Introduction to LinguisticsIntroduction to Linguistics

The Study of LanguageJournal #3

Definitions

1. Linguistics = the study or science of “language”

2. Language = a system of physical sign (sound, gesture, mark, etc) that conveys meaning – often considered “voluntary” and “arbitrary” (meaning it changes, and any word can mean anything as long as enough people agree on it)

*Humans are unique in language to any other species in the animal kingdom; we can use language to lie, manipulate, speculate, and challenge – other animals tend to only react and report.

Language in the World

- Commonly believed there are over 6,000 language, both ancient and currently existing

- Each uses a standardized (everyone uses it) alphabet, and each has a specified structure

Levels of Structure

1. Organization of sound

2. Meaningfulness of units – “words”

3. Organization of thoughts – “phrases” or “sentences”

Four Major Units of Study

1. Phonology: study of sound

2. Morphology: study of word structure

3.Syntax: study of sentence structure

4. Semantics: study of conveyed meaning

Phonology

Language consists of a fairly small set of sounds (phonemes). There are about 40 in English. Most have no meaning in themselves; rather we string them together to form meaningful bits and pieces.

Examples: 1. “t” sound in “tomato”2. “k” sound in “character”3. “th” sound in “the” vs. “th” sound in “think”

*some combinations do not exist in certain position; i.e. “ng” cannot be at the beginning of a word in English

Morphology

Language is Made up of Morphemes. Many are words (roots), while some are word parts (prefixes and suffixes). This is the smallest unit of language “meaning.” By combining morphemes, we can create words that convey very specific meanings and functions within the grand scheme of language.

Example:1. “papers” has two morphemes: root “paper” and suffix “s” – meaning more than one paper2. “diameter” has two morphemes: root “meter” and prefix “dia” – meaning measure across

*morphemes can help you figure out the definition of a word without having to look it up in a dictionary.

SyntaxThese are the language rules that enable us to combine

morphemes into sentences (bridge between sound and meaning).

This is how words are strung together to form a deeper meaning. For example: “The dog jumped over the fence.” The placement of the words conveys their function and thus we understand that “jumped” is the action of the “dog”, and the “fence” is what received the action.

*In English, the placement of the word in the sentence is what gives it function. For example, “The fence dog jumped over the.” makes no sense to us. Some languages (such as Latin) have suffixes for each word that show whether it is a subject, verb, or predicate.

Semantics

A single sentence may have two different meanings, each of which with its own specific structure depending on the grouping of words.

Thus, meaning comes from the placement of words within the sentence more than just the words themselves.

Semantics includes vague things like ambiguity, clichés, idioms, and connotative vs. denotative meanings.