MA English Part 2

Paper 7 (Linguistics) All Important notes

Linguistics All Important Questions

1. Bilingualism
2. Code Switching
3. Comparative linguistics
4. Definition, Scope, leves with analysis and Branches of Linguistics
5. The Branches of linguistics
6. Discuss the kinds and causes of Language change in Historical Linguistics
7. Human-Animal Communication
8. Introduction to Historical Linguistics
9. Language Acquisition
10. Language Acquisition Theories
11. First Language Acquisition
12. Language Acquisition Stages
13. Language and Culture
14. Language and its characteristics
15. Characteristics of Language
16. Language vs Speech
17. Lexical Semantics and sense relations
18. Morphology, Morphemes and its Types
19. Major branches of Phonetics
20. Articulators
21. Phycholinguistics
22. Places and Manner of Articulation
23. The Manner of Articulation
24. Prescriptive and descriptive approach to language
25. Saussure and His Main Contributions
26. Semantics and types of meaning
27. Sociolinguistics
28. Language Variation
29. Stylistics and its significance

Notes Prepared By Prof. Tahir Islam

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Linguistics
All
Important
Questions

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Bilingualism
Bilingualism has been derived from Latin word bi means "two” and lingualism means "tongue".
Monolingualism refers to the ability to use a single language. Bilingualism is the ability to use
two languages effectively. The ability to use multiple languages is known as multilingualism.

Individual & Societal Bilingualism

Bilingualism exists as a possession of an individual. It is also possible to talk about bilingualism

as a characteristic of a group or community of people [societal bilingualism]. Bilinguals and
multilinguals are most often located in groups, communities or in a particular region (e.g.
Catalans in Spain). Co-existing languages may be in a process of rapid change, living in
harmony or one rapidly advancing at the cost of the other, or sometimes in conflict. Where many
language minorities exist, there is often language shift.

Bilingualism as a Norm

Bilingualism-more generally, multilingualism-is a major fact of life in the world today. To begin
with, the world's estimated 5,000 languages are spoken in the world's 200 sovereign states (or 25
languages per state), so that communication among the citizens of many of the world's countries
clearly requires extensive bi- (if not multi-)lingualism. In fact, David Crystal (1997) estimates
that two-thirds of the world's children grow up in a bilingual environment. Considering only
bilingualism involving

English, the statistics that Crystal has gathered indicate that, of the approximately 570 million
people world-wide who speak English, over 41 percent or 235 million are bilingual in English
and some other language. One must conclude that, far from being exceptional, as many lay
people believe, bilingualism/multilingualism--which, of course, goes hand in hand with
multiculturalism in many cases--is currently the rule throughout the world and will become
increasingly so in the future.

Global Multilingualism

The political history of the 19th and 20th centuries and the ideology of 'one state--one nation--
one language' have given rise to the idea that monolingualism has always been the default or
normal case in Europe and more or less a precondition for political loyalty. Facing this situation,
it has been overlooked that the vast majority of the world's population--in whatever form or
conditions--is multilingual. This is quite obvious when we look at the linguistic maps of Africa,
Asia or Southern America at any given time.

The traditional definition of Bilingualism is something like “the ability to use two languages
freely and fluently with native speaker like proficiency”. This approach to bilingualism appears
to rule out a great many people, especially learners, who have a good working knowledge of a
second language and a fair ability to express themselves, but who cannot claim to have the
accuracy and fluency of a native speaker. This type of perfect bilingualism is extremely rare.

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However, it is not uncommon for people to approximate to perfect bilingualism by being equally
competent in both languages over a fairly wide range of situations.

Bilingualism in its broad definition is very common indeed all over the world. Monolingualism
speech communities are extremely rare. People are required to attempt to learn at least one other
language. Over 70% of the earth;s population are thought to be bilingual or multilingual, and
there is good reason to believe that bilingualism or multilingualism has been the norm for most
human beings at least for the last few millennia. In countries like Switzerland, Canada and the
United States, people speak more than one language.

In New Guinea, in southeast Asia, in India, in the Caucasus, in the Amazon rain forest, people
routinely learn two or three neighbouring languages as well as their own, and the same was true
of Australia before the European settlement. Even today, many millions of European are at least
bilingual, speaking both their own mother tongue and the national lenguage of the country they
live in, and many of them can additionally speak a global language or world language like
English or French.

Sociolinguists have identified two main types of bilingualism: Co-ordinate and Compound.

Co-ordinate bilinguals tend to keep the two languages separate, and have language choice
governed by language domains(area of language activity). They may think in their dominant
language but have the ability to switch from one language to another when the need arises.

Compound bilinguals have their two languages as a merged system. They have a single
semantic base or competence and can use it to produce other language. They move from one
language to another with much less hesitation. The compound bilinguals use both languages at
the same time interchangeably. Compound bilingualism results in code-switching which means
change from one language to another. This change of switch may take place from one language
to another in the same situation, or from one sentence to another sentence in the discourse, or
within the same sentence.

There are many different kinds of bilingual communities: different in respect of whether one
language is clearly dominant or not for most members; whether one language is dominent for
some, but not for others; whether some members approximate to perfect bilingualism or not;
whether both languages are acquired simultaneously or not; and so on.

Thus one language might be the language of the home, in the sense that it would always be used
in talking informally with other members of the family at home about domestic matters.
However, another language might be used outside the home, or inside the home when strangers
are present (even though they might well be bilingual too) or when the topic of conversation is
other than domestic. This notion of domain is intuitively attractive.

Bilingualism or multilingualism can be the property of an individual, but equally it can be the
property of an entire speech community in which two or more languages are routinely used. In
what languages should education be delivered, and at what levels? What languages should be

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accepted for publication and broadcasting? In what languages should laws be written, and what
languages should be accepted in court proceedings?

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Code Switching
Bilingual communities use certain phenomena to make communication more effective and
meaningful. One of these phenomena is "code switching" which we can observe mostly in
second or foreign language classrooms. It refers to the use of two languages within a sentence or
discourse. It is a natural process that often occurs between multilingual speakers who share two
or more languages in common.

The Definition Of Code Switching

Code switching can be defined as the use of more than one language, variety, or style by a
speaker within an utterance or discourse, or between different interlocutors or situations. Code
switching occurs mostly in bilingual communities. Speakers of more than one language are
known for their ability to code switch or mix their language during their communication.

Reasons for Code Switching

There are a number of possible reasons for switching from one language to another.

First, people may use code-switching to hide fluency or memory problems in the second
language (but this accounts for about only 10 percent of code switches).

Second, code-switching is used to mark switching from informal situations (using native
languages) to formal situations (using second language).

Third, code-switching is used to exert control, especially between parents and children.

Fourth, code-switching is used to align speakers with others in specific situations (e.g., defining
oneself as a member of an ethnic group).

Code-switching also 'functions to announce specific identities, create certain meanings, and
facilitate particular interpersonal relationships'

Code Switching As A Language Interference

In the classroom, code switching can be seen as language interference. Students may see code
switching as an acceptable form of communication in society, and may feel comfortable
switching languages in everyday normal conversation. This would put those who are not
bilingual at a disadvantage, because they would not be able to communicate effectively.
Therefore, code switching can be both beneficial and a possible language interference, depending
on the situation and the context in which it occurs.

Types Of Code Switching

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Code switching can be classified as follows:

1. Inter-Sentential

In inter-sentential code switching, the language switch is done at sentence boundaries. This is
seen most often between fluent bilingual speakers. For example:

If you are late for the job interview, işealınmazsın.

2. Intra-Sentential

In intra-sentential code switching, the shift is done in the middle of a sentence, with no
interruptions, hesitations or pauses indicating a shift. The speaker is usually unaware of the shift.
Different types of switch occur within the clause level including within the word level. Some
researchers call it also code mixing. For example: You are sleepy coğu zaman, because you
spend a lot of saat in your bed.

3. Extra-Sentential

There is an insertion of a tag from one language into an utterance that is in another language. For
example: Turkish students use some boundary words like ama (but) or yani (I mean) while
speaking English.

Suggestions For Teachers

The teacher can use code switching especially while teaching new vocabulary. Here are some
suggestions for teachers of intermediate level students.

Conclusion

To conclude, code switching is a phenomenon that is inevitable in bilingual communities. It

occurs mostly in second/foreign language teaching and it can be used beneficially in classroom
activities. Although it is phenomenon that may be considered incompetence in language, it is
natural, and can be turned to a purposeful and useful activity in language classes.

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Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics (=comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that
compares languages to determine their relatedness.

The objective of CL as can be seen from the definition suggests is to find out how languages are
related to one another (e.g. what languages should be included in the Germanic family of
languages). Another important goal of CL is to find the origin of individual languages and
language families tracing this origin as far back in history as possible.

Starting at least by Italian writer Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), linguists began to notice and
inquire into similarities and possible relatedness of languages. In his essay entitled “De vulgari
eloquentia”, Dante wrote about the identical origin of Italian, French, and Provençal. More work
in this area was done by Guillaume Postel (1510 – 1581) in his work “De affinitate
linguarum”, by Friedrich Schlegel (1772 – 1829), Franz Bopp (1791–1867), Jacob Ludwig Carl
Grimm (1785 – 1863), Rasmus Christian Rask (1787 –1832), Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 –
1835), and other scholars who suggested theories and found linguistic evidence that multiple
languages had the same origin. This language is referred to as “Proto-Indo-European” (PEI) as
the linguistic evidence suggests the languages that are now spoken in Europe all the way to India
derive from it.

Building on research over the past several centuries, linguists have managed to trace back the
origin of a lot of individual languages and language families.

What is the major method that is used by CL scholars to identify that one language is related to
another language? The major method used in CL is comparison of morphemes. Importantly,
similar words are not considered to be a proof of relatedness between two languages since words
can be easily borrowed from one language to another (the vocabulary of some languages consists
of up to 70% of borrowed words).

How does this method work? Knowing how phonemes shifted in one language and how they
shifted in a different language allows, on the one hand, revealing identical morphemes in these
languages and therefore establishing their relatedness, and on the other hand reconstructing
separate morphemes (including roots) or the whole words in a proto-language (the predecessor of
given languages).

For instance, comparing the word “new” in Armenian “ nor “, French “ nouvel “, German “ neu
“,Greek “ νέος “, Latin “ novus “, Ukrainian “ новий ” and knowing the laws according to
which phonemes shift ( phonetic laws ) in languages, it is possible to reconstruct the Indo-
European proto-form * nevos**** .

In order to determine, whether languages are related or not, CL scholars hold to the rule that “if
the quantity of shared parts of words exceeds the quantity of shared words, then languages are
related; if the quantity of shared words exceeds the quantity of shared parts of words, then the
languages are not related or distantly related” (Kocherhan, 2010, p. 363).

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4 principles are fundamental to CL research: 1) comparison of languages can reveal their

relatedness – the shared proto-language; 2) shift of sounds in a language happens based on strict
linguistic laws due to which it morphemes are stable and it is possible to reconstruct earlier
versions of a language and its proto-language; 3) according to how languages are related they
can be grouped into families, groups, and subgroups; and 4) the differences between languages
can be explained by their individual development.

To advance CL research linguists compare forms both between different languages (outside
reconstruction) and within the same language ( inside reconstruction ).

CL scholars often conduct their research on ancient manuscripts. However, with the development
of computers, CL scholars also take advantage of computers to compile and analyze databases
with considerable amounts of forms and languages to study. One of the linguistic tools that is
available to the public and can be used for CL research is Ngram Viewer.

To conclude, CL research has advanced considerably over the last several centuries; however,
more is still to be discovered. For instance, how is the language described in Gen. 11:1 related to
modern languages? Is this the PIE language or was PIE a “descendant” of that language? How to
refine research tools to answer this and other CL questions? These are some of the outstanding
tasks of CL and I hope that this post may encourage you to think over these matters and possibly
to take the CL research one step further.

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Definition, Scope, leves with analysis and Branches of

Linguistics
Introduction

Linguistics is a growing and interesting area of study, having a direct hearing on fields as diverse
as education, anthropology, sociology, language teaching, cognitive psychology and philosophy.
What is linguistics? Fundamentally, it is concerned with the nature of language and
communication.

Definitions of Linguistics

According to Jean Aitchison: “Linguistics tries to answer two basic questions:What is

language and How does language work.”

According to Victoria A. Fromkin: “The scientific study of human language is called

linguistics”.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. By this we mean language in general, not a
particular language. If we were concerned with studying an individual language, we would say
‘I’m studying French... or English,’ or whichever language we happen to be studying. But
linguistics does not study an individual language; it studies ‘language’ in general.

Linguistics does not emphasize practical knowledge or mastery of a particular language.

Linguists may know only one language, or may know several, or may even study a language they
do not know at all. What they are trying to study are the ways in which language is organised to
fulfill human needs, as a system of communication. There is a difference between a person who
knows many languages (called a polyglot), and a linguist, who studies general principles of
language organisation and language behaviour, often with reference to some actual language or
languages. Any language can be taken up to illustrate the principles of language organisation,
because all languages reveal something of the nature of language in general.

We can say that linguistics is learning about language rather than learning a language. This
distinction is often explained as the difference between learning how a car works and learning
how to drive a car. When we learn how to drive a car, we learn a set of habits and do some
practice—this is similar to learning how to speak a language. When we learn how the car works,
we open up its mechanism, study it and investigate the relationship of its parts to one another.
This is similar to what we do in a scientific study of language, or linguistics: we investigate the
mechanism of language, its parts and how all these parts fit together to perform particular
functions, and why they are arranged or organised in a certain manner. Just as while driving a
car, we are using its various components, while speaking a language we are using the sounds,
words, etc.

Scope of Linguistics

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Linguistics today is a subject of study, independent of other disciplines. Before the twentieth
century, the study of language was not regarded as a separate area of study in its own right. It
was considered to be a part of studying the history of language or the philosophy of language,
and this was known not as linguistics but as philosophy. So ‘Linguistics’ is a modern name
which defines a specific discipline, in which we study language not in relation to some other area
such as history or philosophy, but language as itself, as a self-enclosed and autonomous system,
worthy of study in its own right. It was necessary at the beginning of the growth of modern
linguistics to define this autonomy of the subject; otherwise it would not have been possible to
study the language system with the depth and exhaustiveness which it requires.

The main concern of modern linguistics is to describe language, to study its nature and to
establish a theory of language. That is, it aims at studying the components of the language
system and to ultimately arrive at an explanatory statement on how the system works. In modern
linguistics, the activity of describing the language system is the most important and so modern
linguistics is generally known as descriptive. But linguistics has other concerns as well, which
fall within its scope and these include historical and comparative study of language. These differ
from the descriptive approach in their emphasis; otherwise, these approaches also involve
description of language.

Levels of Linguistic Analysis

In studying language which is the subject-matter of linguistics, we mark or sub-divide the area in
order to study it in an analytical and systematic way. Language has a hierarchical structure. This
means that it is made up of units which are themselves made up of smaller units which are made
of still smaller units till we have the smallest indivisible unit, i.e. a single distinguishable sound,
called a phoneme. Or we can put it the other way round, and say that single sounds or phonemes
combine together to make larger units of sounds, these combine into a larger meaningful unit
called a morpheme; morphemes combine to form larger units of words, and words combine to
form a large unit or sentence and several sentences combine or interconnect to make a unified
piece of speech or writing, which we call a text or discourse. At each stage (or level), there are
certain rules that operate which permit the occurrence and combination of smaller units. So we
can say that rule of phonology determine the occurrence and combination of particular phoneme,
rules of word-formation cover the behaviour of particular morphemes; rules of sentence-
formation determine the combination and positioning of words in a sentence.

