axis, for example, one can oppose /mai/ to /mi:/ or to /mɔ:/, while on the
paradigmatic axis, my can be opposed to your, her; our, their, etc.
The paradigmatic dimension involves the associative aspect of the organisation of
discourse. Out of discourse, words having something in common get associated in the
memory. Thus, words, whose relationships are varied, can be grouped. eg: teaching/teacher;
working/wedding; education/learning, etc. here the coordinations have no relation to linearity.
They take place in the brain. They are part of the “trésor de la langue”. Their relationships are
associative/paradigmatic.
To summarize, in any given text, there are syntagmatic relationships (in presentia) and
which can be identified within the sentences, and there are paradigmatic relationships (in
absentia), which need to be inferred from the sentences.
References:
Saussure, F. De, (1994)‘Le Cours de Linguistique Générale’, ENAG
Practice: Work with your group partners and illustrate each dichotomy with personal
examples taken from Berber, Arabic and English.
The American tradition
So far, we have accounted for the European tradition as being mainly characterized by
reflection on linguistic comparison and, from Saussure on, on the study of language as a
system of relationships which was soon to be seen also as a system of relational structures.
In America however, the first researchers to consider the linguistic situation of the
indigenous people were anthropologists. It ought to be noted already that their interests and
preoccupations were totally different from those of the Europeans philologists. Their basic
preoccupation was to establish good descriptions of the American Indian languages before
they disappeared, not their comparison with the view to discover some hypothetical common
ancestor. Because the languages were only spoken, there were no written records to rely on.
As a result, historical analysis was naturally ruled out. Adding to this, these languages
presented very different kinds of structure compared to those encountered in the European
tradition. Therefore, the approach was to provide a careful account of the speech patterns of
the living languages.
In this respect, the works of F. Boas and E. Sapir proved to be of a formative influence
on the early developments of linguistics in America. F. Boas encountered Native American
languages from many different linguistic families—all of which were quite different from the
Semitic and Indo-European languages which most European scholars studied. Boas came to
realize how greatly ways of life and grammatical categories could vary from one place to
another. As a result he came to believe that the culture and lifeways of a people were reflected
in the language that they spoke. This analysis was to give way to what became the famous
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis:
The interdependence of thought and speech makes it clear that languages are not so
much a means of expressing truth that has already been established, but are a means of
discovering truth that was previously unknown. Their diversity is diversity not of sounds and
signs but of ways of looking at the world1.
Sapir was one of Boas' star students. He furthered Boas' argument by noting that
languages were systematic, formally complete systems. Thus, it was not this or that particular
word that expressed a particular mode of thought or behavior, but that the coherent and
systematic nature of language interacted at a wider level with thought and behavior.
"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and
types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they
stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a
kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this
means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it
into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an
agreement to organize it in this way — an agreement that holds throughout our speech
community and is codified in the patterns of our language... all observers are not led
by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their
linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated." (Language,
Thought and Reality pp. 212–214).
The hypothesis bears two dimensions: linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism.
Supporters of linguistic relativity assume that culture is shaped by language. Terwilliger
defines linguistic determinism as the process by which "the functions of one's mind are
determined by the nature of the language which one speaks." In simpler terms, the thoughts
that we construct are based upon the language that we speak and the words that we use. In its
strongest sense, linguistic determinism can be interpreted as meaning that language
determines thought. In its weakest sense, language partially influences thought. Whorf
demonstrated that culture is largely determined by language (linguistic relativity). Different
cultures perceive the world in different ways. Culturally essential objects, conditions, and
1
W.V. Humboldt Uber das vergleichende sprachstudium P . 27. https://books.google.dz/books?id=cXLQIIhn5gC&pg=PR31&lpg=PR31&dq
processes usually are defined by a plethora of words, while things that cultures perceive as
unimportant are usually assigned one or two words.
References:
Whorf, B. Lee. (1956) Language, Thought, and Reality. Selected Writings. The MIT Press.
On Terwilliger, follow this link: http://reocities.com/CollegePark/4110/whorf.html
https://books.google.dz/books?id=cXL-QIIhn5gC&pg=PR31&lpg=PR31&dq
Practice: It has been reported that there are a dozen words for snow in the Hopi language.
Surf the internet and find arguments for against this pronouncement.
OTHER RELATED DISCIPLINES
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
The primary concern of sociolinguistic scholarship is to study the correlations between
language use and social structure. Sociolinguistics is concerned with describing language use
as a social phenomenon and seeks to establish causal links between language and society.
Two main fields characterize sociolinguistics: micro and macro-sociolinguistics.
Micro-sociolinguistics investigates how social structure influences the way people talk
and how language varieties and patterns of use correlate with social attributes such as class,
sex and age. As an illustration of a direct relationship between language and social class, the
use of Classical Arabic in official meetings and Popular Arabic in more mundane encounters.
