ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

1.      PHONOLOGY

Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics. Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken.

a.       Classification of phonetics symbols

1.      Bilabial Stops: In the production of the sounds /p/ and /b/, the air is stopped at the lips. For example: cap/cab, pat/bat, pup/bub, cup/cub.

2.      Alveolar Stops: In the pronunciation of the sounds /k/ and /g/, it feels as if the air is stopped at the back of the throat, e.g. back/bag, core/gore, thick/twig.

3.      Fricatives: fricative phonemes are the /f/ and the /v/ and the (theta) and the (eth). The /f/ and the /v/ phonemes are called labio-dental fricatives. This means that the air comes through the teeth and the lips, e.g. far/van, feel/veal, fife/five.

4.      Alveolar Fricatives: Two alveolar fricatives are the /s/ phoneme, which is voiceless, and the voiced /z/. For example: bus/buzz, so/zoo, sip/zip.

b.      Phonemes

Phonemes represent a range of sound. Sounds or phonemes vary among the differences between speakers whether they be native English speakers or non-native speakers. We are aware of the differences between the vowel (i) in sheep and the vowel (I) in ship. Spanish does not have a difference between the vowel sounds; therefore, the pronunciation is different.

c.       Allophones

A "phonetic segment" is called a phone. The different phones that come from a phoneme are called allophones of that particular phoneme. In the English language, an allophone can be both oral and nasalized for each vowel phoneme.

2.      MORPHOLOGY

Morphology is the study of word structure. All languages have words and morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning or function within a language. It is the study about parts of speech (adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, preposition, conjunctions, interjections), and also suprasegmental morpheme (pitch, intonation, etc.)

English often allows multiple bound morphemes within a single word by a process called affixation.  Affixation is the addition of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes to a root morpheme Bound morphemes that follow the root are suffixes (things like –ful, -ly, -ness in words like hopeful, quickly, or weirdness), while morphemes that precede the root are prefixes (e.g. mis- as in misunderstand).

How are new words formed? An acronym is formed out of the first letter of each word of a phrase. It’s not uncommon to hear someone lol at a good joke (from LOL — laugh out loud). Scuba (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) and radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging).

A blend combines two words to create a new word. Smog is a blend of smoke plus fog. Mockumentary combines mock and documentary. Jeggings are snug-fitting leggings that look like jeans.

Clipping is the reduction of a word into one of its component parts. The recently-coined word app meaning ‘application for a mobile device’ is clipped from application.

Compounding is the combining of two or more roots to make a new word, such as birdhouse or redneck (‘hillbilly’).

3.      SYNTAX

Syntax is the branch of grammar working with "syntactic elements". Syntax defines relational/functional rules governing the logic structures of syntactic elements.the study of combination of the words. Or in other word, it is the study of phrases, clauses, and sentences.Sentence syntax include the analyses relational functionality developed between syntactic elements within the logic sentence-frame.The structure employed to present sentence syntax are: Syntactic Elements, Subject, Predicate, Subject-Predicate  Agreement, Attributes, Objects, Adverbials. Syntax also studies about deep structure and surface structure.

4.      PRAGMATICS

Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on structural and linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammar, lexicon, etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, any preexisting knowledge about those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and other factors. The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. Pragmatics cover three aspects:

a.       Speech Acts are commonly taken to include such acts as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating. According to Austin 1962, it can be analysed on three levels:

·      Locutionary act: how do we say something

·      Ilocutionary act: how do we do someting

·      Perlocutionary act: how to make someone do or realize something.

b.      Politeness. According to Geoffrey Leech (1983), politeness principle covers six maxims, they are:

§  Tact: try to minimize cost to other or maximize benefit to other;

§  Generosity: try to minimize benefit to self or maximize cost to self;

§  Approbation: try to minimize dispraise of other

§  Modesty: try to minimize praise of self.

§  Agreement: try to minimize disagreement between self and other.

§  Sympathy: try to minimize antipathy between self and other or maximize sympathy between self and other.

            These maxims vary from culture to culture: what may be considered polite in one culture may be strange or downright rude in another. While according to Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1978), being polite therefore consists of attempting to save face for another. There are two kinds of face: Positive Face and Negative face.

c.       Presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. For example:

v  Jane no longer writes fiction. Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction.

v  Have you talked to Hans? Presupposition: Hans exists.

5.      SEMANTICS

Semantics is the study of meaning. It is a wide subject within the general study of language. An understanding of semantics is essential to the study of language acquisition (how language users acquire a sense of meaning, as speakers and writers, listeners and readers) and of language change (how meanings alter over time). Some important areas of semantic theory or related subjects include these: Symbol and referent, Conceptions of meaning, Words and lexemes, Denotation, connotation, implication, Ambiguity, Metaphor & simile, Semantic fields, Synonym, antonym and hyponym, Semantic change and etymology, Polysemy, Homonymy, homophones and homographs, Lexicology and lexicography, Collocation, fixed expression and idiom, Thesauruses, libraries and Web portals, Epistemology, Colour

6.      SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and the effects of language use on society. Or in onother word, sociolinguistics is the study of language in human society.

It also studies how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects that sociolinguistics studies. In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include:

1.   Idiolect is a variety of language that is unique to a person, as manifested by the patterns of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation that he or she uses.

2.   Dialect is a regional or social variety of a language characterized by its own phonological, syntactic, and lexical properties.

3.   Registers and Styles: A register (sometimes called a style) is a variety of language used in a particular social setting.