Each level is a system in its own right. It is important to remember that, because of the existence
of rules at each level, we can analyse each level independently of the other. This means that if we
study one level, e.g. phonology or the sound-system, we need not necessarily study another level,
say that of sentenceformation. We can study phonology on its own, and syntax on its own.
Although these levels are linked in that one is lower in the hierarchy and another is higher in the
hierarchy, and the higher level includes the lower, still each level is independent because it has
its own rules of operation that can be described, analysed and understood.

We can represent these levels in the following manner, with each level of analysis corresponding
to each level of the structure of the language:

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Levels of Analysis Levels of Structure

Phonetics and Phonology Sound Letters(Graphology)
Morphology Word Formation
Syntax Sentence-Formation
Semantics Meanings
Discourse Connected Sentences

A careful look at the above diagram will show that the levels of language structure are not
completely separate from one another. In fact, there are important and vital linkages between the
levels.

However, we can study these links only after we describe and analyse structure at each level
separately. Thus Phonetics studies language at the level of sounds:

How sounds are articulated by the human speech mechanism and received by the auditory
mechanism, how sounds can be distinguished and characterised by the manner in which they are
produced.

Phonology studies the combination of sounds into organised units of speech, the formation
of syllables and larger units.

It describes the sound system of a particular language and the combination and distribution of
sounds which occur in that language. Classification is made on the basis of the concept of the
phoneme, i.e. a distinctive, contrasted sound unit, e.g. /m/, //, /p/. These distinct sounds enter into
combination with others. The rules of combination are different for different languages.

Morphology studies the patterns of formation of words by the combination of sounds into
minimal distinctive units of meaning called morphemes.

A morpheme cannot be broken up because if it is, it will no longer make sense, e.g. a morpheme
‘bat’ is made up of three sounds: /b/ /æ/ and /t/. This combination makes up the single morpheme
‘bat’ and if broken up, it will no longer carry the meaning of ‘bat’. Words can be made up of
single morphemes such as ‘bat’ or combinations of morphemes, e.g. ‘bats’ is made up of two
morphemes: ‘bat’ + ‘s’. Morphology deals with the rules of combination of morphemes to form
words, as suffixes or prefixes are attached to single morphemes to form words.

The level of morphology is linked to phonology on the one hand and to semantics on the other. It
is clear in the above example of ‘take’ that the change to ‘took’ involves a change in one of the
sounds in this morpheme. It also involves a change in meaning: ‘take’ means the action ‘take’ +
time present and ‘took’ means the action ‘take’ + time past. Thus morphological changes often
involve changes at the levels of both sound and meaning.

Syntax is the level at which we study how words combine to form phrases, phrases combine
to form clauses and clauses join to make sentences. The study of syntax also involves the
description of the rules of positioning of elements in the sentence such as the nouns/noun

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syntax phrases, verbs/verb phrases, adverbial phrases, etc. A sentence must be composed of
these elements arranged in a particular order. Syntax also attempts to describe how these
elements function in the sentence, i.e. what is their role in the sentence. For example, the word
‘boy’ is a noun. However, in each of the following sentences, it functions in different roles:

(a) The boy likes cricket (b) The old man loved the boy.

In sentence (a), it functions as the subject of the sentence. In sentence (b), it functions as the
object.

A sentence should be both grammatical and meaningful. For example, a sentence like
‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’ is grammatically correct but it is not meaningful. Thus,
rules of syntax should be comprehensive enough to explain how sentences are constructed which
are both grammatical and meaningful.

Semantics deals with the level of meaning in language. It attempts to analyse the structure
of meaning in a language, e.g. how words similar or different are related; it attempts to show
these inter-relationships through forming ‘categories’.

Semantics tries to give an account of both word and sentence meaning, and attempts to analyse
and define that which is considered to be abstract. It may be easy to define the meanings of
words such as ‘tree’ but not so easy to define the meanings of words such as ‘love’ or similar
abstract things. This is why semantics is one of the less clearly definable areas of language study.

An extension of the study of meaning or semantics is pragmatics. Pragmatics deals with the
contextual aspects of meaning in particular situations. As distinct from the study of
sentences, pragmatics considers utterances, i.e. those sentences which are actually uttered by
speakers of a language.

Discourse is the study of chunks of language which are bigger than a single sentence. At this
level, we analyse inter-sentential links that form a connected or cohesive text.

In addition to these levels of linguistic analysis, we also study Graphology which is the study
of the writing system of a language and the conventions used in representing speech in
writing, e.g. the formation of letters Lexicology studies the manner in which lexical items
(words) are grouped together as in the compilation of dictionaries.

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The Branches of linguistics

1. General linguistic generally describes the concepts and categories of a particular language
or among all language. It also provides analyzed theory of the language.

Descriptive linguistic describes or gives the data to confirm or refute the theory of particular
language explained generally.

2. Micro linguistic is narrower view. It is concerned internal view of language itself

(structure of language systems) without related to other sciences and without related how to
apply it in daily life. Some fields of micro linguistic:

a. Phonetics, the study of the physical properties of sounds of human language

b. Phonology, the study of sounds as discrete, abstract elements in the speaker's mind that
distinguish meaning

c. Morphology, the study of internal structures of words and how they can be modified

d. Syntax, the study of how words combine to form grammatical sentences

e. Semantics, the study of the meaning of words (lexical semantics) and fixed word combinations
(phraseology), and how these combine to form the meanings of sentences

f. Pragmatics, the study of how utterances are used (literally, figuratively, or otherwise) in
communicative acts

g. Discourse analysis, the analysis of language use in texts (spoken, written, or signed)

h. Applied linguistic is the branch of linguistic that is most concerned with application of the
concepts in everyday life, including language-teaching.

3. Macro linguistic is broadest view of language. It is concerned external view of language

itself with related to other sciences and how to apply it in daily life. Some fields of micro
linguistic:

a. Stylistics, the study of linguistic factors that place a discourse in context.

b. Developmental linguistics, the study of the development of linguistic ability in an individual,

particularly the acquisition of language in childhood.

c. Historical linguistics or Diachronic linguistics, the study of language change.

d. Language geography, the study of the spatial patterns of languages.

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e. Evolutionary linguistics, the study of the origin and subsequent development of language.

f. Psycholinguistics, the study of the cognitive processes and representations underlying

language use.

g. Sociolinguistics, the study of social patterns and norms of linguistic variability.

h. Clinical linguistics, the application of linguistic theory to the area of Speech-Language

Pathology.

i. Neurolinguistics, the study of the brain networks that underlie grammar and communication.

j. Biolinguistics, the study of natural as well as human-taught communication systems in animals

compared to human language.

Computational linguistics, the study of computational implementations of linguistic structures.

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Discuss the kinds and causes of Language change in

Historical Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Synchronic linguistics studies a language’s form at
a fixed time in history, past or present. Diachronic, or historical, linguistics, on the other hand,
investigates the way a language changes over time. The origin, growth and development of
language is an important event in the life of the human race. Linguistics deals with this event.

The diachronic or historical linguistics is chiefly concerned with the growth of various languages
or language as a whole through different periods of history. It divides this growth into different
periods of progress, and describes them in its own manner. The various linguistic changes—
phonological, grammatical and semantic—that have occurred in the past, are recorded in it.
Just as history studies past events and happenings to throw light on the present social and
political conditions, so linguistics studies changes and occurrences in language in the past so as
to throw a light on, or account for, its present state. History is concerned with human beings; and
so is language and linguistics. Thus, Linguistics and History are similar and thus become
Historical Linguistics. It also forms a Typology – the classification of languages into different
types; to find out how languages have developed; three areas of Comparative Historical
Linguistics are of interest: Language Changes, Language Borrowings and Establishment of
Language Families. The purpose of Historical linguistics has been summed by Saussure:

“Describe and trace the history of all observable languages and finding their families. To
determine the forces at work in languages and deduce and the general laws to which all
specific historical phenomenon can be reduced (language universals)”

Change is the law of Nature. Everything that exists on this earth, including human life and
society, changes. Language changes because the society in which it is used, changes. Language
is never static or stagnant. It is always in a state of flux which involves change. Change is
inevitable in language but language changes are frequent, gradual, and often abrupt. What are the
causes of change? The individual as well as society play a part in language change. The speech
habits of one generation are based on those of the earlier one, and a change is likely to occur
during the course of the acquisition of these habits by others. The rise of new concepts and
discover) of new objects cause changes in the vocabulary, structure and sounds of a language.
Geographical conditions also affect changes in the sound of a language. Language changes
because new concepts and discoveries are born, a huge migration takes place, a prestige is
required so language is molded to suit new trends and also language changes because man is
accustomed to least effort in speaking. There are usually five types of changes in language:
phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic and lexical.

Phonological Change: One of the major sound changes in the history of the English
language is the so-called Great Vowel Shift. In Middle English, spoken from 1100 to 1500, the
word house was pronounced with the vowel sound of the modern English word boot, while boot
was pronounced with the vowel sound of the modern English boat. The change that affected the
pronunciation of house also affected the vowels of mouse, louse, and mouth. This illustrates an

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important principle of sound change.

Morphological Change: An ongoing morphological change in English is the loss of the

distinction between the nominative, or subject, form who and the accusative, or object, form
whom. English speakers use both the who and whom forms for the object of a sentence, saying
both “Who did you see?” and “Whom did you see?” The modern English word ‘stone’ has
only three additional forms: the genitive singular ‘stone’s’, the plural ‘stones’, and the genitive
plural stones’. All three have the same pronunciation. In Old English they were different: stan,
stanes, stanas, and stana, respectively. In addition, after certain prepositions, as in under stanum
(under stones).

Syntactic Change: In modern English, the basic word order is subject-verb-object, as in the
sentence “I know John.” The only other possible word order is object-subject-verb, as in “John
I know (but Mary I don’t).” Old English, by contrast, allowed all possible word order
permutations, including subject-object-verb, as in Gif hie ænigne feld secan wolden, literally
meaning “If they any field to seek wished.”

Semantic and Lexical Change: In Middle English, the word nice usually had the meaning
“foolish,” and sometimes “shy,” but never the modern meaning “pleasant.” Change in the
meanings of words is semantic and can be viewed as part of the more general phenomenon of
lexical change, or change in a language’s vocabulary.

Historical Linguistics is the study of how languages change over time and the relationship among
different languages. Historical Linguistics studies the process of language change, the ‘genetic’
relationship between languages and how best to classify languages into groups. Using biological
analogy, the linguist studies that languages are genetically related and are called a Language
Family.

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Human-Animal Communication
Language is primarily human. It is humans alone that possess language and use it for
communication. Language is, in that sense, species-specific–it is specific only to one set of
species. Also, all human beings uniformly possess language. It is only a few deaf and dumb
persons who cannot speak. Thus language is species-uniform to that extent. Animals also have
their own system of communication but communication between them is extremely limited.

It is limited to a very small number of messages. The first principle is that language relates to
communication between human beings, not between animals. Language shows certain inherent
features of design. These features set it apart from other forms of communication; particularly
animal communication.

The famous American linguist, Charles Hackett has found key properties of language or design
features which as a whole don’t appear among animals: these are the design features of language.
These are seven: duality, productivity, arbitrariness, interchangeability, displacement,
specialization and cultural transmission. Animal communication can never encompass all the
properties of human communication. In this regard, Bertrand Russell’s dictum is appropriate:

“No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but
honest”

Human Language Animal Communication

Unlimited Limited and finite
Open system Closed system
Extendible Inextendible
Flexible and varied Non-inflexible
Non-intrinsic Instinctive
Acquired Inherent
Creativity Non-creativity
Recurrent Repetitive
Has grammaticality No grammaticality
Cognitively behavioral Only behavioral
Descriptive & narrative No-descriptive

Firstly, language has phonological and grammatical duality. We have small meaningless sounds
and turn them into a number of sequences to produce millions of meaningful utterances. This is
the most economical feature of language.

Secondly, productivity refers to the creative capacity of language users to produce an endless
number of new sentences, in contrast to the communication systems of individuals which are
limited to set formulas and are thus ‘unproductive’. Chomsky calls it Creativity. It means that
we can create sentences which we have never spoken or heard of. Animals don’t possess this

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quality.

Thirdly, in language, the role of the speaker and hearer can be exchanged without any problem.
Any user of the language is both a listener and a speaker. In the animal world, some are endowed
with the ability while others are not.

Fourthly, Human Speech is a specialized activity. We can talk about an exciting experience
while at the same time doing something else like peeling potatoes.

Fifthly, a human being, for example, can talk about the past, the present or the future, of an
event that happened nearby or thousands of miles away. An animal cannot do that. When a dog
produces a certain sound, it generally refers to the present.

Man is said to be intimately disposed to learn a language. His innate competence helps him
master the unique features of a specific language. Thus language is transmitted from generation
to generation. Animals don’t learn their call systems from elders. Their knowledge is inherent.

Language is both species-specific and species-uniform. We acquire our native tongue by cultural
transmission. It is by means of our native tongue that we receive cultural transmissions that we
learn and adapt. This is the spiral that has driven human development. Animal communication
differs from human communication in many ways as illustrated in the chart.

Furthermore, language makes use of discrete symbols while animal communication systems are
often continuous or non-discrete. One can clearly distinguish between /k/, /æ/ and /t/ in the word
cat but one cannot identify different discrete symbols in the long humming sound that a bee
produces. A bee’s dance or a cock’s crow is today the same that it was two hundred years ago. It
is not so in the case of language. Language is changing, growing every day and new words are
coming up. Human language is far more structurally complex than animal communication.
Human language is complex while there is no complexity in Lamb’s cry.

In short, there is a great difference between the two species yet in many ways, humans
interpret the behaviour of domestic animals, or can command them. Humans have behaviors that
resemble animal’s interspecific communication. Some of our bodily features - eyebrows, beards
and moustaches - strongly resemble adaptations to producing signals. Humans also often seek to
mimic animals' communicative signals in order to interact with the animals. For example,
humans often close their eyes towards a pet cat to establish a tolerant relationship. Stroking,
petting and rubbing pet animals are all actions that probably work through their natural patterns
of interspecific communication.

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Introduction to Historical Linguistics

Historical linguistics is the study of not only the history of languages, as the name implies, but
also the study of how languages change, and how languages are related to one another. It might
seem at first that this would be a rather dull, uneventful field of study, but that is far from the
truth. Historical linguistics is full of lively debate and controversy (I'll point out controvercial
things when they come), and occasionally some nasty words are thrown around.

The main job of historical linguists is to learn how languages are related. Generally, languages
can be shown to be related by having a large number of words in common that were not
borrowed (cognates). Languages often borrow words from each other, but these are usually not
too difficult to tell apart from other words. When a related group of languages has been studied
in enough detail, it is possible to know almost exactly how most words, sounds, and grammar
rules have changed in the languages.

