Linguistics

by ehab

Artwork: Ehab Seh

Joined May 2017
Published Books 2

The following pages are based on notes from my undergraduate courses if you’d like an introduction to linguistics:

What is Linguistics?
What is Morphology?
What is Syntax?
What is Phonetics?
What is Phonology?

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Linguistics encompasses many fields related to language in general, but my major concentrations are in second language acquisition (SLA) and language pedagogy. I received my Bachelor’s degree in French & Linguistics in 2004 and my Master’s degree in Linguistics & Teaching English as a Second Language in 2007. I was officially awarded my PhD in Applied Linguistics in December 2015.

My major research interests are related to the role textbooks play in language teaching and learning, including the use of (or lack of) realia and informal language, as well as the teaching of vocabulary with regards to frequency and corpora and the importance of listening comprehension for learning vocabulary. I’m also interested in the role technology plays in language learning, especially computer-assisted language learning (CALL) that allows for more audio-visual input than the regular classroom.

I will be updating this section with more information on Applied Linguistics, Second Language Acquisition, and Language Pedagogy in the future. Also make sure to check out the Teaching English articles for information on teaching English as a second language as well as English grammar and the history of English.

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Every human knows at least one language, spoken or signed. Linguistics is the science of language, including the sounds, words, and grammar rules. Words in languages are finite, but sentences are not. It is this creative aspect of human language that sets it apart from animal languages, which are essentially responses to stimuli.

The rules of a language, also called grammar, are learned as one acquires a language. These rules include phonology, the sound system, morphology, the structure of words, syntax, the combination of words into sentences, semantics, the ways in which sounds and meanings are related, and the lexicon, or mental dictionary of words. When you know a language, you know words in that language, i.e. sound units that are related to specific meanings. However, the sounds and meanings of words are arbitrary. For the most part, there is no relationship between the way a word is pronounced (or signed) and its meaning.

Knowing a language encompasses this entire system, but this knowledge (called competence) is different from behavior (called performance.) You may know a language, but you may also choose to not speak it. Although you are not speaking the language, you still have the knowledge of it. However, if you don’t know a language, you cannot speak it at all.

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Morphology is the study of words. Morphemes are the minimal units of words that have a meaning and cannot be subdivided further. There are two main types: free and bound. Free morphemes can occur alone and bound morphemes must occur with another morpheme. An example of a free morpheme is “bad”, and an example of a bound morpheme is “ly.” It is bound because although it has meaning, it cannot stand alone. It must be attached to another morpheme to produce a word.

Free morpheme: bad
Bound morpheme: -ly
Word: badly

When we talk about words, there are two groups: lexical (or content) and function (or grammatical) words. Lexical words are called open class words and include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. New words can regularly be added to this group. Function words, or closed class words, are conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns; and new words cannot be (or are very rarely) added to this class.

Affixes are often the bound morpheme. This group includes prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and circumfixes. Prefixes are added to the beginning of another morpheme, suffixes are added to the end, infixes are inserted into other morphemes, and circumfixes are attached to another morpheme at the beginning and end. Following are examples of each of these:

Prefix: re- added to do produces redo
Suffix: -or added to edit produces editor
Infix: -um- added to fikas (strong) produces fumikas (to be strong) in Bontoc
Circumfix: ge- and -t to lieb (love) produces geliebt (loved) in German

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Syntax refers to word order and depends on lexical categories (parts of speech.) You probably learned that there are eight main parts of speech in grammar school. Linguistics takes a different approach to these categories and separates words into morphological and syntactic groups. Linguistics analyzes words according to their affixes and the words that follow or precede them. Hopefully, the following definitions of the parts of speech will make more sense and be more useful than the old definitions of grammar school books.

Open Class Words

Nouns	_____ + plural endings “dogs”	Det. Adj. _____ (this is called a Noun Phrase) “the black cat”
Verbs	____ + tense endings “speaks”	Aux. ____ (this is called a Verb Phrase) “is talking” / “have eaten”
Adjectives	____ + er / est “small”	Det. ____ Noun “the young child”
Adverbs	Adj. + ly “quickly”	____ Adj. or Verb or Adv. “quickly answered”

Closed Class Words

Determiners	a, an, the, this, that, these, those, pronouns, quantities	____ Adj. Noun “this heavy book”
Auxiliary Verbs	forms of be, have, may, can, shall	NP ____ VP “the boy is singing”
Prepositions	at, in, on, under, over, of	____ NP (this is called a Prepositional Phrase) “in the drawer”
Conjunctions	and, but, or	N or V or Adj. ____ N or V or Adj. “desks and chairs”

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There are three types of the study of the sounds of language. Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of sounds. Auditory Phonetics is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds. Articulatory Phonetics is the study of how the vocal tracts produce the sounds. This article will only describe articulatory phonetics.

The orthography (spelling) of words in misleading, especially in English. One sound can be represented by several different combinations of letters. For example, all of the following words contain the same vowel sound: he, believe, Lee, Caesar, key, amoeba, loudly, machine, people, and sea. The following poem illustrates this fact of English humorously (note the pronunciation of the bold words):

I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Some may stumble, but not you, on hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?
So now you are ready, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word, that looks like beard, but sounds like bird.
And dead, it’s said like bed, not bead; for goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat. (They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)
A moth is not a moth in mother, nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear, for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose – just look them up – and goose and choose
And cork and work and card and ward and font and front and word and sword
And do and go, then thwart and cart, come, come! I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why man alive! I’ve learned to talk it when I was five.
And yet to write it, the more I tried, I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five.
– Author Unknown

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds led to the formation of the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.) The symbols used in this alphabet can be used to represent all sounds of all human languages. The following is the American English Phonetic alphabet. You might want to memorize all of these symbols, as most foreign language dictionaries use the IPA.

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