Likewise, the type of language used by women gatherings differs from the one used by men in
say, stadiums or souks, just as well as the variety of language used by teenagers differs
significantly from the one used by adults.
Macro-sociolinguistics studies what societies do with their languages, that is, attitudes
and attachments that account for the functional distribution of speech forms in society,
language shift, maintenance and replacement, the delimitation and interaction of speech
communities.
Major topics which sociolinguistics is concerned with involve: language change
(causes and mechanisms of language change, language variation (and boundary markers,
multilingualism and linguistic relativism), and language planning. They also involve change
in the internal structure of a language.
To Bernard Spolsky again, sociolinguistics focuses on the language practices of a
group of people who do in fact the opportunity to interact, and who, it often turns out, share
not just a single language, but a repertoire of language varieties. For the sociolinguist, the
speech community is a complex interlocking network of communication whose members
share knowledge about, and attitudes towards the language use patterns of others as well as
themselves. It is useful to remind that a speech community is all the people who speak a s
ingle language and so, share notions of what is same or different in phonology, vocabulary
and syntax. The notion is preserved in such a concept as ‘francophonia’.
Sociolinguistics being the study of language in relation to society, studies the ways in
which language interacts with society both in their temporal and spatial dimensions. As
society evolves in a permanent way, language also involves in a permanent way. Besides, all
aspects of language are concerned with linguistic change: pronunciation, vocabulary and
grammar, though some aspects change faster and deeper than others.
1 - Examples of change in pronunciation:
- Haplology: this is the type of change caused by the loss of a sound, because of its
similarity to a neighbouring sound. e.g. ‘England’ from ‘Englaland’.
- Dissimilation: a sound moves away from the pronunciation of a neighbouring sound.
e.g. ‘tartoffel’ became ‘kartoffel’ in Modern German.
- Apocope: the loss of a final sound from a word. e.g. ‘help’ from ‘helpe’
2 – Examples of change in vocabulary/meaning:
In the course of its life, a language always experiences the arrival of new words and the loss
of old ones. A word can also change its meaning.
It can widen its meaning by the process of extension: in Latin, ‘virtue’ was only a male
quality, today it applies to both sexes. Its meaning may become more specialized by the
process of semantic narrowing: O.E.
‘mete’ used to refer to food in general, today, it refers only to one type of food.
3 – Examples of grammatical change:
Analogy: irregular grammatical patterns are changed in accordance with the regular patterns
which already exist in the language. For example, several irregular verbs became regular in
today’s English. e.g. healpen => healp => helpt => helped.
Linguistic change over space. May be the best illustration would be the distinction
between the two varieties of English known as British English (BE) and American English
(AM). Other varieties known as World Englishes amply testify to the extreme dynamism of
English.
Linguistic change according to context of interaction: a clear illustration of this
type of change concerns the difference between the variety known as colloquial English used
in a familiar context, and the one known as formal English which is used in formal and
official circumstances. For example, don’t in a familiar context, and do not in a formal
situation.
Bernard Spolsky defines Sociolinguistics as the field which studies the relation
between language and society, between the uses of language and the social structures in
which the users of language live. Considering that language is a social phenomenon, and that
that even to Saussure, language is a system of signs in use in society, it becomes clear that
language cannot be dissociated from the structural organisation of the speech community
where it is used. This definition also accounts for the social dimension in the variation of a
language within the same speech community, depending to which social class a speaker
belongs. In addition to this social dimension, the physical territory where a language is spoken
is also to be considered.
In this respect, R. Hudson claims that, It is a well-known fact that the greater the
geographical distance between the users of a common language, the greater the language
variation. The examples of English, Berber and Arabic are clear examples of such a variation.
Being spoken by people living in very wide areas, these languages undergo a process of
variation comprising all aspects of the language. However, despite the extent of the
divergence, as long as the users understand each other, the language unity is not threatened. It
becomes, when mutual intelligibility between the members of the same speech community is
not ensured. In this case, the language evolves into different accents, different dialects and
sometimes, to different languages.
To Peter Trudgill, the criterion of ‘mutual intelligibility’ is of less importance in the
use of the terms language and dialect than are political and cultural factors. The term dialect,
refers strictly speaking to differences between kinds of language which are differences in
vocabulary and grammar as well as pronunciation. The term accent, on the other hand, refers
solely to differences of pronunciation, and it is important to distinguish between the two. This
is particularly true, in the context of English, in the case of the dialect known as Standard
English. In so far as it differs grammatically and lexically from other varieties of English, it is
legitimate to consider it a dialect: the term dialect can be used to apply to all varieties, not just
to non-standard varieties.
There is also one accent which only occurs together with Standard English. This is the
British English accent, or more properly, the English-English accent, which is known to
linguists as RP (Received Pronunciation). This is the accent which developed largely in the
English public schools, and which was until recently required of all BBC announcers. It is
however not necessary to speak Standard English.