History of historical linguistics

People have thought about the origin of languages for a long, long time. Like other early looks
into nature and the universe, the early ideas about language where at best obvious (realizing that
two very similar languages were related) or lucky guesses, at worst dead wrong, and almost
always ethno-centric (only paying attention to nearby languages. This, of course, wasn't always
their fault, since communication was so slow. However, for example, the Greeks simply
considered most languages in Europe to be "Barbarian", even though there were certainly several
distinct "Barbarian" languages).

One of the earliest observations about language was by the Romans. They noticed that Latin and
Greek were similar. However, they incorectly assumed that Latin came from Greek. The reality
is that both came from Indo-European. More on that later.

There were lots of people looking at languages in the middle ages. However, most of them were
trying to show Hebrew giving rise to all of the world's languages, specifically European
languages. This never really worked, since Hebrew is not directly related to Indo-European
languages.

When Europeans started travelling to India about 300 years ago, they noticed that Sanskrit, the
ancient literary language of India, was similar to Greek, Latin, and other languages of Europe. In
the late 18th century, it was first correctly theorized that Sanskrit and the languages of Europe
had all come from the same language, but that that language was no longer living. This was the
beginning of Indo-European. Since then, many languages from all over the world have been
studied, and we are starting to get a good idea of how all the world's languages may be related.

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Language Acquisition
By the study of language acquisition is meant the process whereby children achieve a fluent
control of their native language. Few people in the 1950s asked about the processes by which
language was acquired. It was assumed that children imitated the adults around them and their
speech gradually became more accurate as they grow up. Some have argued that learning is
entirely the product of experience and that our environment affects all of us in the same way.
Others have suggested that everybody has an innate language learning mechanism which
determines learning or acquisition of language identically for each of us. These two schools
are known as ‘empiricists’ (Behaviourists) and ‘rationalists’ (mentalists).

The empiricists say that all knowledge is derived from experience. They are of the opinion that
children start out as clean slates. Learning a language is a process of getting linguistic habits
printed on these slates. Language acquisition is the result of stimulus-response activities.

Imitation, repetition, memorization, reward, and reinforcement facilitate this process of language
acquisition. The behaviourists argue that learning is controlled by the conditions under which
it takes place and that, as long as individuals are subjected on the same condition, they will
learn in the same way. Variations in learning are caused because of the difference in learning
experience, difference in the past experience of learning, difference in aptitudes, motivation,
memory and age.

From this follows that in general there is no difference between the way one learns a language
and the way one learns to do anything else. So, according to the empiricists, language is a result
of stimulus and response. A child should, therefore, learn to make a response in the first place,
and then the response should be reinforced in a variety of ways. A word that has been uttered
thirty times is better learned than one which has been said twenty times. Language is behaviour,
a conditioned behaviour which can be learned only by inducing the child to behave. Repetition
plays a vital role in learning a language.

The rationalists contradict the empiricists at almost every point. Children learn a language, not
because they are subjected to a similar conditioning process, but because they possess an
inborn capacity which permits them to acquire a language as a normal maturational process.
This capacity is universal. The child has an innate language acquiring device. He learns a
language by exposure to it in society and by unconsciously forming certain hypotheses about
language, which he goes on modifying till he comes to the adult model to which he is for the
most part exposed.

Language acquisition is species-specific and species-uniform. The ability to take up an

understand language is inherited genetically but the particular language that children speak, is
culturally and environmentally transmitted to them. Children all over the world acquire their
native tongue without tutoring. Whereas a child exposed to an English speaking community
begins to speak English fluently, the other one exposed to a community of Urdu speakers, begins
to use Urdu fluently. Only human beings can acquire language. Language acquisition thus
appears to be different in kind from acquisition of other skills such as swimming, dancing, or

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gymnastics.

Native language acquisition is much less likely to be affected by mental retardation than the
acquisition of other intellectual activities. Every normal human child learns one or more
language unless he is brought up in linguistic isolation. To acquire fluency in a language a child
has to be exposed to people who speak that language. A language is not something we know by
instinct or inherit from our parents. It is the result of our exposure to a certain linguistic
community. By this we do not mean that language is acquired ready-made. It is created anew by
each child by putting together bits and pieces of environmental raw material. The human child
does play an active role in this process, he actively strains, filters, recognizes what he is exposed
to. His imitations are not photographic reproductions but artistic recreations. A child is a linguist
in cradle. He acquires a language more easily than adults. He discovers the structure of his
native language to use that language; no one hands it to him in a ready-to-use form. Both
schools have said significant things, yet neither is perfect. The mentalists’ emphasis on the rule-
learning is over-enthusiastic, and the behaviourists’ rejection of meaning entirely is unjust.

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Language Acquisition Theories

Introduction
Without which human civilization would have remained an impossibility. Psycholinguistics
developed in the early sixties. But now-a-days it has been influenced deeply by the development
of generative theory, and its most important area of investigation has been language acquisition.
It has raised and has partly answered questions such as how do children acquire their mother
tongue? How do they grow up linguistically and learn to handle the registral and stylistic
varieties of their mother tongue effectively? How much of the linguistic system that they
ultimately command are they born with and how much do they discover on the basis of their
exposure to language? In order to account for the phenomenon of language learning by children,
during the past forty years, there have been two main theories known as "Behaviourism" and
"Mentalism". The Behaviourists School of thought has argued that learning is entirely the
product of experience and that our environment affects all of us in the same way. On the other
hand the Mentalists school of thought has suggested that everybody has an innate language
learning mechanism.

(1) The Behaviourist School

According to B.F Skinner and his colleagues, the behaviourists, learning, or a change of
behaviour on the part of the learner, is brought about by a process known as operant conditioning
which is the result of repeated training. Operant means 'voluntary behaviour' which is the result
of learner's own free-will and is not forced by any outside person or thing. The learner
demonstrates the new behavior first as a response to a system of reward or punishment, and
finally as an automatic response. In order to prove their theory they conducted an experiment.

In a typical experiment, a rat is put in a box containing a bar. If it presses the bar, it is rewarded
with a pellet of food. Nothing forces it to press the bar. The first time it probably does so
accidentally. When the rat finds that the food arrives, it presses the bar again. Eventually it finds
that if it is hungry it can obtain food by pressing the bar. Then task is made more difficult. The
rat only gets rewarded if it presses the bar while a light is flashing. At first rat is puzzled.
Eventually it learns the trick. Then the task is made more difficult again. This time the rat only
receives food if it presses the bar a certain number of times. After initial confusion it learns to do
this also. And so on, and so on.

There are two kinds of reinforcement:

(a) Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement comprises of praises and rewards. It has been shown by the experiments
that positive reinforcement works much better in bringing about good learning.

(b) Negative Reinforcement

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Rebukes and punishments fall into the negative reinforcement category. Skinner eventually
applies his theory of learning through operant conditioning to the study of how humans learn
language.

Behaviourists believe that learning a language is no different from learning anything else; it
becomes a habit by the stimulus-response-reinforcement-repetition process. The behaviourists
also claim that we learn by imitation and by association. For instance, a young child hears a word
'apple' every time he is given one. He soon associates the word 'apple' with the actual thing. He
then makes this sound himself, imitating what he has heard.

Psycholinguists argue that imitation is not enough; it is not merely by mechanical repetition that
children acquire language. They also acquire it by natural exposure.

(2) The Mentalist School

Another school of thought arguing on the crucial matter of first language acquisition in children
is the mentalist school of thought which is led by Noam Chomsky. He and his mentalist
followers claim that a child learns his first language through cognitive learning. He also acquires
it by natural exposure. Both 'nature' and 'nurture' influence the acquisition of language in
children. Chomsky regards linguistics as a subfield of psychology, more especially the cognitive
psychology.

The Language Acquisition Device:

He further says that a child is born with some innate mental capacity which helps the child to
process all the language which he hears. This is called the "Language Acquisition Device"
(LAD).

Chomsky and his followers claim that language is governed by rules, and is not a haphazard
thing, as Skinner and his followers would claim. We must remember that when Chomsky talks
about rules, he means the unconscious rules in a child's mind. A child constructs his own mental
grammar which is a part of his cognitive framework. These rules enable him to produce
grammatical sentences in his own language. Chomsky does not mean that child can describe
these rules explicitly. For instance, a four or five year old child can produce a sentence like, I
have taken meal, he can do that because he has a 'mental grammar' which enables him to form
correct present perfect structures and also to use such structures in the right or appropriate
situation.

Chomsky suggests that the learner of any language has an inbuilt learning capacity for language
that enables each learner to construct a kind of personal theory or set of rules about the language
based on very limited exposure to language.

The differences between the empiricists approach and that of the rationalist can be summarized
in the following manner:

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Mentalist Approach
(1) Language is an innate, in-born process. (2) Children learn language by application. (3)
Language is not a behavior like other behaviors, but a specific mental process. (4) The role of
exposure to language is quite vital. (5) Language learning is analytical, generative and creation
(6) Language acquisition is the result of nurture.

Behaviourist Approach
(1) Language acquisition is a stimulusresponse process. (2) Children learn language by imitation
and analogy. (3) Language is a conditioned behavior. (4) The role of imitation, repetition,
reinforcement and motivation is very significant in language learning. (5) Language learning is
based on practice. (6) Language acquisition is the result of nature.

it can be concluded that Chomsky subscribes to an entirely different view of learning from that
of behaviourists. He follows a mentalist approach which means something which involves the
mind and the thought processes. Most psychologists of language agree with this theory.
Behaviourism may not tell us much about the way in which we learn our mother tongue, but it
can point to successful strategies in the learning of a foreign language when we are older. This
comparative study makes one thing clear: nature and nurture, analogy and application, practice
and exposure are important.

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First Language Acquisition

The acquisition of first language "is doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is
ever required to perform." Leonard Bloomfield

Children acquire their first language when they are exposed to a real environment. Acquiring the
first language is like completing a puzzle. Some parts of the puzzle are set up, they are ready to
be used-those set of pieces are born with everybody, we inherit them from our parents and
forefathers. They are called innate learning mechanisms or as Noam Chomsky described as
universal grammar. They are active until a specific age then it seems to be impossible to acquire
the language again ‘There is strong evidence that children may never acquire a language if they
have not been exposed to before they reach the age of 6 or 7.

Children between the ages of 2 and 6 learn language so rapidly that by 6 they are competent
language users. By the time children are of school-age, they have amazing language ability; it is
a seemingly effortless acquisition. The other part of the puzzle is acquired from the interaction
between the child and the surroundings, the environment, parents, caretakers, etc. The puzzle is
not finished until we interact with the surroundings. As a result of this kind of interaction we
acquire the language or we complete the puzzle.

Basic requirements for first language acquisition

A child growing up in the first two or three years requires interaction with other languageusers in
order to bring the 'language-faculty' or 'universal grammar' into operation with a particular
language, such as English. The child who doesn't hear, or not allowed to use, language will learn
no language. The case of Genie, the thirteen-year-old girl from Los Angles who spent her whole
life in a state of physical, sensory, social and emotional deprivation that resulted in language
disability, is an example.

The language is acquired in a particular language-using environment.

The child must also be physically capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a language.
All infants make 'cooing' and 'babbling' noises during the first few months, but congenitally deaf
infants stop after six months. Therefore, in order to speak a language, a child must be able to
hear that language being used. Hearing language sounds by itself, however, is not enough. One
reported case has demonstrated that, with deaf parents who gave their mal-hearing son ample
exposure to TV and radio programs, the child did not acquire an ability to speak or understand
English. What he did learn very effectively, by the age of three, was the use of American Sign
Language- the language he used to interact with parents.

Caretaker speech
The characteristically simplified speech style adopted by someone who spends a lot of time
interacting with young child is called caretaker speech or motherese. This type of speech often
uses exaggerating intonation and incorporates a lot of forms associated with 'baby-talk'. These

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are simplified words or alternative forms, with repeated simple sounds, for objects in the child's
environment. Caretaker speech is also characterized by simple sentence structures and a lot of
repetition. Moreover, it has generally been observed that the speech of those regularly interacting
with children changes and becomes more elaborate as the child begins using more and more
language.

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Language Acquisition Stages

Here are the stages of child language development. As we look at the stages we have to
remember that children develop at different rates.

Pre-Language Stages
The pre-linguistic sounds of the very early stages of child language acquisition are simply called
'cooing' and babbling'. The period from about three months to ten months is usually
characterized by three stages of sound production in the infant's developing repertoire. The first
recognizable sounds are described as cooing with velar consonants like /k/ and /g/, as well as
high vowels like /i/ and /u/. By six months, the child is usually able to sit up and can produce a
number of different vowels and consonants such as fricatives and nasals. The sound production
at this stage is described as babbling and may contain syllable type sounds such as mu and da. In
the later babbling stage, around nine months, there are recognizable intonation patterns to the
consonant and vowel combinations being produced.

The one-word or Holophrastic Stage

Between twelve and eighteen months, children begin to produce a variety of recognizable single
unit utterances. This period, traditionally called the 'one-word stage', is characterized by speech
in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects such as ‘cat and cup' other forms such as
/Ʌ / may occur in circumstances which suggest that the child is producing a version of what is
that, so the label 'one-word' may be misleading. Some terms like holophrastic or 'single-unit' or
'single-form' may be more accurate.

The two-word Stage

This stage begins around eighteen to twenty months,as the child's vocabulary moves beyond fifty
distinct words. By the time the child is two years old, a variety of combinations will have
appeared.

Telegraphic Speech
Between two and three years old, the child will begin producing a large number of utterances
which could be classified as multiple-word utterances.The telegraphic speech is a stage which is
characterized by strings of lexical morphemes in phrases such as cat drink milk . The child has
clearly developed some sentence-building capacity by this stage and can order the forms
correctly. By the age of two and a half, the child's vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child
is actually initiating more talks. By the age of three, the vocabulary has grown to hundreds of
words and pronunciation has become closer to the form of the adult language, so that even
visitors have to admit that the little creature can talk.

To conclude, babies are not born talking however, they acquire the language. Language
acquisition is a part of the overall development of children physically, socially, and cognitively.

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They start to acquire the language even before they are born ‘silent stage’ and they develop their
abilities and skills immediately after birth.

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Language and Culture

Language
Language has been defined as the systematic, conventional use of sounds, signs or written
symbols in a human society for communication and self-expression. The purpose of language is
to communicate with others, to think and to create the foundation for shaping one’s standpoint
and outlook to life.

Culture
Culture on the other hand has multifarious meanings. Culture is the total of the inherited and
innate ideas, attitudes, beliefs, values and knowledge comprising or forming the shared
foundations of social action.

Relationship between language and culture

The relationship between language and culture is definitely symbiotic as one cannot function
without the other. By this we mean that for an individual to inherit or gain knowledge, values
and ideas, the individual must first be able to communicate with others knowledgeable about that
particular culture through convention sounds/signs which is language.

So here are some facts on the relationship between language and culture for anyone writing a
project on these subject matters.

1. Language and culture are unique human abilities. The ability to create a structured language
for communication is what makes humans and our culture distinct from other species. Humans
learn their culture through language and foreign cultures are also transmitted through language.

