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”The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.” Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell
What is linguistics? A linguist is: • A person who speaks different languages fluently? • A person who translates texts? • A person who can help you determine what is correct or incorrect in speech and writing?
Language • Is language the only means of communication? • When do we use language? What is it used for? • What does it mean to know a language?
What does it mean to know a language? So, we will first talk about the properties of language in general. The properties of human language are: 1. REFLEXIVITY/ REFLEXIVENESS: Humans are able to reflect on language and its uses; Reflexivity accounts for the fact that we can use language to think and talk about language itself. 2. DISPLACEMENT: Humans are able to speak about things not present in the immediate environment. 3. ARBITRARINESS: There is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. This aspect of the relationship between linguistic signs and objects in the world is called arbitrariness.
4. CULTURAL TRANSMISSION: Language is passed on from one generation to the next. Humans are born with some kind of predisposition to acquire language in general sense (The Innateness Hypothesis). However, we are not born with the ability to produce utterances in a specific language such as English. We acquire our first language as children in a culture. 5. DUALITY: Human language is organized at two levels or layers simultaneously: 1st level DISTINCT SOUNDS, 2nd level DISTINCT MEANINGS. In speech production, we have a physical level at which we can produce individual sounds, like n, b, i. At another level we have distinct words. So in a particular combination, such as bin, we have another level producing a meaning which is different from the meaning in the combination in nib.
6. CREATIVITY/ PRODUCTIVITY/ OPEN-ENDEDNESS The main property of a language is its creativity. Because there are always new things to say and new experiences to report, language has to be creative, thus giving us freedom to produce and understand new words and sentences. Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources to describe new objects and situations. The potential numbr of utterances in any human language is infinite.
However, creativity as a property of human language is itself not unbounded – it is restricted by systematic constraints that establish the boundaries within which innovation can occur.We can be innovative, but there are rules to the game! • For example, PRANG, FLIG, TRAF etc. could be used as novel words in the language because they follow the correct phonotactic rules applied to the English language. In contrast to that, words such as RPANG, LFIG, FTRA can never be used as English words.
Other constraints determine how words can be created from already existing forms with the help of special endings. SOLEME ---- SOLEMIC ---SOLEMICISE --- SOLEMICISATION • Thus creativity, namely the ability to produce and use novel words and sentences is the basic property of a language, but it has to be limited and based on exact rules.
Sometimes, however, there are some exceptions to these rules which prevent the process of production. For example, the process of CONVERSION of nouns into verbs is very productive, and many verbs are formed this way. • Compare two sets of sentences (1 and 2): • He summered in London. Mary holidayed in Italy. Mary and John honeymooned in the Maldives. • *Andrea nooned at the restaurant. *Philip midnightedin the streets. RULE?
EXCEPTIONS TO THE PREVIOUSLY DEVISED RULE *They autumned / weekedin Spain. • The creativity of language is most noticeable in the production and comprehension of sentences. Even though all of the words i (3) are comprehensible, the sentence is ungrammatical. • *Robbed this man the woman at the bus stop who was standing. (This man robbed the woman who was standing at the bus stop.)
Native speakers of the English language will automatically KNOW all of the things that we have discussed up to now. • The same applies to the speakers of all the other languages – native speakers are able to easily determine the level of grammaticality of the sentences in their own native language. • Speakers of any language are able to produce or understand an unlimited number of sentences/utterances, including many that are unfamiliar or novel to them. • They are able to recognize that certain utterances are not acceptable and this knowledge is usually referred to as linguistic competenceand constitutes the central subject matter of modern linguistics and of this course/book.
LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE is the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by native speakers of a language, it models what fluent speakers know when they know a language. • It contrasts with LINGUISTIC PERFORMANCE, which is the way a language system is used in communication. Performance models how speakers actually use their linguistic competence. • In investigating competence, linguists mainly focus on the mental system that allows human beings to form and interpret the sounds, words and sentences of their own language. This system is called a GRAMMAR used in a special way. • Chomsky and Halle (1963): ‚We use the term ‚grammar‘ with a systematic ambiguity. On the one hand, the term referes to the explicit theory constructed by the linguist and proposed as a description of speaker‘s competence. On the other hand, it refers to this competence itself.‘
It has nothing to do with the grammar book which prescribes grammatical rules and which is mainly concerned with forms of words and sentences. Rather, it is an intricate system of knowledge which encompasses sound and meaning as well as form and structure. It consists of 5 basic components: 1. Phonetics: the articulation and perception of speech sounds 2. Phonology: the patterning of speech sounds 3. Morphology: Word formation 4. Syntax: Sentence formation 5. Semantics: The interpretation of words and sentences
Our knowledge of language, i.e. our internal grammar, not only allows us to produce and understand an infinite number of well-formed (even if silly and illogical) sentences. It also permits us to distinguish well-formed (grammatical) sentences form ill-formed (ungrammatical) sentences. This is further evidence of our creativity/ productivity, because the ungrammatical sentences are typically novel, not sentences we have previously heard or produced: • John kissed the little old lady who owned the shaggy dog. • Who owned the shaggy dog John kissed the little old lady. • John is difficult to love. • It is difficult to love John.
5. John is anxious to go. 6. It is anxious to go John. 7. John, who was a student, flunked the exam. 8. Exams his flunked student a who was John. If you find b, f, and h unacceptable, you see your linguistic creativity at work.
The study of grammar lies at the core of our attempts to understand what language is and what it means to know a language. Five simple points should help clarify why the investigation of grammatical systems is so important to contemporary linguistics analysis: • GENERALITY: ALL LANGUAGES HAVE GRAMMARS • PARITY: ALL LANGUAGES ARE EQUAL • UNIVERSALITY: ALL LANGUAGES ARE ALIKE IN BASIC WAYS • MUTABILITY: GRAMMARS CHANGE OVER TIME • INACESSABILITY: GRAMMATICAL KNOWLEDGE IS SUBCONSCIOUS
Thus, to summarize: in modern linguistics grammar is the knowledge speakers have about the units and rules of their language, rules for combining sounds into words, rules for word formation, rules for combining into phrases and sentences, as well as the rues for assigning meaning. • The linguist‘s description is a true model of the speaker‘s linguistic capacity – it is a successful description of the grammar and the language itself. Such a model is called DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR. • When we say that a sentence is grammatical, we mean to say that it conforms to the rules of the mental grammar. When we say it is ungrammatical, it deviates from the rules in some way.
Not all grammarians agree that all the languages are equal. Language purists believe that some versions of a language are better than the others. These grammarians wish to prescribe rather than describe grammar and the type of grammar they are proposing is usually referred to as prescriptive grammar.