4.   Accent is a manner of pronunciation peculiar to a particular individual, location, or nation.

5.   Code-switching is switching between two or more languages used a single conversation.

6.   Pidgin is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common.

7.   Creole is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages.

7.         PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. The three primary processes investigated in psycholinguistics are:

·         Language Comprehension: how people understand sentences as they read.

·         Language Production: the production of spoken or written language. It describes all of the stages between having a concept, and translating that concept into linguistic form.

·         Language Acquisition: the study of how humans acquire knowledge of their native language (as infants and as children). There are essentially two schools of thought as to how children acquire or learn language, and there is still much debate as to which theory is the correct one. The first theory states that all language must be learned by the child. It is popularized by the mentalistic theories (Jean Piaget) and empiricist (Rudolf Carnap). The second view states that the abstract system of language cannot be learned, but that humans possess an innate language faculty, or an access to what has been called universal grammar (Noam Chomsky).

8.      APPLIED LINGUISTICS

Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems, especially those of language education (first-language, second-language and foreign-language teaching and learning).

As English is the contemporary lingua franca applied linguists attempt to include language policy and planning in their interest, but is also concerned with analyzing language and identity, and special educational needs. Corpus analysis takes both quantitative and qualitative approach to the study of language and applied linguists focus of the identification of patterns of language use depending on social context, audiences, genres and settings. Critical applied linguistics is interested in the social problems connected with language such as unemployment, illiteracy and pedagogy.

9.      NEUROLINGUISTICS

Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language.

In this picture, The part marked as (1) is known as Broca’s area or ‘anterior speech cortex’ and as it has been discovered it is responsible for speech production. Posterior speech cortex, or as it is usually described Wernicke’s area, in the picture marked (2) is responsible for speech comprehension. The largest part of the brain marked in the picture is the motor cortex (3) and it is responsible for the muscular movements. Part (4) in the picture shows arcuate fasciculus which is the bundle of nerve fibers connecting Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas.

Moreover, neurolinguistics deals with various language disorders known as ‘aphasia’ which is impairment of language functions because of some brain damage leading to difficulties in either producing or understanding linguistic forms.

10.  ANTHROLINGUISTICS

Anthropological linguistics is the study of the relations between language and culture and the relations between human biology, cognition and language. It is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. Scholars are interested not only in the differences between languages, but also in the influence of language on culture and culture on language in different communities throughout the world. Culture in linguistics is described as socially acquired knowledge of the world, as well as attitudes towards it.

11.  DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Discourse Analysis is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, vocal, or sign language use or any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse analysis—discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event—are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentences, propositions, speech acts, or turns-at-talk.

Seven criteria which have to be fulfilled to qualify either a written or a spoken text as a discourse have been suggested by Beaugrande (1981):

§  Cohesion - grammatical relationship between parts of a sentence essential for its interpretation

§  Coherence - the order of statements relates one another by sense.

§  Intentionality - the message has to be conveyed deliberately and consciously

§  Acceptability - indicates that the communicative product needs to be satisfactory in that the audience approves it

§  Informativeness - some new information has to be included in the discourse

§  Situationality - circumstances in which the remark is made are important;

§  Intertextuality - reference to the world outside the text or the interpreters' schemata.

12.  HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS

Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:

§  to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages

§  to reconstruct the pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping them into language families (comparative linguistics)

§  to develop general theories about how and why language changes

§  to describe the history of speech communities

§  to study the history of words, i.e. etymology.

13.  SIGN LANGUAGE

A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses manual communication and body language to convey meaning. Body language is included in sign language. It is a form of mental and physical ability of human non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements.

How to read body language?

·         Pay attention to how close someone is to you. The closer they are, the warmer they are thinking of you.

·         Watch their head position. Overly tilted heads are either a potential sign of sympathy, or if a person smiles while tilting their head, they are being playful and maybe even flirting.

·         Look into their eyes. People who look to the sides a lot are nervous, lying, or distracted.

·         Check their arms. If their hands are closed or clenched, they may be irritated, angry, or nervous.

·         Be aware of nervous gestures. If they are staring into space then they are most likely thinking deeply about the past or they could be thinking of you

14.  PRESCRIPTIVE LINGUISTICS

A prescriptive grammar is a set of rules about language based on how people think language should be used. Prescriptive grammar categorizes certain language uses as acceptable or unacceptable according to a standard form of the language. It can be compared with a descriptive grammar, which is a set of rules based on how language is actually used. For example,

§  Don’t split infinitives!

Do not say: I wanted to carefully explain to her why the decision was made

Say: I wanted to explain to her carefully why the decision was made

§  Don’t use double negation!

Do not say: I didn’t do nothing.

Say: I didn’t do anything.

REFERENCES:

http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~pfoltz/psy301/overheadsfirstthird.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_comprehension

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politeness_maxims

http://www.unc.edu/~gerfen/Ling30Sp2002/sociolinguistics.html

http://www.slideshare.net/nana1101/languagedialect-and-variation-sociolinguistic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pidgin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_language

http://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/semantics.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_linguistics

Dick Hudson, 1999. Applied Linguistics. (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/AL.html)

http://www.tlumaczenia-angielski.info/linguistics/neurolinguistics.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_anthropology

http://www.tlumaczenia-angielski.info/linguistics/language-and-culture.htm

http://www.slideshare.net/cupidlucid/discourse-analysis-presentation-710333#btnPrevious

http://www.studymode.com/essays/A-Sample-Analysis-Of-Written-Discourse-382361.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_language

http://www.corollarytheorems.com/Grammar/sentence.htm

Brown K. (Editor) 2005. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics – 2nd Edition. Oxford: Elsevier (http://www.tlumaczenia-angielski.info/linguistics/applied-linguistics.htm)