2. The role culture plays a major role in language. Humans are born without a language but are
born with language-acquisition faculties which enable us learn languages. Research shows that
humans learn their local language through cultural transmission rather than from formal learning.
This research goes further to state that to understand specific words and literary terms of a
language, an individual must be familiar with the culture of that society.

3. There is a strong relationship between language and culture in numbers. There are
approximately 6,000 different languages in the world and these are shared among the 9,000
different cultures currently existing on earth.

Linguists have showed concern that 5% of the least used languages in the world are in danger of
becoming extinct and in the next 100 years, 90% of all world languages will either be extinct or
moribund. Lastly, an entire way of thinking — cultures — gets lost to the human race each time
a language goes extinct.

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4. Language influences culture. Language influences culture in diverse ways and provides people
from other cultures with a window into understanding cultures other than theirs. Studies show
that the vocabulary of any language tends to place emphasis on words that are considered to be
adaptively important to the corresponding culture. Therefore learning the terminologies
commonly used by a culture provides a measure of understanding into the way of life of its
people.

5. Teaching using another language in a different culture is hard. Teachers have encountered
difficulties when teaching a second language not local to a culture to its people and here are
some facts to explain these difficulties. Studies have shown that how students learn and interact
with teachers is determined by their culture. Approximately 80% of language teachers agree that
cultural boundaries and roots play a huge role in determining how students understand or
interpret the new language expressions they are been taught. Therefore, creators of second
language policies must be sensitive to the local culture of all people.

6. The language and culture of different societies greatly vary. In all communities, the spoken
language is in a synergetic relationship with the culture of that society and Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis states that; the characteristics, peculiarities, and literary words encoded in one
language system are distinctive, typical, and unique to that system and they are dissimilar as well
as incomparable with those of other systems. These dissimilarities in turn lead to difficulties in
understanding the expressions and terminologies inherent to a certain culture by foreigners.

7. The major languages do not represent the cultures of the world. The major languages spoken
in Europe—English, French, Spanish etc.—do not truly represent the cultural values in a
majority of the nations in which they are spoken. Studies show that colonialism saw these
languages having been adapted by diverse cultures for easy administration by the conquerors but
they do not provide insight into understanding of these diverse cultures. Most nations using the
major languages as their lingua franca have local languages that represent their culture.

8. The role of culture in cross-cultural communication is huge. Since each culture has its own
language set and ways of communicating, cross cultural communications can be quite difficult
for individuals. Research shows that culture constantly makes its presence felt during cross-
cultural communication and this can lead to stereotyping and misunderstandings during
communication. Language and culture are not monolithic and the belief in a monolithic human
identity leads to social and political standoffs.

9. The relationship between language, culture and gender. Studies have shown that the language
used by specific genders fluctuate in almost every culture. In approximately 80% of the world’s
languages, women may communicate at a deficit which is specified as the ‘woman register’ and
this places them as inferior to men. This leads to social friction when genders from diverse
cultures communicate.

10. Learning of new languages is achieved through cultural integration. Understanding a foreign
culture plays a huge role in becoming competent with its language. Studies show that students of
another language will learn to use expressions and terminologies in their right context if they
acquire knowledge of the society’s culture. Therefore an integrated learning policy that targets

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both cultural and lingual learning is important to mastering a second language.

To Conclude, Language is a major component and supporter of culture as well as a primary

tool for transferring message, which is inextricably bound with culture. Learning a second
language also involves learning a second culture to varying degrees. On the other hand, language
is influenced and shaped by culture. It reflects culture. Cultural differences are the most serious
areas causing misunderstanding, unpleasantness and even conflict in cross-cultural
communication. So both foreign language learners and teachers should pay more attention to
cultural communication information.

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Language and its characteristics

Introduction

Without language human civilizationwould have remained an impossibility. Language is

ubiquitous (ever present). It is present everywhere–in our thoughts and dreams, prayers and
meditations, relations and communication. Besides being a means of communication, and
storehouse of knowledge, it is an instrument of thinking as well as a source of delight (e.g.
singing). It transfers knowledge from one person to another and from one generation to another.
Language is also the maker or unmaker of human relationships. It is the use of language that
‘Italics a life bitter or sweet. Without language man would have remained only a dumb animal. It
is our ability to communicate through words that makes us different from animals. Because of its
omn presence, language is often taken for granted.

Definition of Language

Since linguistics is the study of language, it is imperative for linguist to know what language is.
Language is a very complex human phenomenon; all attempts to define it have proved
inadequate. In a nut-shell, language is an ‘organised noise’ used in actual social situations. That
is why it has also been defined as ‘contextualised systematic sound‘.

The term language can be understood better in terms of its properties or characteristics. Some
linguists, however, have been trying to define language in their own ways even though all these
definitions have been far from satisfactory. Here are some of these definitions:

According to Robins:

“Language is a symbol system based on pure or arbitrary conventions... infinitely extendable

and modifiable according to the changing needs and conditions of the speakers.”

According to this definition, language is a symbol system. Every language selects some symbols
for its selected sounds. The English sound /k/ for example has the symbol k for it. These symbols
form the alphabet of the language and join in different combinations to form meaningful words.
The system talked of here is purely arbitrary (random) in the sense that there is no one to one
correspondence between the structure of a word and the thing it stands for. The combination
p.e.n., for example stands, in English, for an instrument used for writing.

As stated here, language conventions are not easily changed, yet it is not impossible to do so.
Language is infinitely modifiable and extendable. Words go on changing meanings and new
words continue to be added to language with the changing needs of the community using it.

According to Noam Chomsky:

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“A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out
of a finite set of elements.”

Chomsky meant to convey that each sentence has a structure. Human brain is competent enough
to construct different sentences from out of the limited set of sounds/symbols belonging to a
particular language. Human brain is so productive that a child can at any time produce a sentence
that has never been said or heard earlier.

According to Wardaugh:

“A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.”

Both these definitions prominently point out that language is a system. Sounds join to form
words according to a system. The letters k, n, i, t join to form a meaningful ‘word knit, whereas
combinations like n-k-i-t, t.k.n.i. or i.n.k.t. do not form any meaningful or sensible combinations.
Although initially the formation of words, as said earlier, is only arbitrary, convention makes
them parts of a system. Words too join to form sentences according to some system. A sentence
like: Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties is acceptable but one cannot accept a string of
words like: a game is of cricket uncertainties glorious. It is in this sense that language is said to
be a system of systems.

According to Derbyshire:

“Language is undoubtedly a kind of means of communication among human beings. It

consists primarily of vocal sounds. It is articulatory, systematic, symbolic and arbitrary.”

Derbyshire, while accepting that language is the property of human beings and that it is primarily
speech, brings out the point that it is an important means of communication amongst humans.
Before the start of civilization, man might have used the language of signs but it must have had a
very limited scope. Language is a fully developed means of communication with the civilized
man who can convey and receive millions of messages across the universe. An entire civilization
depends on language only. Think of a world without language—man would only continue to be a
denizen of the forest and the caves. Language has changed the entire gamut of human relations
and made it possible for human beings to grow into a human community on this planet.

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Characteristics of Language

Language is a means of communication

Language is a very important means of communication between humans. One can communicate
his or her ideas, emotions, beliefs or feelings to the other as they share a common code that
makes up the language.

No doubt, there are many other means of communication used by humans e.g. gestures, nods,
winks, flags, smiles, horns, shorthand, Braille alphabet, mathematical symbols, Morse code,
sirens, sketches, maps, acting, miming, dancing etc. But all these systems of communication are
extremely limited or they too, in turn, depend upon language only. They are not as flexible,
comprehensive, perfect and extensive as language is. Language is so important a form of
communication between humans that it is difficult to think of a society without language. It gives
shape to people’s thoughts and guides and controls their entire activity. It is a carrier of
civilization and culture as human thoughts and philosophy are conveyed from one generation to
the other through the medium of language.

Animals too have their system of communication but their communication is limited to a very
small number of messages, e.g. hunger, fear, and anger. In the case of humans, the situation is
entirely different. Human beings can send an infinite number of messages to their fellow beings.
It is through language that they store knowledge, transfer it to the next generation and yoke the
present, past and the future together.

Language is arbitrary

Language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no inherent relation between the words of a
language and their meanings or the ideas conveyed by them. There is no reason why a female
adult human being be called a “woman” in English, “aurat” in Urdu, “zen” in Persian and
“femine” in French. Selection of these words in the languages mentioned here is purely
arbitrary, an accident of history. It is just like christening a new born baby who may be
christened John or James. But once a child is given some name in a purely arbitrary manner; this
name gets associated with the child for his entire life and it becomes an important, established
convention. The situation in the case of the language is a similar one. The choice of a word
selected to mean a particular thing or idea is purely arbitrary but once a word is selected for a
particular referent, it comes to stay as such. It may be noted that had language not been arbitrary,
there would have been only one language in the world.

Any brick may be used anywhere in a building, but it is not so with sounds or graphic symbols
standing for the sounds of a language. Sounds are arranged in certain fixed or established,
systematic order to form meaningful units or words. Similarly, words are also arranged in a
particular system to frame acceptable meaningful sentences. These systems operate at two levels:
phonological and syntactical.

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At the phonological level, for example, sounds of a language appear only in some fixed combin
tions. There is no word, for example, that starts with bz–, lr– or zl– combination. There is no
word that begins with a /ŋ/ sound or ends in a /h/ sound. Similarly words too combine to form
sentences according to certain conventions (i.e. grammatical or structural rules) of the language.
The sentence “The hunter shot the tiger with a gun” is acceptable but the sentence “the tiger
shot a gun with hunter the” is not acceptable as the word order in the latter sentence does not
conform to the established language conventions. Language is thus called a system of systems as
it operates at the two levels discussed above. This property of language is also termed duality by
some linguists. This makes language a very complex phenomenon. Every human child has to
master the conventions of the language he or she learns before being able to successfully
communicate with other members of the social group in which he or she is placed.

Language is primarily vocal

Language is primarily made up of vocal sounds only produced by a physiological articulatory

mechanism in the human body. In the beginning, it must have appeared as vocal sounds only.
Writing must have come much later, as an intelligent attempt to represent vocal sounds. Writing
is only the graphic representation of the sounds of the language. There are a number of languages
which continue to exist, even today, in the spoken form only. They do not have a written form. A
child learns to speak first; writing comes much later. Also, during his life time, a man speaks
much more than he writes.

It is because of these reasons that some linguists say that speech is primary, writing is secondary.
Writing did have one advantage over speech—it could be preserved in books or records. But,
with the invention of magnetic tapes or audio-cassettes, it has lost that advantage too. A number
of modern gadgets like the telephone, the tape recorder, the Dictaphone, etc. only go to prove the
primacy of speech over writing.

Language is a social Phenomenon

Language is a set of conventional communicative signals used by humans for communication in

a community. Language in this sense is a possession of a social group, comprising an
indispensable set of rules which permits its members to relate to each other, to interact with each
other, to cooperate with each other; it is a social institution. Language exists in society; it is a
means of nourishing and developing culture and establishing human relations. It is as a member
of society that a human being acquires a language. If a language is not used in any society, it dies
out.

Language is thus a social event. It can fully be described only if we know all about the people
who are involved in it, their personalities, their beliefs, attitudes, knowledge of the world,
relationship to each other, their social status, what activity they are engaged in, what they are
talking about, what has gone before linguistically and non-linguistically, what happens after,
what they are and a host of other facts about them and the situation they are placed in.

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Language is Non-instinctive and Conventional

No language was created in a day out of a mutually agreed upon formula by a group of humans.
Language is the outcome of evolution and convention. Each generation transmits this convention
on to the next. Like all human institutions languages also change and die, grow and expand.
Every language then is a convention in a community. It is non-instinctive because it is acquired
by human beings. Nobody gets a language in heritage; he acquires it, and everybody has been
provided with an innate ability to acquire language. Animals inherit their system of
communication by heredity, humans do not.

Language is Systematic

Although language is symbolic, yet its symbols are arranged in a particular system. All
languages have their system of arrangements. Though symbols in each human language are
finite, they can be arranged infinitely; that is to say, we can produce an infinite set of sentence by
a finite set of symbols.

Language is Unique, Creative, Complex & Modifiable

Language is a unique phenomenon of the earth. Other planets do not seem to have any language,
although this fact may be invalidated if we happen to discover a talking generation on any other
planet. But so far there is no evidence of the presence of language on the moon. Each language is
unique in its own sense. By this we do not mean that languages do not have any similarities or
universals.

Language has creativity and productivity. The structural elements of human language can be
combined to produce new utterances, which neither the speaker nor his hearers may ever have
made or heard before any, listener, yet which both sides understand without difficulty. Language
changes according to the needs of society. Old English is different from modern English; so is
old Urdu different form modern Urdu.

Language has a Duality

The language that human beings use consists of two sub-systems - sound and meaning. A finite
set of sound units can be grouped and re-grouped into units of meaning. These can be grouped
and re-grouped to generate further functional constituents of the higher hierarchical order. .
Animal calls do not show such duality, they are unitary.

Language has a Productivity

A speaker may say something that he has never said before and be understood without difficulty.
Man uses the limited linguistic, resources in order to produce completely novel ideas and
utterances. Fairy tales, animal fables, narratives about alien unheard of happenings in distant
galaxies or nonexistent worlds are perfectly understood by the listeners.

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Language has a Displacement

One can talk about situations, places and objects far removed from one’s present surroundings
and time. We often talk about events that happened long time ago and at a distant place; bombing
incident in Ireland’s Londonderry twelve years’ back, for instance; or the sinking of the Spanish
Armada in the sixteenth century. Bees, of course, perform dances about the source of nectar that
is also removed from the place of dance (beehive). But they cannot convey what happened in the
previous season through their dance features. Human beings, however, can narrate events in
which they were not involved.

Language is Human and Structurally Complex

No species other than humans has been endowed with language. Animals cannot acquire human
language because of its complex structure and their physical inadequacies. Animals do not have
the type of brain which the human beings possess and their articulatory organs are also very
much different from those of the human beings. Furthermore any system of animals’
communication does not make use of the quality of features, that is, of concurrent systems of
sound and meaning. Human language is openended, extendable and modifiable whereas the
animal language is not.

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Language vs Speech
Language and speech are two different communicating tools. Language is the tool by which we
write, understand, etc., and speech is the tool of communication which is used to verbally
communicate with others. Let us elaborate more on both to understand the differences.

Language

One of the dictionary meanings of language is the communication of feelings and thoughts
through a system of particular signals, like sounds, voice, written symbols, and gestures. It is
considered to be a very specialized capacity of humans where they use complex systems for
communication. The study of languages is called linguistics.

There are many languages spoken today by humans. Languages have some rules, and they are
compiled and used according to those rules for communication. Languages can be not only
written, but sometimes some languages are based on signs only. These are called sign languages.
In other cases, some particular codes are used for computers, etc. which are called computer
languages or programming.

Language has four different rules which are shared socially. First, what a word means, the
meaning of the words which is called vocabulary; second, how to make up new words; third,
how to put the words together in a sequence and, finally, how to use the sentence in a particular
situation. Does it need to be a statement, or does it need to be interrogative, etc.

Language can be either receptive, meaning understanding of a language, and expressive

language, which means the usage of the language either orally or in writing. If we simplify
everything, language expresses an idea communicated in the message.

