Language and Linguistics Introduction Language and Linguistics

Preview Introduction Origins of language Communication systems Functions of language Universal properties of language Definitions of language Approaches to the study of language

Language “History is universal and basic. It’s about every event that involves all people at all times and in all places” “Yes, but how would you record and interpret that history without language?”

Language A means to pass a record of what has happened from one generation to the next through stories and sagas, even before written records Development of tools to meet a broad range of needs – impossible without language

Language Capacity for self-awareness and abstract thought – dependent on language The ability to transfer complex information, to discuss the meaning of events and outcomes of alternative actions, to share feelings and ideas – impossible without language

Origins of language Shrouded in obscurity The ability to model the world and to communicate using language – the single most advantageous evolutionary adaptation of the human species

Origins of language Over thousands of years, the human species developed a vocal tract flexible enough to make a wide range of distinguishable sounds and the ability to perceive differences among those sounds The ability to use these sounds in systems which could communicate meaning Language – a distinctive attribute of the human species

Communication Communication – transfer of information Sign – a basic unit of communication Sign – sth that stands for sth else to communicate it (communicate = to make sth common)

Passage of information, formulation of inferences Communication sign communication human animal Passage of information, formulation of inferences

Communication human natural verbal non-verbal (gestures, etc.) artificial (street signs)

Code Sender intentionally produces a sign for the recipient How can the recipient interpret the sign? Code – a set of signs, determined by convention, that provides the rules of interpretation All communication systems - codes

Language Signifiant ‘ expression, form, the aspect that can be perceived’ (e.g. the word cat, spoken or written) Signifiée ‘ the content, information transmitted by signifiant’ (the concept of a “cat”)

Semiotic triangle

Semiotic triangle (a) ‘sign', (b) 'thought or reference' and (c) 'referent'

Freedom from stimulus Language – independent from stimuli, i.e. external aspects of a situation Distinguishes human from animal language Human verbal messages – free, no deterministic aspect

Distancing The possibility to formulate messages which are distant in space and time – characteristic of human language as opposed to animal communication

Social transferability Anthropologically, any language is socially and culturally transmitted Any human being acquires at least one language (mother tongue) and can learn other languages Innate language faculty: universal properties of language – empty slots filled by material provided by the environment

Transferability of medium: spoken and written Primacy of the spoken language: Ontogenetic (a child first learns to speak) Filogenetic (writing developed much later in human history) Social primacy of the written language in modern societies (higher cultural prestige; science, education, law)

Multifunctionality of language Expresses thought Transmits information Initiates, maintains and regulates cooperative activities and social relationships Expresses feelings and states of mind Resolves problems Creates possible worlds (literary creation)

R. Jakobson’s classification Channel (contact) Phatic f. Sender (emotive or expressive f.) Message (poetic f.) Code (metalinguistic f.) Context Referential f.) Receiver (conative f.)

R. Jakobson’s classification Functions: 1) emotive or expressive 2) metalinguistic 3) referential 4) conative (speech acts) 5) phatic (establishing contact) 6) poetic

Language functions Emotive (expressive)-expresses the speaker’s feelings (“What a surprise!”) Referential – information about external reality Conative – making the recipient act in a particular way (“Open the window!”) Phatic – establishing contact (“Hello!”) Poetic function – focuses on the message (Carl Sandburg: “The fog comes in on little cat feet”; metaphor) Metalinguistic – focuses on the code “What’s the subject of this sentence?”

Universal properties of language Although languages differ in many ways, they are made possible by the same genetic information, processed in the brain in the same ways and they share some fundamental features and structural characteristics Understanding and explaining the properties which are universal to all languages, as well as those which vary across languages – task of linguistics

Universal properties of language Modularity Compositionality and recursion Discreteness Productivity Arbitrariness Reliance on context Variability

Modularity Language – a modular system: produced and interpreted by using a set of component subsystems (or modules) in a coordinated way Different regions of the brain – associated with different aspects of language processing

Modularity Production and interpretation of speech sounds – phonetics Words and their structure – morphology Structure of sentences – syntax Lexicon – interacting with these properties Meaning – semantics Discourse - organization of language beyond the sentence

Compositionality and recursion Languages – organized into constituents, allowing more complex units to enter structures where simpler ones are also possible

Compositionality: examples She sat down. The smart woman sat down. The tall, dark-haired, smart woman with the bright red sweater and pearl necklace sat down.

Compositionality Being composed of constituents gives language a balance of structure and flexibility Constituents can be moved or replaced by other constituents, but you can’t move or replace a constituent with a word that is not a constituent (Smart with the bright red sweater sat down*)

Compositionality Constituents can be moved, but you can only move a complete constituent (Possible: She is very smart; very smart, she is, but not: Smart, she is very)

Recursion Property of language which allows grammatical processes to be applied repeatedly, combining constituents to produce and infinite variety of sentences of indefinite length

Recursion Profound implications – noone can learn a language by memorizing all the sentences of that language, so there must be another explanation for how human beings are able to learn them The human brain – finite, but recursiveness means that it is capable of producing and understanding an infinite number of sentences

Productivity Language can always produce messages that have never been produced before Infinite combinations of basic units whose number is limited Rule-based creativity: infinite productivity based on a limited number of principles and rules

Productivity Languages can systematically combine the minimal units of meaning, called morphemes, into new words, whose meaning is nonetheless deducible from the interaction of its morphemic components A way in which languages change to meet the changing communicative needs of their speakers

