Linguistics 101: An Introduction to Language and Grammar, Apuntes de Gramática y Composición

¡Descarga Linguistics 101: An Introduction to Language and Grammar y más Apuntes en PDF de Gramática y Composición solo en Docsity! GRAMMAR INTRODUCTION ● What is Linguistics? Discipline that deals with language/Scientific study of language. It is scientific because it follows the scientific method. Linguistics is classified as a soft science, but it can be in between soft and hard sciences. ● What is Language? Communication? Tool that we use to communicate. Communication is intentional (willing to inform), information which is not intentional is not communication (sneezing=a cold). Animals communicate with other members of their own species. ● Difference between human and animal communication Human language can be used to talk and reflect on language and its uses: reflexivity. It allows humans to talk about events which are not present in the immediate environment or events or things whose existence we cannot be sure of: displacement. There is no natural connection between a linguistic form and its meaning: arbitrariness. Onomatopeias are not an exception. There are representations of a sound. Humans are continually creating new expressions and novel utterances by manipulating their linguistic resources, productivity. Human language is transmitted culturally while animal communication is instinctive. We have a predisposition to acquire language but a specific language (English, Spanish…) has to be learnt, cultural transmission. Human language has a physical level at which we produce sounds and another level at which we produce meaning, duality. With a limited set of sounds we can produce a large number of sound combinations which are distinct in meaning: /t/ ,/o/ ,/n/ = “ton”, “not” ● Signs in Linguistics Signifier and Signified. Sassuew said the sign is the basic unit of meaning and he thought signis were made up of two parts. Signifier is the form of a sign. The form might be a sound, a word, a photograph. Signified, is a concept or object that represents, might be the actual object, the command to stop… Peirce added a third to signs, the interpreter. He saw signs consisting of: The representamen (signifier)- the sign’s form An Interpretant- What the audience makes of the sign An Object (signified)- what the sign refers to. Signs according to Peirce could be of 3 types: They resemble what they represent (ex. photographs): ICONICS. They have a connection with the thing they represent (smoke to fire): INDEXICAL. They are only conventionally related to the thing they represent (a flag to a nation, a wedding ring to marriage): SYMBOLIC. Most language is symbolic, the relation between signifier and the signified is arbitrary. ● Is human language homogeneous? What are the factors which determine variation in language? No. Language variation may depend on: 1. Users (speakers) 2. Use (situation), how speakers use the language. Language variations that depend on USERS: 1. diatopic variation (regional origin). 2. diastratic variation ( social-class membership, age and gender). Variety of a language: A set of linguistic items with similar geographical or social distribution (sociolect) (español canario, clase baja). Dialect: usually a variety of a language employed in a certain geographical area (not a derogatory term). Regional variation, age variation, social variation affect pronunciation, grammar and lexis. Gender variation: as Labov said -traditional approach-, females use more prestigious pronunciations and more polite language (ex. less imperative and more indirect language) , males use more non-standard forms in pronunciation and grammar, more taboo words, direct language. As Tannen said, -modern approaches. Language variations that depend on USE: no user of language employs one uniform variety of language, language variation according to use has been called style but more technically it is referred to as register. Register (Halliday, 1985) or the context of the situation, will depend on three factors which usually combine: 1. Tenor, the relationship between speaker and addressee, which is often shown by greater or less formality 2. Mode , means the difference between written and spoken language (which involves the use of intonation or non-verbal communication (the channel of communication)/multimodality, combination of different modes to express a message (written, oral, pictures, emoticons…) 3.Field or Domain, the activity in which language plays a part, the use of language will depend on the activity we are engaged in. -Jargon, specialized language , medical jargon. ● What kind of language will linguistics study? A specific language, languages in contrast (contrastive linguistics) and features in common for all languages. ● What languages have in common Hypothesis: Languages have a common origin: proto-language(s), monogenesis /polygenesis. Stages: 1. The proto-language splits into different dialects. 2. Dialects became languages. 3. Language splits into dialects. This ‘monocentric’ view has been challenged by some scholars, who hold that English has become ‘pluricentric' and that it is therefore more correct to speak of ‘Englishes’ rather than of ‘English’.” ● The concept of grammar What is understood may vary considerably from one author to another. Studies language but, for instance, David Crystal lists six different types of grammar: 1. Prescriptive Grammar, a manual that focuses on constructions where usage is divided, and lays down rules governing the socially correct use of language. These grammars were a formative influence on language attitudes in Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their influence lives on in the handbooks of usage widely found today. 