Speech

One of the dictionary meanings of speech is the act of expressing or the faculty of describing
feelings and thoughts or perceptions by words, something spoken or vocal communication. It is a
specifically human capacity to communicate verbally or vocally with the use of syntactic
combinations from diverse vocabularies.

Each word spoken has a phonetic combination of certain sound units. Speech is created by
vocabularies, syntax, and a set of sound units. It is the verbal way of communicating. The
following components are a part of speech:

Articulation, which means the way speech sounds are produced.

Voice, the breathing process and the vocal folds used to produce sounds.

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Fluency, the rhythm required to speak without hesitation.

Simplifying the whole concept, speech expresses how a spoken message needs to be
communicated.

Summary:

1. Language is the communication of feelings and thoughts through a system of particular

signals like sounds, voice, written symbols, and gestures. However, speech is the act of
expressing or the faculty of describing feelings and thoughts or perceptions by words,
something spoken or vocal communication.
2. Languages could be human languages, sign languages, or computer languages which use
codes while speech is a single concept. It is the physical process used to verbalize
language.
3. Languages express the idea that needs to be communicated while speech is the process
which shows how the message needs to be communicated.

Language vs. Speech

What is Language? What is Speech? (From the American Speech-Language Hearing
Association)

Language is different from speech.

Language is made up of socially shared rules that include the following:

 What words mean (e.g., "star" can refer to a bright object in the night sky or a celebrity)
 How to make new words (e.g., friend, friendly, unfriendly)
 How to put words together (e.g., "Peg walked to the new store" rather than "Peg walk
store new")
 What word combinations are best in what situations ("Would you mind moving your
foot?" could quickly change to "Get off my foot, please!" if the first request did not
produce results)

Speech is the verbal means of communicating. Speech consists of the following:

Articulation: How speech sounds are made (e.g., children must learn how to produce
the "r" sound in order to say "rabbit" instead of "wabbit").

Voice: Use of the vocal folds and breathing to produce sound (e.g., the voice can be
abused from overuse or misuse and can lead to hoarseness or loss of voice).

Fluency: The rhythm of speech (e.g., hesitations or stuttering can affect fluency).
When a person has trouble understanding others (receptive language), or sharing

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thoughts, ideas, and feelings completely (expressive language) or using language

appropriately in social situations (pragmatic language), then he or she has a language
disorder. A receptive and expressive language disorder means we may not have a good
understanding of the meaning of words and how and when to use them. Because of this,
we have trouble following directions and speaking in long sentences. Language disorders
can affect people from early childhood to late adulthood and stem from a number of
etiologies including cognitive delays, learning disabilities, ASD, aphasia, or exist on their
own.

When a person is unable to produce speech sounds correctly or fluently, or has problems
with his or her voice, then he or she has a speech disorder. A speech disorder can make us
hard to understand. If the lips, tongue, and mouth are not moved at the right time, then
what we say will not sound right. People who stutter or whose voices sound hoarse or
nasal have speech problems as well.

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Lexical Semantics and sense relations

Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), is a subfield of linguistic semantics. The
units of analysis in lexical semantics are lexical units which include not only words but also sub-
words or sub-units such as affixes and even compound words and phrases. Lexical units make up
the catalogue of words in a language, the lexicon. Lexical semantics looks at how the meaning of
the lexical units correlates with the structure of the language or syntax. This is referred to as
syntax-semantic interface.

The study of lexical semantics looks at:

1. The classification and decomposition of lexical items

2. The differences and similarities in lexical semantic structure cross-linguistically

3. The relationship of lexical meaning to sentence meaning and syntax.

Lexical units, also referred to as syntactic atoms, can stand alone such as in the case of root
words or parts of compound words or they necessarily attach to other units such as prefixes and
suffixes do. The former are called free morphemes and the latter bound morphemes. They fall
into a narrow range of meanings (semantic fields) and can combine with each other to generate
new meanings.

Lexical items participate in regular patterns of association with each other. Some relations
between lexical items include hyponymy, hypernymy , synonymy , and antonymy , as well as
homonymy.

Kinds of Sense Relations

There are several kinds of sense relations as a result of the semantic relatedness between the
form and meaning and between two meanings which will be discussed in the following.

1. Synonymy

This kind of sense relation means “word of the same meaning” (Leech, 1981: 92). Synonymy is
a condition in which two lexemes or words have “more or less” the same lexical meaning
(Subroto, 1992: Synonymy is the semantic relation between two words that have the same (or
nearly the same) meaning. Two expressions A and B in the same syntactic position are
synonymous if A implies B and B implies A (e.g. movie-film). Thus, synonymy presupposes the
substitutability of the given expressions in all contexts. These expressions share the same
denotational and connotational meaning and are referred to as complete synonyms. However,
most synonyms are partial synonyms and differ with regard to their connotations.

Examples:

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1. “I am going to purchase/buy a new coat.”

2. Happy, joyful, glad are all synonymy

2. Antonymy

The concept of antonymy implies ‘oppositeness of meaning’ where the ‘recognition and
assertion of one implies the denial of the other’. This is illustrated in pairs of words such as, big-
small; old-young; wide-narrow, etc.

3. Polysemy
When a word is identified as possessing two or more meanings, it is; said to be polysemous or
polysemic. These different meanings are derived from one basic idea or concept. Dictionaries
enter different meanings of a word. Head, for example, has the following different meanings : the
upper or anterior division of the body, scat of intellect, mind, poise, the obverse of a coin,
person, individual, the source of a stream, leader, director, crisis, culminating point of action, etc
(Webster’s Dictionary). All these meanings derive from the same word. From this have been
coined as many as seventy, compound structures, each in the right of a different word such as
headsman, headstand, headshop, headpiece, headgear, headlamp, headline, headlong, headdress,
etc. In the latter examples, one can see that the noun acts as adjectives which show contextual
shifts of application.

Problems arise when it becomes difficult to determine whether a word with several meanings
must he called polysemic or homonomous.

4. Hyponymy

This meaning relation exists between two meanings if one componential formula contains all the
features present in the other formula. (Leech, 1981: 92). This condition results from the inclusion
of one meaning into another meaning.

Hyponymy is a sense relation between two expressions or more such that the meaning of one
expression is included in the meaning of the other (Hurford and Heasley, 1986: 105). Usually,
the hyponym has a more specific feature/property than the hyperonym.

Examples:

1. Fruits: Mango, Apple, Banana etc.

2. Emotions: love; fear; anger; happiness; sadness etc.
3. Color (hypernym): Red, Green, Yellow, Blue (Hyponyms)

5. Homonymy

Homonomous words are defined as sounding alike hut possessing different meanings. For
example, the words lie-lie, by-bye, I-eye. They are spoken and sometimes, written alike, but

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mean totally different things, as can be seen in their uses in these setences - Don’t lie, tell the
truth. I have to lie down now. Normally, in dictionaries, separate entries are made for
homonymous words recognizing them as separate Words rather than different meanings of the
same words.

For the words that are spelled alike the name homography is used. For the words that sound alike
but may be spelled differently, the term homophony is used. Examples of the former are grave-
grave; pupil-pupil; light-light; examples of the latter are cite-site; write-right-rite-might. Some
homophones are also, interestingly, antonyms - raise-raze; cleave in the sense of severing
asunder and cleave in the sense of ‘uniting’. The problem of identifying which is a homonym
and which a polyseme is a practical one and often it is difficult to determine exactly what is
what.

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Morphology, Morphemes and its Types

Morphology is the study of morphemes, which are the smallest significant units of grammar. It is
a level of structure between the phonological and the syntactic. It is complementary to syntax.
Morphology is the grammar of words; syntax is the grammar of sentences. One accounts for the
internal structure or form of words; the other describes how these words are put together in
sentences.

The English word unkind is made up of two smaller units: “un” and “kind”. These are minimal
units that cannot be further sub-divided into meaningful units. Such minimal, meaningful units of
grammatical description are generally referred to as morphemes.

Morpheme

A morpheme is the smallest grammatical unity possible that can be found by decomposing
words. A morpheme is a short segment of language that meets three criteria:

1. It is a word or a part of a word that has meaning.

2. It cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts without violation of its meaning
or without meaningless remainders.

3. It recurs in differing verbal environments with a relatively stable meaning.

For example, the word “singers” contains three morphemes:

sing-: the action -er-: the one who does the action -s: the mark of the plural form

There are two Types Of Morphemes: Free and Bound

Free morphemes

There are free morphemes that can occur on their own without any morphemes necessarily
attached to them. As such, free morphemes can stand by themselves as single, thoroughly
independent words, e.g. manage as in management, mother as in motherhood or words such as
pen, tea, and man. Free morphemes can further be subcategorized into content words and
function words.

Bound Morphemes

A bound morpheme is that morpheme that cannot stand or occur as an independent word. It has
to be attached to a free morpheme or word to have a clear meaning. Examples of bound
morphemes are –ment, -en, -ing, -ed, -ness, –ful , mis-, -anti, -less, etc. in the following free
morphemes or words. ‘government’, ‘encouragement’, ‘dancing’, ‘accepted’, ‘happiness’,

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‘hopeless etc. Another name for the bound morpheme is empty morphemes. They can also be
called grammatical indicators because they have the tendency to affect grammar.

For example, this sentence:

• The lecturer glad praised God. The omission of –ly in glad renders the sentence ungrammatical.

Grammatically, the sentence should read, “the lecturer gladly praised God”. Most bound
morphemes are grammatical or functional elements in language.

Bound morphemes are of two types. Some bound morphemes have the ability of changing word
class or forming or generating new words while others only inflect the word they are added to.
This takes us to another segment in this discussion.

Affixes

An "affix" is a bound morpheme that occurs before or after a base. An affix that comes before a
base is called a "prefix." Some examples of prefixes are ante- , pre-, un- , and dis- , as in the
following words:

ante date ---pre historic---un healthy---dis regard

An affix that comes after a base is called a "suffix." Some examples of suffixes are -ly, -er , -ism,
and -ness , as in the following words:

happily---garden er---capital ism---kindness

Inflectional Affixes
A major division in morpheme is free and bound. A free morpheme has been referred to as an
independent word. The bound morpheme is of two types: inflectional and derivational. An
inflectional morpheme, which is a type of a bound morpheme, is defined by linguists as a mere
grammatical indicator or marker. An inflectional morpheme cannot generate or create new words
nor can it affect the grammatical class of a word.

An inflectional morpheme plays three grammatical roles in English:

1. It indicates tense – Tense relates to a verb. It then means that to indicate tense, it affects verb.
A verb is affected in the following ways. come + s, come + ing, walk + s, walking, walk + ed,
write + ing, (writing), write + en (written) ‘s’ is the third person singular marker, ‘ed’ is the past
tense marker while ‘ing’ is the continuous tense marker.

2. It indicates number – plurality. Plurality deals with nouns. Nouns are affected by number.
Nouns are subdivided into singular and plural. Plural nouns are indicated with‘s’. Thus,

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boy + s boys----school + s schools---table + s tables.

The‘s’ above is a plural marker and it is an additive morpheme. It indicates that the morpheme
carrying it is ‘more tan one’.

3. It indicates comparison. Adjectives are used to compare. Thus, this third part affects
adjectives. Adjectives have comparative (for two people) and superlative (more than two people)
forms.

fat + ‘er ’ fatter + ‘est’ to fattest---fast + ‘er’, est faster, fastest

The ‘er ’ and ‘est’ morphemes are used to indicate comparative superlative forms of the
adjectives fat and fast above.

Derivational Bound Morphemes

A derivational morpheme which is also called a derived morpheme is a type of bound morpheme
which generates or creates new words by either changing the class of word or forming new
words.

This change in word class, caused by the addition of a derivational bound morpheme, is not
restricted to a particular class of words. It affects all classes of words. This transformation does
not, however, affect the lexical meaning of the base forms of the free morpheme. That is, the
lexical meanings of the core or base or free morpheme remain unchanged.

These examples are common in the English language:

a. Nouns from verbs word class Derivational suffix ---verb Noun -age break breakage,– al
revive revival,– ation explore exploration,– ment govern government,– ee pay payee

b. Adjectives from nouns Suffix---Noun Adjective – ful care careful,– less fruit fruitless,– n
Nigeria Nigerian,– able love lovable

c. Nouns from Adjectives Suffix --Adjective Noun – ity rapid rapidity,– ness kind kindness ,–
ce fragrant fragrance,– ity humble humility

d. Verbs from Adjective Suffix--Adjective Verb – en weak weaken,– ize liquid liquidize,– fy
solid solidify

e. Adjectives from verbs Suffix--Verb Adjective – able wash washable,– ive digest digestive,–
tory satisfy satisfactory

f. Verbs from nouns Suffix Nouns Verbs – ize special specialize

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Derivational bound morphemes, thus, have the following features:-

1. They change the meaning or word class e.g govern + ment government.

2. They indicate semantic relations in words e.g the morpheme – ful in hopeful does not relate to
any other word in the language except the free morpheme hopeful.

3. It operates a close circuit kind of relationship. For example, some bound morphemes like
‘hood’ carefully choose their root; they do not collocate with every other word in the language.

4. It occurs before the inflectional bound morphemes they should co-occur. For example, teach +
er teacher + s teachers (verb) (bound morpheme) (a new word) inflectional Thus, ‘er ’ comes
before‘s’.

Phonetics and its main branches

Introduction
Phonetics has been defined as the science of speech sounds. It is scientific study of the
production, transmission, and reception of speech sound produced by human beings. There is the
production of speech which is the result of simultaneous activities of several body organs.

These activities are aimed at creating disturbances in the air. The inhaled air acts as source of
energy setting the outside air vibrating so that the sound thus generated is carried along to the
ears of the listener. The auditory process is set in motion which is again a complicated process
involving auditory organs; perception of speech segments which involves discarding the non-
significant features from the significant or distinctive features and perceiving only those that are
meaningful.

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Major branches of Phonetics

Acoustic Phonetics

This is the study of the sound waves made by the human vocal organs for communication and
how the sounds are transmitted. The sound travels through from the speaker's mouth through the
air to the hearer's ear, through the form of vibrations in the air. Phoneticians can use equipment
like Oscillographs and Spectographs in order to analyse things like the frequency and duration of
the sound waves produced. Acoustic phonetics also looks at how articulatory and auditory
phonetics link to the acoustic properties.

Auditory Phonetics
Auditory phonetics focuses on the perception of sounds or the way in which sounds are heard
and interpreted. It is, obviously, a field of linguistic study which has to rely heavily on biology
and more specifically on anatomy and physiology. In auditory phonetics, we are dealing with
two distinct operations which are closely interrelated and influence each other: on the one hand
we can talk about audition proper, that is the perception of sounds by our auditory apparatus and
the transforming of the information into a neural sign and its sending to the brain and, on the
other hand, we can talk about the analysis of this information by the brain which eventually leads
to the decoding of the message, the understanding of the verbal message.

Keeping it very simple, we can state, that any sound coming from any source, be it a door
slamming or someone speaking to you, is spreading from that source as a sound wave, causing
the molecules on its way to crowd together and move apart again or in other words, to vibrate.
When these vibrating air molecules reach your ear, they cause the eardrum in your middle ear to
vibrate, too and this vibration is then carried on from the eardrum to the three little bones:
mallet, incus and stirrup .