Standard English can be spoken with any regional accent, and in the vast majority of
cases normally is. Because language, as a social phenomenon is closely tied up with the social
structure and value system of society, different dialects and accents are evaluated in different
ways. So statusful are Standard English and the prestige accents that they are widely
considered ‘correct’, ‘beautiful’, ’nice’, ‘pure’ and so on. Other, non- standard, non-prestige
varieties are often held to be ‘ugly’, ‘corrupt’, ‘lazy’, etc.
The scientific study of language has convinced scholars that all languages, and
correspondingly all dialects, are equally ‘good’, as linguistic systems. All varieties of a
language are structured, complex, rule-governed systems which are wholly adequate for the
needs of their speakers. It follows that value-judgments concerning the correctness and purity
of linguistic varieties are social rather than linguistic. There is nothing at all, inherent in nonstandard varieties which makes them inferior. Any apparent inferiority is due only to their
association with speakers from under-privileged, low-status groups. In other words, attitudes
towards non-standard dialects are attitudes which reflect the social structure of society.
References:
Most of the text above was inspired from “The Handbook of Sociolinguistics”, edited by
Florian Coulmas.
Coulmas, F. (1998) The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, Blackwell
Crystal D. (2009) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. CUP
Hudson, R.A.(1996) Sociolinguistics, CUP.
Giglioli, P. : Language and Social Context
Hockett, C.F. (1960). The origin of speech. Scientific American, 203, 88-96.
Spolsky, B.(1998) : Sociolinguistics, Oxford University Press
Practice:
Work with your group partners and try to illustrate each type of internal change visible in
French (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary) and each type of change due to external
motives (time, place, context of interaction)
LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION
THE FUNCTIONS OF LANGUAGE
In addition to its representational function, language is characterized by its
communicative function. The representational function of language allows humans to
communicate by using linguistic signs in place of the objects to which they refer. This allows
Berbers to talk about ‘adrar’ or French to talk about ‘la mer’, without bringing a mountain or
a sea to the place of interaction. This ability for abstraction which language offers its users is
highly cognitive and is actually deemed as the cornerstone of the divide between humans and
non humans. It is precisely this communicative function which makes of language a medium
for interaction. This communicative function permits humans to socialize, share ideas and
feelings, but also to “do things with words”. That is, to use language in such a way as to alter
the belief or the behaviour of the listener.
Indeed, it is language which provides humans with a communicative system and it is
the rules of the language used which permit them to ensure mutual understanding. The history
of human communication will not be reviewed here, but a special attention will be devoted to
the device elaborated by the linguist Roman Jakobson to account for the six factors involved
in a communication act, and to which he makes correspond six functions of a language.
In a remarkable summary of the history of communication studies, Medina notes that
Karl Bühler (1933, 1934) gave a precise formulation to the traditional
model of communication as containing three distinct elements: the speaker,
addresser or sender of the message; the listener addressee, audience or recipient
of the message; and the world or object domain that is the topic of
communication2.
To these three important elements, Roman Jakobson adds three other ones which he
connects to six corresponding functions of language. The six factors of an act of communication
2
J. Medina, Language : Key Concepts in Philosophy, Continuum, 2005, p 2.
are according to Jakobson: the addresser, the message, the context, the contact, the code and the
addressee. The functions involved accordingly are: the emotive function which corresponds to
the addresser, the poetic function which relates to the message, the referential function which
defines the context, the phatic function which corresponds to the contact, the metalingual
function which refers to the code and the conative function which corresponds to the addressee.
All, some, or only one of these functions can prevail at a time in an act of communication
to varying degrees. The most dominant function(s) imprint(s) a particular aspect to the
communication act. For example, a text where the dominant element is a description will have a
referential focus, while another where the dominant factor is an instruction will bear a more
conative aspect. A text where the focus is put on the feelings and emotions of the speaker will be
dominated by the emotive function, while another whose emphasis is more on the form of a
message rather than on its contents will bear a more poetic aspect. Mention should also be made
that any text can be described using the following model developed by Roman Jakobson.
Jakobson’s model of communication
Context
Referential
Message
Poetic
Addresser
Emotive
Addressee
Conative
Contact
Phatic
Code
Metalingual
References:
Austin, J. L. (1962) How to do Things with Words, Clarendon Press.
http://www.sfu.ca/~terryn/http___sfu.ca_~terryn_304W_Effect/CMNS_304W_Effect_files/CM
NS304W%20Mid-term%20Notes.pdf
http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fitchf/readlit/Jakobson.htm
Practice:
1 - With your group partners, take a newspaper and focus on three different rubrics. Then apply
Jakobson’s diagram to analyse the functions that dominate each rubric. Then try to explain why
the author has chosen to focus on these particular factors.
2 – Study the following passage by Gorki, and sort out the dominant functions.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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