2. Pedagogical Grammar, a book specifically designed for teaching a foreign language, or for developing awareness of the mother tongue. Such teaching grammars are widely used in schools, so that many people have only one meaning for the term grammar. a grammar book. 3. Descriptive grammar, an approach that describes the grammatical constructions that are used in a language, without making any evaluative judgement about their standing in society. Are commonplace in linguistics, where it is standard practice to investigate a corpus of spoken or written material, and to describe the patterns it contains. 4. Reference grammar, It’s a grammatical description that tries to be as comprehensive as possible, so that it can act as a reference for those interested in establishing grammatical facts, whether contemporary or historical. 5. Theoretical grammar, An approach that goes beyond the study of individual languages to determine what constructs are needed in order to do any kind of grammatical analysis and how these can be applied consistently in the investigation of human language. It is thus a central notion in the investigation of linguistic universals. 6. Traditional grammar, A term often used to summarise the range of attitudes and methods found in the period of grammatical study before the advent of linguistic science. This “tradition” is over 2,000 years old and includes the work of classical Greek and Roman grammarians, Renaissance writers and 18th-century prescriptive grammarians. Sometimes it is used pejoratively, identifying it with an unscientific approach to grammatical study, in which languages were analysed in terms of Latin, with scant regard for empirical facts. However, many basic notions used by modern approaches can be found in these earlier writings. ● Why study Grammar? ‘They can help us all to identify the fascinating edges of language, where grammaticality shades into ungrammaticality, and where we find the many kinds of humorous and dramatic effects, both in literature and in everyday language. As we discover more about the way we each use grammar as part of our daily linguistic survival, we inevitably sharpen our individual sense of style, and thus promote our abilities to handle more complex constructions, both in speaking/ listening and in reading/writing. The principles of grammatical analysis are general ones, applicable to the study of any language, so that we find ourselves developing a keener sense of the similarities and differences between languages. Many kinds of specialized problems can be illuminated through the study of grammar – such as the difficulties facing the language-disabled, the foreign-language learner, or the translator. Grammar need not be dry, unreal, arcane; it can be alive, relevant, entertaining. As with so many subjects, it depends only on how it is put across’ ---Crystal Linguistic analysis Linguistics has roughly two goals: 1. The description of human language in general 2. The description of individual languages Each of them can be looked upon as a contribution to the study of language in general. Both aim at gaining a better understanding of the nature and complexity of language. Level of analysis This task can be simplified by setting a number of levels of analysis that enable linguists to focus their attention on a particular aspect of what they are studying. Although there is no consensus of opinion, it has been customary to set up at least four levels of study: 1. The sound level 2. The morphological level, 3. The syntactic level 4. The semantic level These levels would be the components of a grammatical description of a language. The sound level It is concerned with the study of human speech sounds in general Phonetics: -It will study all speech sounds, not just those of a particular language -It deals with questions such as: how are sounds produced?, how are they transmitted?, how can they be classified? Phonology: Each language makes a selection from the total range of human speech sounds. The task of Phonology is the study of the selection made by a particular language and the systematic functioning of the selected items in that language. Phonology, then, differs from Phonetics in being language-specific. The Morphological level This level is concerned with the study of meaningful units called morphemes. Morphemes can be defined as the smallest meaningful units of grammatical description, since they cannot be analysed any further at this level. Morphology studies the internal structure of words, that is the ways in which morphemes function as constituents of word structure. ➔ Types of morphemes Agree is a free morpheme, it can occur on its own. The other two are bound morphemes, they must always co-occur with free morphemes. Bound morphemes are also called affixes Dis, no agree s, plural ➔ Types of affixes Affixes added to the beginning of a Word are called prefixes: dis-agrees Affixes added to the end of a word are suffixes: disagree-s English words English words consists of: One or more free morphemes : bookstore Combination of free and bound morphemes: washes, washing, washed, washable The syntactic level Combining morphemes we can get words. Combining these words we can form larger grammatical units called phrases (sintagmas). These, in turn, combine to form sentences. Sentences are considered the basic unit of syntactic analysis. Play+er+s, players (Word) The + players, the players (phrase) (noun phrase) The players + have arrived (noun phrase + verb phrase) - (sentence) Syntax At the syntactic level we study the set of rules that specify which combinations of words or of phrases are grammatical and which are not. We call this study Syntax. In English, the article precedes the noun: the players. The complement of a preposition is a noun phrase, an -ing clause or a wh-clause: He was afraid of the audience (noun phrase), speaking (-ing clause) what the audience could think (wh- clause).