Articulatory Phonetics

This branch of phonetics recognises that there is speech producing mechanism in human beings.
‘The ‘apparatus’ that produces speech sounds is situated within the human body. Man uses
various organs for speaking which already serve other biological needs. Lips, teeth, tongue, hard
palate, soft palate, trachea, lungs - all these organs used in speech production have different basic
biological functions.

Besides these the airstream that goes in and out of the lungs forms the basis of speech; that is,
speech is based on the outgoing air stream. Articulatory phonetics studies how the outgoing
airstream is regulated along the vocal tract to form various speech sounds.

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Articulators
Articulator is a vocal organ that takes part in the production of a speech sound. Such organs are
of two types: those that can move, such as the tongue, lips, etc. (active articulators), and those
that remain fixed, such as the teeth, the hard palate, etc. (passive articulators)

Active Articulators

The main role of the active articulators is to actively interfere with the outgoing airstream and
modify it to produce various types of speech sounds.

Tongue: - The most active of articulators is the tongue. It shows an amazing range of
adjustments and movements mainly because it is made of two groups of muscles, intrinsic ones
are fibers of the longitudinal, transverse and vertical lingual muscles. These muscles are within
the tongue and mainly responsible for changes in its shape. The tongue has been divided into the
parts on the surface along its length i-e tip of the tongue, blade of the tongue, front of the tongue,
back of the tongue and root of the tongue. The sides of the tongue can also be used in speech,
these are known as margin.

Lower lip: - The lower lip is a mobile articulator which can be used for many oral
configurations. With the upper lip it can form various degrees of rounding that produce different
vowels. It can bring about complete oral occlusion with the upper lip which produces bilabial
sounds, plosives and in many languages fricatives also. When the lower lip comes into contact
with upper teeth, we hear fricative sounds (labio-dental).

Passive Articulators

Passive articulators cannot be moved about, but perform a very crucial role in speech production.
The active organs approximate them, i.e. come close enough to affect the shape of the outgoing
column of air, or form a complete closure by coming into full contact with them.

These organs are mostly located in the upper part of the mouth, beginning in front with the upper
lip, upper teeth, the alveolar ridge, hard palate, the soft palate, just behind the hard palate and the
back wall of the throat (pharynx).

Upper lip: - Though upper lip is not a rigid organ and can be moved, in speech production it is
not used as a mobile articulator; rather the lower lip reaches up to create various constrictions
with it. Therefore, it has been classified as a passive articulator.

Upper teeth: - The row of upper teeth functions as the passive articulator. Tongue-tip and blade
as well as the lower lip form constriction with them. The active organs can do so either with the
edges of the teeth or the back of them. Dental class of sounds is produced in this manner.

Alveolar ridge: - Just behind the upper teeth is located alveolar ridge. The mobile speech organs
- various parts of the tongue reach it to form either a narrow stricture or a complete closure.

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English /0/ in thin and /ð/ in this are fricatives.

Hard Palate: - Behind the alveolar ridge begins the hard palate which forms the major part of
the roof of the mouth. It is made of the horizontal plates of bone which terminate in the soft
palate. ‘Some part of both the hard and the soft palates serves as a point of contact or near-
contact for the tongue in the production of a number of speech sounds’. It can be divided into
parts or areas where the tongue makes contact.

Soft Palate: - This is recognised as the fixed articulator though it can he moved, being a soft and
flexible organ. The principal action of soft place consists of opening the naso-pharyngeal cavity
by lowering itself. When it is lowered, the oral passage is closed off and the outgoing airstream
passes through the nose, sounds produced in this manner are identified as nasals. /m/, /n/, /h/ and
the nasalised vowels are of this type. For opening the oral passage and allowing the air a free
passage through it, the soft palate is raised. Soft palate thus acts as a valve.

Uvula: - The soft palate terminates into a piece of flesh which dangles over the pharyngeal
passage. This is called uvula. It is a ‘small flexible appendage hanging down from the posterior
edge of the velum. It can be vibrated by the outgoing breath-stream, to produce uvular sound,
particularly uvular trills. Some languages use these sounds as phonemes.

Pharynx: - The posterior wall of the pharynx is used for producing speech. In the front are the
base of the tongue, the palate, and the two openings leading to the nasal and oral passages. The
pharynx serves as a resonator for the voice. Widening of the pharynx promotes resonance and
makes the tones full, dark, strong and resonant; narrowing tends to make them thin, sharp,
dampened, and throaty’ .

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Phycholinguistics
Since language is a mental phenomenon, it is mental processes which are articulated in language
behaviour. Psycholinguistics studies these mental processes, processes of thought and concept
formation and their articulation in language, which reveal a great deal about the structures of
human psychology as well as of language. ‘Cognitive’ psychology is the area which explores
how meanings are understood by the human brain, how syntax and memory are linked, how
messages are ‘decoded’ and stored.

Psycholinguistics also studies the influence of psychological factors such as intelligence,

motivation, anxiety etc. on the kind of language that is understood and produced. For instance, in
the case of errors made by a speaker, there may be psychological reasons which influence
comprehension or production that are responsible for the occurrence of an error. Our perception
of speech sounds or graphic symbols (in writing) is influenced by the state of our mind. One kind
of mental disability, for example, results in the mistakes made by children in reading when they
mistake one letter for another (Dyslexia). Psycholinguistics can offer some insights and
corrective measures for this condition.

Psycholinguistics is concerned with the learning of language at various stages: the early
acquisition of a first language by children and later stages in acquisition of first and other
languages.

Psycholinguists attempt to answer questions such as whether the human brain has an inborn
language ability structured in such a way that certain grammatical and semantic patterns are
embedded in it, which can explain how all human beings are capable of learning a language. This
exploration may lead us to determining whether all the languages in the world have some
‘universal’ grammar that lies in the mind of every human being and is transformed in particular
situations to produce different languages. Psycholinguistic studies in language acquisition are
very useful in the area of language teaching because they help teachers to understand error
production and individual differences among learners and thus devise appropriate syllabi and
materials for them.

One specialized area within psycholinguistics is Neurolinguistics that studies the physiological
basis of language and language disorders such as aphasia, loss of memory, etc.

Another relation of language with mind is that of logic. It was held by some ancient philosophers
that the human mind is rational and capable of thinking logi¬cally and, therefore, language too is
logically ordered and rational. Others held that, just as irrationality is present in the mind,
irregularity or anomaly is present in human language. Since then there has been a debate about
the nature of language and the relation between language and logic. One of the problems
discussed by philosophers of language is whether language can be an adequate medium for
philosophical inquiry. Since all our thoughts are known to us through language, we must
examine the kind of language we use when we approach philosophical issues and analysis.

There are three Branches of Phycholinguistics.

1-Language Processing
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2-Language Acquisition
3-Neurolinguistics

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Places and Manner of Articulation

Place of Articulation
Speech sounds are classified in terms of which articulators are used, in other words, which bit of
the mouth is used in making the sound. Here are some basic classifications to get you started.

Bilabial Sounds made using both lips. For example, /p/ as in p at or /b/ as in b at.

Labiodental Sounds made using the lower lip and upper teeth. For example, /f/ as in fat or /v/ as
in v ase.

Alveolar Sounds made where the tongue touches the alveolar ridge. For example, /d/ as in dad
or /s/ as in s at.

Dental Sounds made using the upper teeth and tongue. For example, /ð/ as in th e /θ/ as in th
ing.

Velar Sounds made using the back part of the tongue and the soft palate (velum). For example,
/k/ as in c at /g/ as in g ate.

Palatal Sounds made when the tongue is close to the hard palate or 'roof of the mouth'. For
example, /j/ as in y es.

Glottal Sounds made using the glottis. For example, glottal stops /ʔ/.

The Manner of Articulation

The manner or way in which the outgoing air-stream is interfered with determines the manner of
articulation. The airstream may completely be stopped and released with force producing a
plosive or stop sound. According to the manner of articulation sounds are classified into smaller
classes as stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, laterals, trills or flaps and semivowels. These
constitute the larger class of consonants. For the complete description both the point/place and
manner of articulation are taken into consideration. According to the manner of articulation,
which describes the type of obstruction caused by the narrowing or closure of the articulators, the
consonants can be divided into Plosives, Nasals, Fricatives, Laterals, Affricates and semi-vowels
or frictionless continuants.

Plosives
In the production of a plosive, the oral and nasal passages arc closed simultaneously. The active
and passive articulators come in contact with each other forming a stricture of complete closure
and preventing the air from escaping through the mouth. The soft palate is raised and thus the
nasal passage is also blocked. The air behind the oral closure is compressed, and when the active
articulator is removed from contact with passive one, the air escapes with an explosion. Plosives

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are also known as Stops.

Nasals

In a nasal consonant, the breath stream is interrupted at some point in the oral cavity or at the
lips, while being allowed to enter the nose and create resonance there. Thus a nasal is produced
by a stricture of complete oral closure. The soft palate is lowered and the air passes through the
nose. All nasal sounds are voiced.

Fricatives

In the production of a fricative consonant the stricture is one of close approximation. The active
articulator and the passive articulator are so close to each other that passage between them is
very narrow and the air passes through it with audible friction.

Laterals
Laterals are produced by a stricture of complete closure in the center of the vocal tract, but the
air passes out every one or both side of the tongue.

Affricate

Affricate are produced by complete closure of the air passagae and released aferwars slowly.

Semi-vowels
A semi-vowel is a vowel glide functioning as a consonant i.e., as the C element in syllable
structure. In terms of articulation semi-vowels are like vowels, but they don’t behave like
vowels. Semi-vowels are never stable; they can never be pronounced by themselves. They are
sounds in transition. These are also called semi-consonants too.

Voicing: -
At the articulatory level, a voiced sound is one in which the vocal cords vibrate, and a voiceless
sound is one in which they do not. The voiced sounds in English are /b, d, g, v. р, z, dʒ, m, n, ŋ, l,
r, w, j/. All the vowels and semi-vowels are voiced sounds, whereas among the consonants some
are voiced and some voiceless.

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Prescriptive and descriptive approach to language

Descriptive approach
Descriptive approach to language: tries to explain things as they actually are, not as we wish
them to be, tries to find the unconscious rules that people follow when they are speaking and
writing. Describes our basic linguistic knowledge.

Prescriptive approach

Prescriptive approach to language: tries to tell us how one should speak and write and what rules
of language usage people should know.

Prescription can only occur after the language has been described, good prescription depends on
an adequate description.

Prescriptivists accuse descriptivists of being anarchists who want to do away with all the rules of
language.

Descriptivists accuse prescriptivists of uniformed bigotry.

Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how language is (or was) spoken
by a group of people in a speech community. All scholary research in linguistics is descriptive, it
aims to observe the linguistics world as it is, without the bias of preconceived ideas about how it
ought to be. [for teaching]

Prescription can refer to both codification and enforcement of rules governing how a language is
to be used. These rules can cover such topics as standards for spelling, grammar or syntax , or
rules of what is deemed socially and politically correct. It includes the mechanisms for
establishing and maintaining an interregional language or standarised spelling systems.

*Prescriptive: A set of rules and examples dealing with the syntax and word structures of a
language, usually intended as an aid to the learning of that language. Prescriptive grammar refers
to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used. A prescriptive grammar is
an account of a language that sets out rules (prescriptions) for how it should be used and for what
should not be used (proscriptions), based on norms derived from a particular model of grammar.
For English, such a grammar may prescribe ‘I’ as in ‘It is I’ and proscribe me as in ‘It's me’. It
may proscribe ‘like’ used as a conjunction, as in ‘He behaved like he was in charge’, prescribing
instead ‘He behaved as if he were in charge’. Prescriptive grammars have been criticised for not
taking account of language change and stylistic variation, and for imposing the norms of some
groups on all users of a language. They have been discussed by linguists as exemplifying specific
attitudes to language and usage.

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* Descriptive: The systematic study and description of a language. Seeks to describe how it is
used objectively, accurately, systematically, and comprehensively. Descriptive grammar refers to
the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers.

Prescription can only occur after the language has been described, good prescription depends on
adequate description.

Both kinds of grammar are concerned with rules-but in different ways.

Specialists in descriptive grammar (called linguists) study the rules or patterns that underlie our
use of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. They aim to observe the linguistic world as it is
without the bias of preconceived ideas of how it ought to be. On the other hand, prescriptive
grammarians (such as most editors and teachers) lay out rules about what they believe to be the
“correct” or “incorrect” use of language. They codify and enforce the rules that should govern
the language.

Robert Lowth (November 27, 1710 – November 3, 1787) was a Bishop of the Church of
England, a professor of poetry at Oxford University and the author of one of the most influential
textbooks of English grammar.

Lowth's grammar is the source of many of the prescriptive shibboleths (haslo rozpoznawcze) that
are studied in schools, and established him as the first of a long line of usage commentators who
judge the English language in addition to describing it.

A more scientifically minded attitude took hold by the 19th century when the Oxford English
Dictionary was proposed in 1859. It was to be a factual account of every word in the English
language since 1000 including its main form, pronunciation, spelling variations, part of speech,
etymology, meanings in chronological order and illustrative quotations. The project was begun in
1879 under its first editor, James AH Murray. The1st edition was published in 1928, with
supplements in 1933 and 1972-6. The second edition was published in 1989 and it recognised
American and Australian English, as the International Phonetic Alphabet for pronunciation.

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Saussure and His Main Contributions

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was a Swiss linguist who occupies an important place in the
history of linguistics and is generally considered the founder of modern linguistics. It was he
who first of all emphasized the importance of viewing language as a living phenomenon. He was
the founder of a “theoretic foundation to the newer trend in linguistics study," and European
scholars have seldom failed to consider his views when dealing with any theoretical problem.
Jonathan Culler (1976) says,

"Ferdinand de Saussure is the father of modern linguistics, the man who reorganized the
systematic study of language and language in such a way as to make possible the
achievements of twentieth-century linguists. This alone would make him a Modern Master:
master of a discipline which he made modern."

De Saussure’s contribution to modern linguistics was responsible for three key directions in the
study of language. He distinguished between Synchrony and Diachrony, between langue and
parole, between signified and signifier and between syntagmatic and paradigmatic. He also
contributed by describing the distinction between syntagmatic and paradigmatic, the theory of
associative value. Saussure’s contributions to linguistics are given below:

Synchrony and Diachrony

Synchrony: - Saussure proposed that language as a system of signs be studied as a complete
system at any given point in time.

A synchronic relationship is one where two similar things exist at the same time. Modern
American English and British English have a synchronic relationship.

Diachrony: - Diachrony is the change in the meaning of words over time. For example in the
way that 'magic' meant 'good' in youth culture for a period during the 1980s (and, to a lesser
extent, beyond).

A diachronic relationship is where related things exist separated by time. 12th century English
and 21st century English have a diachronic relationship.

Synchrony and Diachrony in Linguistics

According to the method, range or scope of its study, or the focus of interest of the linguist,
Linguistics can be classified into different kinds, the chief of which are Diachronic Linguistics
and Synchronic Linguistics.

Diachronic linguistics is the kind in which we study the historical development of language
through different periods of time. For example, we study how French and Italian have grown out
of Latin. The changes that have occurred in language with the passage of time, are also studied
under this kind of linguistics; therefore, it is called historical linguistics.