Productivity The productivity of languages derives from the fact that they are organized around a finite set of principles which systematically constrain the ways in which sounds, morphemes, words, phrases and sentences may be combined Since languages place no limits on the use of recursive processes, they are potentially infinitely productive

Discretness Units of language are not continuous; there is a limit between one element and the next

Discreteness The range of sounds that human beings can make – continuous, but all languages divide that continuous space of sound into discrete territories Sounds that are discrete in one language may not be discrete in another

Discreteness Language – composed of sounds, words, sentences etc. The fact that we hear speech as a sequence of individual sounds, words and sentences – incredible accomplishment Children in the first year or two learn to pick out words from the stream of speech with no instruction

Reliance on context Pronounciation of one and won: the same sequence of sounds can represent different concepts in the same language The meaning of a sentence depends on the context in which it is uttered The context: sentence or sentences which precede it, or the broader physical or social circumstances in which the sentence is uttered

Reliance on context: examples It’s cold in here – could be a complaint, a request to close the window, or even a compliment Languages rely on the connection between form (what is said) and context (when, where, by whom, and to whom it is said) to communicate much more than is contained in a sequence of words.

Variability The language people use varies depending on who’s speaking and the situation in which they are speaking Variation – essence of information Variability of language – indexical Speakers vary the language they use to signal their social identities (geographical, social status, ethnicity, gender) and also to define the immediate speech situation

Variability People show who they are by the variety of language they use - they reveal their geographical origin and social status. They signal membership in a range of overlapping social groups: male or female, teenager or adult, member of an ethic group, etc.

Variability People also use language variation to communicate the situation and purpose in which they are talking, as well as the roles they are playing in those situations

Variability A large part of a speech community’s culture is transacted through language variation Norms of appropriate language use help speakers to construct and negotiate their relations

Variability The unwritten rules for the various forms and uses of language can vary from one cultural milieu to another, within and between societies, even between genders This raises the risk of misunderstanding when speakers unknowingly behave according to different cultural norms, but enriches our ways of seeing the world when those differences are understood

The descriptive approach Language – universal characteristic of human beings All languages (and language varieties) – equal Language varieties differ because over time they have adapted to differing needs of their speech communities Each language – equally functional in meeting the communicative needs of its speech community

The descriptive approach Sometimes when two or more speech communities come into contact, one group will have more power; the language variety of the dominant group is often perceived as having higher status as well, especially if speaking it affords increased access to power or wealth; language varieties spoken by the less powerful groups – often stigmatized as “incorrect” or “bad” language

The descriptive approach Linguists take language as they find it, rather than attempting to regulate it in the direction of preconceived criteria

Language A finite system of elements and principles that make it possible for speakers to construct sentences for particular communicative functions

Grammatical competence Knowing the meanings signified by different sound sequences and how to combine units of meaning into words, phrases and sentences

Communicative competence To be effective, speakers have to combine grammatical competence with the knowledge of how to use grammatical sentences appropriately to the purpose and context at hand

Defining language the knowledge included in the grammatical competence + the ability to use that knowledge to accomplish a wide range of communicative tasks – language

Definition of language Language is a) a code B) which organizes a system of signs which are C) primarily phonic-acoustic D) fundamentally arbitrary F) capable of expressing anything G) possessed as interiorized knowledge which allows to produce infinite sentences starting from a limited number of elements

General principles for the analysis of language Synchronic and diachronic approach Langue et parole Paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis Levels of analysis

Synchronic and diachronic study Syn (‘with’) + chronos (‘time’) Dia (‘across’) + chronos Diachrony – study of language over time (history) Synchrony – study of language at a definite moment in time Two approaches - complementary

Langue et parole Distinction between the abstract system (langue) and its concrete realization (parole): Ferdinand de Saussure System and use (Louis Hjelmslev) Competence and performance (Noam Chomsky)

Langue et parole Langue (system, competence) – a set of interiorized rules of a language that constitute our capacity to produce messages in a certain language; abstract, unconscious competence shared by all members of a linguistic community Parole – individual linguistic act, concrete realization of a message in a particular language

Langue et parole Langue et parole: opposition between the abstract, social and constant on the one hand (langue) and concrete, individual and variable on the other (parole)

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis Paradigmatic axis concerns relations on the level of the system, syntagmatic axis concerns relations on the level of structures that realize the potentialities of the system Paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions constitute a double perspective according to which the structures, combinations of linguistic signs, function

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis Paradigmatic axis: repository from which linguistic units can be taken, syntagmatic axis makes sure that the combinations of units are formed on the basis of restrictions of any language Organization according to the two principles – very important because it results in different distribution of elements of a language, allowing us to recognize classes of elements which share the same distribution properties in opposition to those that have different distribution

Paradigmatic and syntagmatic axis Paradigmatic axis

Levels of analysis Phonetics and phonology Morphology Syntax Semantics

External world cognitively codified Levels of analysis Physical reality Phonetics and phonology Morphology Syntax Lexicon and semantics External world cognitively codified

Levels of analysis Phonetics and phonology, semantics – link with external reality Phonetics – physical support to communication Semantics: conceptualisation and cognitive categorisation of our world

Levels of analysis Morphology and syntax – internal levels on which the system is organised according to the principles that govern the language faculty

The diversity of linguistics General linguistics Historical linguistics Language acquisition Sociolinguistics Psycholinguistics Cognitive linguistics Computational linguistics Corpus linguistics Applied linguistics (foreign language learning, LSP, translation studies, forensic linguistics etc.)

Summary Communication systems Functions of language Universal properties of language Study of language