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Synchronic linguistics is not concerned with the historical development of language. It confines
itself to the study of how a language is spoken by a specified speech community at a particular
point of time. It is also called ‘descriptive’ linguistics. Diachronic linguistics studies language
change, and synchronic linguistics studies language states without their history.

According to C.F. Hockett:

“The study of how a language works at a given time, regardless of its past history or future
destiny, is called descriptive or synchronic linguistics. The study of how speech habits change
as time goes by is called historical or diachronic linguistics”

Some scholars do not see the two approaches apart. They assert that it is a mistake to think of
descriptive and historical linguistics as two separate compartments. However, on the whole the
two areas are kept apart and one is studied to the exclusion of the other. Synchronic statements
make no reference to the previous stages in the language. Linguistic studies in the nineteenth
century were historical in character; they originated as part of the general historical
investigations into the origins and development of cultures and communities, especially West
Asia, Egypt, etc.

“Which developed so powerfully and fruitfully from the 1820s to the 1880s. This discovery
enabled linguists to explain modern languages as a result of lawgoverned historical
development”.

On a closer look one realizes that without a good synchronic (descriptive) work, valid historical
(diachronic) postulations are not possible; in other words, a good historical linguist needs to be
thorough descriptive scholar too.

Synchronic Study of language describes language at a particular stage of its development. It

restricts itself to the study of a language at a particular point of time. For example, study of
English in Mexico on present day or study of Hindi in Delhi in 1998 is example of Synchronic
Study.

Diachronic Study of language, on the other hand, is the thorough study of evolution of language
including study of its birth, various stages of its development and the changes it undertook. It
identifies the fact that language is a continuously changing phenomenon. For instance, the study
of the development of modern Italian from Latin and that of Modern English from Old English
are examples of Diachronic study of language.

Signifier and Signified

Description: - Saussure's 'theory of the sign' defined a sign as being made up of the matched pair
of signifier and signified.

Signifier: - The signifier is the pointing finger, the word, the sound-image. A word is simply a
jumble of letters. The pointing finger is not the star. It is in the interpretation of the signifier that
meaning is created.

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Signified: - The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. It need
not be a 'real object' but is some referent to which the signifier refers. The thing signified is
created in the perceiver and is internal to them.

The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (Saussure called this
'unmotivated'). A real object need not actually exist 'out there'. Whilst the letters 'c-a-t' spell cat,
they do not embody 'catness'. The French 'chat' is not identical to the English 'cat' in the signified
that it creates (to the French, 'chat' has differences of meaning).

He was really interested in the larger and more abstract system of signs. De Saussure
characterized signs as a relationship between "concept" and "sound" to use de Saussure's words
signified and signifier. Saussure called this relationship of signified to signifier a linguistic sign.
The sign, for him, is the basic unit of communication. The linguistic sign is constituted by the
structural relationship between the concept (e.g., "house"---the signified) and the sound of the
word "house" (signifier). A language is essentially composed of such structural relationships, and
the study of language is the study of the system of signs that express ideas.

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic

Syntagmatic: - In Syntagmatic relations the syntagme is seen as any ‘combination of discrete

successive units of which there are at least two, with no limit on the possible number’. These
segments range from the smallest construction units, i.e. phonemes, to phrases, and so on. Thus
the word read is a succession of phonemes /r/, /i:/, /d/; re-read a succession of bound morpheme
and a free morphemes. For Saussure sentence is the most obvious example of a syntagme. It is a
combination of other linguistic units. They demonstrate chain relationship. The unit acquires its
significance by its position of occurrence vis-a-vis other elements preceding and following it.
We shall take an example to e see elements occurring in a linear order in the following sentence:
She will come tomorrow.

The pronoun+ auxiliary+ main verb +adverb.

This ordering of the words cannot be changed. Syntagmatic relations function on the horizontal
emphasizing the relational criteria identifying or defining linguistic categories or units.

Paradigmatic: - The paradigmatic relationships are contrastive or choice relationships. Words

that have something in common, are; associated in the memory, resulting in groups marked by
diverse relations. For example, the English word learning will unconsciously call to mind a host
of other words–study, knowledge, discipline, etc. All these words are related in some way. This
kind of relationship is called associative or paradigmatic relationship. Here the co-ordinations are
outside discourse and are not supported by linearity. They are relations in absentia, and are
vertical type relations. Their seat is in the brain; they are a part of the inner storehouse that
makes up language of each speaker.” (Saussure)

We can visualize a word as the centre of a constellation around which spring other words. These
relations are unpredictable.

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Associations that are called up in one person may not occur in the mind of another. Since it is
psychological, it is also subject to individual vagaries and governed by the specific factors
governing the individual’s speech behaviour, Paradigmatic relations are unpredictable, free,
dynamic and idiosyncratic, comparable to la parole.

Langue and Parole

De Saussure put forward the concepts of La langue(abstract system of rules), La Parole(speech)
and Le Language(Human language).

La langue is more directly indicative of ability to produce speech, a kind of ‘institutionalized

element’ of the community’s collective consciousness. Every member of the community shares
it, and because of this they are in a position to understand each other. Through langue they share
the common properties of speech. ‘If one took away what was idiosyncratic or innovational,
langue would remain. Langue, by definition, is stable and systematic, society conveys the
regularities of langue to the child so that he becomes able to function as a member of the speech
community (Wilkins).

La langue is a collective pattern which exists as ‘a sum of impressions deposited in the brain of
each individual.., like a dictionary of which identical copies have been distributed to each
individual... it exists in each individual, yet it is common to all’.

La langue is a repository of signs which each speaker has received from the other speakers of the
community. It is passive. It is a set of conventions received by us all, ready-made from the
community.

La Parole: By contrast la parole is active and denotes the actual speech act of the individual. We
can better understand it by considering each act of speaking as a unique event. It is unique
because it reflects the unstable, changeable relationship between the languages, the precise
contextual elements triggering particular utterances, and personal factors.

Saussure identified a sharp distinction in three terms- language, langue and parole. He believed
that language is not only about the faculty of speech (ability to speak) that human beings get due
to heredity. It also depends on suitable environmental stimuli for its development. It is not
limited to an individual but is a social concept.

Keeping this fact in mind, Saussure devised a new term- Langue. According to him, Langue is
the sum total of all the rules and conventions that could be associated to the language on the
whole. It is inclusive of all the practical and abstract ideas concerned to the language.
Parole, on the other hand, is the practical application of Langue on the part of a speaker. It
includes only those rules and conventions that a person actually makes use of when he uses the
language. Since every person makes use of language in his/ her own way, Parole of one person
may differ from that of another person.

Langue and Parole differ from each other in the sense that Parole could differ from one person to
another while Langue is the same for every person. Langue includes even those aspects (rules,

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beliefs and conventions) of language that are not applied in practical interaction between people
but Parole includes only those aspects that a person uses practically.

Saussure used example of the game of Chess to clarify the difference between the two. He stated
that ‘Langue’ in case of Chess would be inclusive of all the possible moves that could be made in
the game of Chess. Parole of the game would be the choice of moves that a person makes in the
game. So, understanding Parole of Chess could not give thorough understanding of the game.
According to Saussure, if a person wishes to have universal understanding of language, he
should understand Langue since Parole could not be enough for the purpose.

Conclusion

The contribution Saussure had on language was revolutionary. His work had a profound
influence on many aspects of linguistics. Lastly the following statement from Benevensite will
reflect his contribution:

"a forerunner in doctrines which in the post fifty years have transformed the theory of
language, he has opened us unforgettable vistas on the highest and mysterious faculty of
man… he has contributed to the advent of formal thought in the sciences of society and
culture and to the founding of a general semiology".

There is not a single general theory which doesn't mention him name.

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Semantics and types of meaning

Semantics as a general explanation is about the study of meaning of the words, phrases,
sentences, and discourse. Lyons (1977:1) states that semantics is generally defined as the study
of meaning. Palmer (1981:1) argues that semantics is the technical term used to refer to the study
of meaning, and, since meaning is a part of language, semantics is a part of linguistics.
Unfortunately, ‘meaning’ covers a variety of aspects of language, and there is no general
agreement about the nature of meaning, what aspects of it may properly be included in
semantics, or the way in which it should be described.

We know that language is used to express meanings which can be understood by others. But
meanings exist in our minds and we can express what is in our minds through the spoken and
written forms of language (as well as through gestures, action etc.).

‘How is language organised in order to be meaningful?’ This is the question we ask and
attempt to answer at the level of semantics. Semantics is that level of linguistic analysis where
meaning is analysed. It is the most abstract level of linguistic analysis, since we cannot see or
observe meaning as we can observe and record sounds. Meaning is related very closely to the
human capacity to think logically and to understand. So when we try to analyse meaning, we are
trying to analyse our own capacity to think and understand, our own ability to create meaning.

What is Meaning?
Philosophers have puzzled over this question for over 2000 years. Their thinking begins from the
question of the relationship between words and the objects which words represent. For example,
we may ask: What is the meaning of the word ‘cow’? One answer would be that it refers to an
animal who has certain properties that distinguish it from other animals, who are called by other
names. Where do these names come from and why does the word ‘cow’ mean only that
particular animal and none other? Some thinkers say that there is no essential connection
between the word ‘cow’ and the animal indicated by the word, but we have established this
connection by convention and thus it continues to be so.

There are at least seven types of meaning (many linguists state their different categories of
meaning) in semantic according Geoffrey Leech (1974), those are:

Conceptual meaning (logical, cognitive, or denotative content)

It refers to the dictionary meaning which indicates the concepts. In reading we can find many
different words have the same conceptual meanings. Take the word walk as an example, the
conceptual meaning or the primary dictionary meaning is to move forward by placing one foot in
front of the other. There are also a few other words that, according to the dictionary, mean to
move forward on foot, etc.

The Connotative Meaning

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That is, apart from its logical or essential attributes, there is a further meaning attached to a word,
which comes from its reference to other things in the real world. In the real world, such a word
may be associated with some other features or attributes. For example, the logical or denotative
meaning of the word ‘woman’ is the concept, ‘human + female + adult’. To it may be added
the concept of ‘weaker sex’ or ‘frailty’. These were the connotations or values associated with
the concept of ‘woman’. Thus connotative meaning consists of the attributes associated with a
concept. As we know, these associations come into use over a period of time in a particular
culture and can change with change in time. While denotative meaning remains stable since it
defines the essential attributes of a concept, connotative meaning changes as it is based on
associations made to the concept; these associations may change.

The Social Meaning

This is the meaning that a word or a phrase conveys about the circumstances of its use. That is,
the meaning of a word is understood according to the different style and situation in which the
word is used, e.g. though the words ‘domicile’, ‘residence’, ‘abode’, ‘home’ all refer to the
same thing (i.e. their denotative meaning is the same), each word belongs to a particular situation
of use—’domicile’ is used in an official context, ‘residence’ in a formal context, ‘abode’ is a
poetic use and ‘home’ is an ordinary use. Where one is used, the other is not seen as appropriate.

The Thematic Meaning

This is the meaning which is communicated by the way in which a speaker or writer organises
the message in terms of ordering, focus and emphasis. It is often felt, for example, that an active
sentence has a different meaning from its passive equivalent although its conceptual meaning
seems to be the same. In the sentences:

Mrs. Smith donated the first prize

The first prize was donated by Mrs. Smith

The thematic meaning of both the sentences is different. In the first sentence it appears that we
know who Mrs. Smith is, so the new information on which the emphasis is laid is ‘the first
prize’. In the second sentence, however, the emphasis is laid on ‘Mrs. Smith’. It is sometimes
difficult to demarcate all these categories of meaning. For example, it may be difficult to
distinguish between conceptual meaning and social meaning in the following sentences:

He stuck the key in his pocket.

He put the key in his pocket.

We could argue that these two sentences are conceptually alike, but different in social meaning–
–the first one adopts a casual or informal style, the second adopts a neutral style.

He stuck the key in his pocket.

He put the key in his pocket.

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We could argue that these two sentences are conceptually alike, but different in social meaning–
–the first one adopts a casual or informal style, the second adopts a neutral style.

Affective Meaning

In a manner comparable to social meaning, affective meaning is only indirectly related to the
conceptual representation.

Affective meaning is more directly a reflection of the speaker’s personal attitude or feelings
towards the listener or the target of the utterance. Such feelings or attitudes are usually negative
or insincere in nature. They are normally expressed through such forms of language use as
insults, flattery, hyperbole or sarcasm.

Affective meaning is largely a parasitic category in the sense that to express our emotions we
rely upon the mediation of other categories of meaning: conceptual, connotative, or stylistic.
The level of meaning that conveys the language user’s feelings, including his attitude or
evaluation in shaping his use of language is called affective meaning or emotive meaning.

Reflected Meaning

Reflected meaning involves an interconnection on the lexical level of language, it is the meaning,
which arises in case of multiple conceptual meaning, when one senses of word forms part of our
response to another sense. For instance, on hearing the Church service, the synonymous
expressions The Comforter and The Holy Ghost both refer to the Third Trinity, but the
Comforter sounds warm and comforting, while the Holy Ghost sounds awesome.

Collocative Meaning

Collocative meaning consists of the associations a word acquire s on account of the meanings of
the words, which tends to occur in its environment. For instance the words pretty and handsome
share common ground in the meaning of good looking. But may be distinguished by the range of
noun in which they are like to occur or collocate; Pretty woman and handsome man. The ranges
may well match although they suggest a different kind of attractiveness of the adjectives.

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Sociolinguistics
Language is a social-cultural-geographical phenomenon. There is a deep relationship between
language and society. It is in society that man acquires and uses language. When we study a
language which is an abstraction of abstractions, a system of systems, we have to study its
further abstractions such as dialects, sociolects, idiolects, etc. That is why we have to keep in
mind the geographical area in which this language is spoken, the culture and the society in which
it is used, the speakers who use it, the listeners for whom it is used, and the purpose for which it
is used, besides the linguistic components that compose it. Only then can our study of a language
be complete and comprehensive.

Sociolinguistics is the study of speech functions according to the speaker, the hearer, their
relationship and contact, the context and the situation, the topic of discourse, the purpose
of discourse, and the form of discourse. An informal definition of sociolinguistics suggested
by a linguist is that it is the study of: “Who can say what how, using what means, to whom and
why.”
It studies the ways in which language interacts with society. It is the study of the way in which
the structure of a language changes in response to its different social functions, and the definition
of what these functions are.

Problems related to interference, code-switching or dialect-switching can be successfully

handled by sociolinguistics. But the success of socio-linguistics ultimately depends upon ‘pure
linguistics’. The scope of sociolinguistics, therefore, is the interaction of language and various
sociologically definable variables such as social class, specific social situation, status and roles
of speakers/hearers, etc.

Language Variation
Language with its different varieties is the subject matter of sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics
studies the varied linguistic realizations of socio-cultural meanings which in a sense are both
familiar and unfamiliar and the occurrence of everyday social interactions which are nevertheless
relative to particular cultures, societies, social groups, speech communities, languages, dialects,
varieties, styles. That is why language variation generally forms a part of socio-linguistic study.
Language can vary, not only from one individual to the next, but also from one sub-section of
speech-community (family, village, town, and region) to another. People of different age, sex,
social classes, occupations, or cultural groups in the same community will show variations in
their speech. Thus language varies in geographical and social space. Variability in a social
dimension is called sociolectical. According to sociolinguists, a language is code.

Language Varieties: - Language varies from region to region, class to class, profession to
profession, person to person, and even situation to situation. Sociolinguistics tends to describe
these variations in language with reference to their relationship with society. It shows that the
relationship between language variation and society is rather a systematic relationship. It
manifests that there are four major social factors involve in this variation: socio-economic

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status, age, gender, and ethnic background of the user or users of language. Due to all these
four factors language differs on four levels chiefly:

(1) Phonological Level

(2) Lexical Level
(3) Syntax Level
(4) Discourse Level

In other words, variation within a language with reference to its use or user can be defined in
terms of ‘difference of linguistic items’.

R. A. Hudson in his Sociolinguistics manifests: “What makes a language variety different from
another is linguistic items that it includes, so we may define a variety of language as a set of
linguistic items with similar social distribution”.

So, to describe language varieties, on one side there are linguistic items and on the other there is
‘social distribution’. Let’s take two different social classes for example: Middle Class and
Working Class. Language of Working Class is different from that of Middle Class. The choice of
vocabulary of one class is quite different from the other. Middle class uses more adjective,
adverbs and impersonal pronouns. Whereas Working class uses active and simple words and
here is lesser use of adjective, adverbs and impersonal pronouns. Lower class speech (restricted
code) is more direct with simple grammatical construction in contrast with middle class speech
(elaborated code).

In the following, five major language verities will be discussed, namely: Idiolect, Register,
Diglossia, Pidgin and Lingua Franca. Besides this, it will also be observed that how a language
variety differs from another closely related variety. For instance, what is difference between
Idiolect and sociolect? How register differs from dialect? What makes distinguish pidgin from
other varieties?

Idiolect: - Every person has some differences with people around him. From eating habits to
dressing, everyone has some quite unique feature. The same is the case with individual language
use. Every individual have some idiosyncratic linguistic features in his or her use of language.
These personal linguistic features are known as Idiolect. David crystal in his Dictionary of
Linguistics and phonetics defines Idiolect as: “Linguistic system of an individual—one’s
personal dialect”.

This ‘linguistic system’ can be described in terms of personal choice of vocabulary,

grammatical structures, and individual style of pronunciation. In other words idiolect refers to a
person’s individual phonology, syntax and lexicon.

For instance some individuals use lower pitch and some other speak with higher pitch. Some are
in habit of speaking with harder tone and it feels as if they are speaking with anger, even though
they are speaking ‘sweetly’ on their side. Similarly, some individual’s use their nasal cavity,
more than their vocal cord, in their production of sound and listener feels as some sharp whistle

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is blowing.

The best example of particular choice of vocabulary is individual use of ‘catch phrases’. Most
frequent among these are “I say”, “I mean”, “do you understand?” and “what do you
think?” Some catch phrases are rather interesting and their use becomes cause of amusement.
For example one of my classmate in M.A Linguistics was in habit of using:

“Bhai” with every third or fourth sentence. Once his audience was a girl instead of boy. When
he said “Bhai, main explain kar raha thaa...” The girl corrected him and said “bhai nahi
bhan!” and he promptly replied, “Oh bhai, I mean...”

In this way a person’s speech is distinguished from other individuals and form any speech
community. Idiolect is a minor speech variety than sociolect, which is used by any social
class. Idiolect varies with individual whereas sociolect varies with class defined on socio-
economic bases. Idiolect, sociolect and dialect are the varieties which depend on their user.

Register: - Human beings are not static. Their thinking, choice, and behavior vary according to
need and situation. As they adapt their behavior according to the situation, they adapt their
language. This adaptation of language according to situation, context and purpose forms a
language variety that is called ‘Register’. David Crystal defines Register as: “A variety of
language defined according to its use in a social situation”.

Language of individual varies from situation to situation. At some occasions people talk very
formally, on some other occasions they talk technically as well as formally. At some other
occasion they become informal yet technical and sometimes informal and non-technical.

‘Register’ as a language variety differs from dialect, sociolect and idiolect. These differences
are:

Register Dialect
Register is a language variety according to use. Dialect is language variety according to user.
It may be related to any particular profession or
It may be related to any region or social class
situation.
It shows what the user of language is doing It shows who the user is.
Register is a set of particular linguistic items to Dialect is a set of linguistic items to be used
be used in a particular situation. by people of particular area or class.

Up till now the different variations within a language were being dealt but there are certain
situations where two or more languages are used which causes such variations that are beyond
the range of one language. One of these variations is known as pidgin. There is a situation in
which two or more languages are used with in a society. That is known as ‘Diglossia’. Let’s
discuss the situation.

Diglossia: - Diglossia is not a language variety but a ‘linguistic situation’ where more than
one languages are used. In English language, term Diglossia was introduced by Charles
Ferguson. He used this term to refer to those societies where two very different varieties of the

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same language were being used. He said: “Diglossia is a relatively stable language situation in
which, in addition to the primary dialect of the language (which may include standard or
regional standards), there is very highly codified (often grammatically complex) superposed
variety.”

In Ferguson’s theory that society is ‘diglossic’ where two ‘divergent’ varieties of the same
language are used, out of which one is ‘highly codified’. Arabic speaking countries are the best
examples of ‘Diglossia’. Throughout the Arabic peninsula there are two varieties of Arabic
language in use: Classical Arabic, and Vernaculars. Classical Arabic, which is based on the
Qur’anic language, is highly codified and complex and has stable grammatical structure since
The Holy Qur’an is revealed. This language is ‘Lingua Franca’ of Arabic Peninsula and is
being taught in schools and also the language of media. Everyone has to learn this variety
especially and not acquired “by being born in right kind of family”.

It is obvious from Ferguson’s definition that only that society was considered diglossic where
two varieties, one high and another low, of the same language were used. However, later on,
Joshua Fishman, extend the term to that society where two different languages are used.

Ferguson also purposed that there is a strong tendency to give one language higher status or
prestige and reserve it for specific occasion and purposes. According to this notion, Pakistani
society is strongly a diglossic society where there are not two but three languages exist with
different status. In Punjab for example, Punjabi is used at personal level, Urdu is used on social
level and English is ‘reserved’ for high formal occasions. The existence of different languages
in a society provides them to emerge into each other and sometimes results into a new mixture of
languages that is called Pidgin.

Pidgin: - Pidgin is an ‘odd mixture’ of two languages which cannot be said a divergent variety
of ‘a language’ but of two or more languages. Here languages mixed up oddly that from
morphemes to sentence structure everything reduces and mingles strangely. David crystal defines
pidgin as a language with a markedly reduced grammatical structure, lexicon, and stylistic range,
compared with other languages, and which is native language of none and are formed by two
mutually unintelligible speech communities attempting to communicate.

The vocabulary of a pidgin comes mainly from one particular language called the “lexifier”. An
early “pre-pidgin” is quite restricted in use and variable in structure. But the later “stable
pidgin” develops its own grammatical rules which are quite different from those of the lexifier.

Since pidgin emerges out of practical need of communication between two different language
communities having no greater language to interact, it is also called ‘contact language’. R. A.
Hudson in his Sociolinguistics states: “Pidgin is a variety especially created for the purpose of
communication with some other group, and not used by any community for communication
among themselves.” So pidgin is outcome of interaction between two entirely different ‘speech
communities’. It develops because neither of the communities ‘learns’ the language of others due
to different reasons.

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Sometimes practically it is impossible to learn either of the languages so quickly and there is
strong need of interaction, as for business purposes or immediate political needs. Most of the
present pidgins have developed in European colonies. A few examples are: Hawaii Creole
English, AAVE, Papiamentu “Geordie Cameroon Pidgin Krio “Singlish” Tok Pisin, Bislama.
Out of these, many have developed as Creoles.

Major difference between pidgin and Creole is that former has no native speakers but later has.
In fact, when any pidgin is acquired by children of any community it becomes Creole. At that
time it develops its new structures and vocabulary. In other words when a pidgin becomes
‘lingua franca’ it is called Creole.

An old example of pidgin, that later developed into creole, was “lingua franca”. It referred to a
mix of mostly Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and
Arabic. This mixed language was used for communication throughout the medieval and early
modern Middle East as a diplomatic language. Term “lingua franca” has since become common
for any language used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another.

Lingua Franca: - Lingua franca is any inter-language used beyond its native speakers for the sake
of communication between the speech communities having different languages. David Crystal
defines it as: “An auxiliary language used to enable routine communication to take place
between groups of people who speak different native languages”.

Term ‘lingua franca’ is an old one and its origin is Italian means “Frankish language”. It was
derived from the medieval Arab Muslim use of “Franks” mean ancient Germanic people. The
Muslims used it as a generic term for Europeans during the period of the Crusades. Formerly, the
term referred to an old pidgin, mixture of Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Greek and French.
This pidgin was widely used in the Mediterranean area from the 14th century or earlier and still
in use in the 20th century. This language served as diplomatic and trade language. However, now
this term refers to any language that serves to communicate between different larger speech
communities.

There are many languages which have served as ‘Lingua Franca’ during the course of history.
For instance, during the domination of Roman Empire, lingua franca was Latin in the East and
Greek in the west. With the rise of the Arab Muslims, Arabic became lingua franca in the East
from South Asia to North Africa and even western part of southern Europe. Persian also have
enjoyed this status around 15th century till 19th century in Indian-subcontinent and Central Asia.

Conclusion

We have studied different varieties of language and have compared their different aspect. We
have observed that language varies from larger communities, down to an individual. Even
language of an individual varies from occasion to occasion. We find that there are different
levels of formalities with in a language and their use depends of speaker’s purpose, mode and
audience. Moreover it also varies due to socio-economic position of individual or group. This
variation of language with social difference, makes this notion more clear that language is a
social phenomenon and inextricably tied with social and cultural traditions.

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Stylistics and its significance

Stylisticsthe branch of linguistics that studies the style of language and describes the norms and
usage of literary language in speech, in various types of written works, and in public affairs.

Stylistics deals with language in the broad sense of the term, which includes speech, but stylistics
differs from other areas of linguistics in that it is concerned with language and society and with
sociolinguistics. Stylistics studies the means of expressing the supplementary (stylistic)
information that accompanies the content of speech. A related subject of study is the system of a
language’s synonymic means and potentialities at all levels. Stylistics also studies the linguistic
norms of past periods of language development. Historical stylistics deals with these topics and
also seeks to identify shifts and nuances in style, although its primary aim is to trace the history
of stylistic systems, the origin, formation, and development of stylistic variants within languages,
and the history of the interactions among these variants.

The grouping of linguistic material by theorists of stylistics does not necessarily coincide with
division into lexicon, phraseology, morphology, and syntax. Of course, stylistics may study and
describe the stylistic features of levels of language, but the researcher engaged in this task keeps
in mind the language’s stylistic system as a whole. Since the stylistic features of linguistic
material are perceived by researchers studying the stylistics of a contemporary literary language
as bearers of the literary language directly and intuitively—they are identified without analyzing
texts or utterances. But these researchers’ main efforts are directed toward studying the aggregate
of stylistically colored elements in various styles, and identifying the norms of textual structure
as revealed in the linguistic material studied.

In studying the styles of earlier stages of a language’s development, the researcher proceeds from
analysis of texts and of their composition and structure to the identification of the stylistic traits
of the linguistic phenomena in the texts. As a result of this approach, the use of statistical
methods in the study of texts is increasing.

A separate branch of stylistics is the stylistics of literature (artistic speech). The methodology of
this type of study is determined by the subject’s distinct nature. Literary language as a
manifestation of art remains language in the usual sense of the term, and the artistic functions of
language in literature are determined by style. Consequently, it is natural that the stylistics of
artistic speech should remain a part of the stylistics of language as a linguistic discipline and
should use the same concepts and categories. However, the stylistics of artistic speech is not
limited to these concepts and categories when it reveals the aesthetic function of language in
literature.

The stylistics of literature elucidates the methods of using language in literature and of
combining aesthetic and communicative functions in language. The stylistics of literature also
identifies the means by which language becomes a work of art within literature. Researchers in
the field of literary stylistics indicate the distinctive features of texts, the methods of structuring
various types of authorial narration, and the devices used to depict the speech of a given milieu.
They also elucidate the methods of constructing dialogue, the functions of different stylistic
strata of language in artistic speech, the principles of selecting linguistic means and of

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transforming them in literature, and the methods of concretizing aspects of language that are not
significant in actual speech.

A related task of historical stylistics is the analysis of the relations of the language of poetry and
fiction with literary and popular colloquial language at various stages in the development of
language and literature. This makes it possible to trace the connections between the history of the
literary language and the history of literature, and to amplify with linguistic features such
concepts as classicism, sentimentalism, romanticism, and realism.

At the same time, researchers in the stylistics of artistic speech seek to indicate the aesthetic
function of the linguistic material in a given literary system and in the relations of this material
with the other elements of the system. Consequently, the most important subject of study in
literary stylistics is the language of the writer and of works of literature, in which the problem of
individual style is brought to the forefront.

The stylistics of artistic speech borders on poetics. This contiguity marks the boundaries of
linguostylistic analysis. These boundaries exist since the style of a literary work embraces,
according to V. M. Zhirmunskii, both linguistic means (the subject of stylistics in the precise
meaning of the term) and themes, images, composition, and literary content, the last of which is
embodied partially, though not exclusively, in words. At the same time, not all of the linguistic
features of a work are the subject of stylistics. For example, the study of the rhythm of a poetic
text and the study of the sound instrumentation of a line of poetry lie within the domain of
poetics. Practical stylistics is an applied discipline that includes stylistic recommendations
conforming to the needs of a given speech culture.

Elements of stylistics existed in classical theories of language, whose traditions influenced

medieval philology. These traditions were also reflected in Russian theories of rhetoric of the
17th to early 19th centuries. The works of M. V. Lomonosov in the 18th century and of A. A.
Potebnia and A. N. Veselovskii in the 19th century were very important in the history of Russian
stylistics.

Stylistics took form as an independent discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
particularly in the works of C. Bally. Bally developed a theory that the expressive means of a
language on the emotional, social, and individual planes were the main subject of stylistics. The
relations between stylistics and poetic speech were exhaustively studied in Russia between 1910
and 1930. Important work in the development of stylistics and of the sociological, historical, and
literary study of linguistic styles was carried out by V. M. Zhirmunskii and V. V. Vinogradov.
Of particular significance were Vinogradov’s attempts to fix the boundaries between stylistics
and poetics and, within stylistics, to differentiate such branches as the stylistics of language, of
speech, and of literature. The scholars L. V. Shcherba, B. A. Larin, L. A. Bulakhovskii, G. O.
Vinokur, and B. V. Tomashevskii made important contributions to the study of Russian
stylistics.

The most controversial topics in contemporary stylistics are the nature of the meanings suggested
by style, the description of functional styles of language, the place of the language of poetry and
fiction in the stylistic system of a literary language, and the principles of studying the language

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of literary works. Further topics of current interest are the roles of individual style and of
statistical methods.

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