Module Linguistics For Lang Teaching 25 Sept 2019 - PDF

CONTENTS:
Page No.
Foreword - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 5
Syllabus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 6
Weekly Meeting Details - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 10
Week/Unit 1: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 14
Linguistics: Introduction
How do linguists learn about language?

Describing and prescribing.
Week/Unit 2: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - 17
Linguistics as Hidden knowledge
How linguistic inquiry works

The idea of deep structure
Using linguistic evidence cautiously
Exercise
Week/Unit 3: Phonetics - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 23
Introduction: The English Speech Sounds, Consonants
Phonetic transcription and the IPA

Articulatory phonetics
Consonants
MOA involves a number of different variables
Week/Unit 4: Phonetics - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 28
The English Speech Sounds (continued):
Vowels, Other Types of Phonetics
Vowels
Other types of phonetics
Acoustic phonetics
Auditory phonetics
Exercise
Week/Unit 5: Phonology - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 32
Introduction
Phonemes
Allophony
1
Minimal pairs
Phonological Rules
Phonotactics
Coarticulation Effects
Morphophonology
Issues
Week/Unit 6: Morphology - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 37
Introduction
Morphemes
Classifying Morphemes
Affixation
Derivational Morphology
Concatenative morphology
Non-concatenative morphology
Ablaut
Other Theories of Morphology
Week/Unit 7: Syntax - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 43
Introduction
Units
Lexical categories
Constituent structure
Constituent Categories
Constituent Analysis
Week/Unit 8: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 48
MID TERM
See: attachment
Week/Unit 9: Syntax Trees - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 49

Introduction
Movement
Recursion
Grammatical relations
Week/Unit 10: Semantics - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 52

Introduction
Reference and Sense

Semantic Features
Lexical Relations
Semantic Roles
2
Propositions
Week/Unit 11: Layers of Linguistics: -------------------- 57

Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis
Introduction 1: Pragmatics:
Deixis
Reference
Presupposition
Implicature
Speech acts
Searle’s classification
Felicity conditions
Week/Unit 12: Layers of Linguistics: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- 61

Introduction 2: Discourse Analysis
Coherence vs. Cohesion

The Cooperative Principle
The Maxims of Conversation
Maxim Violations
More on Conversational Implicature
Natural Language VS Logical Language
Criticisms of the Maxims
Week/Unit 13: Psycholinguistics - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 66

Introduction
Speech and Comprehension Errors

Brain Division
First language:
Language and the Brain
Composition of human brain:
Week/Unit 14: Second Language Acquisition --------------- 70

Introduction
What is second language acquisition (SLA)?

Research background
Stages of acquisition
Comparisons with first-language acquisition
What is the best way to teach a second language?
There are different ways that to introduce the second language:
How can a speech-language pathologist help?
Week/Unit 15: Sociolinguistics - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 76
3
Introduction
Speech Communities
Jargon
Slang
Prestige
Bernstein’s Code Theory: Social language codes
Restricted code
Elaborated code
Deviation from standard language varieties
Covert prestige
Style Shifting
Speech Accommodation
Internal vs. external language
Sociolinguistic interview
Week/Unit 16: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 81
FINAL TERM
See: attachment
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Foreword
This module of Linguistics for Language Teaching is intended to be one major

resource of the course under study, as one of the courses obliged in the S1 English
education study program. This module is prepared as a respond to the increasing demands
for suitable materials of the course. As otherwise there is a more suitable resource, it can
also be a supplementary for the Linguistics for Language Teacher. The materials for
fourteen weeks meetings have been selected based on the topics recommended by some
of the lecturers at the English Education Department of Universitas PGRI Adi Buana
Surabaya (UNIPA). Along with the materials, exercises are also provided in some
chapters to meet the need of the students or lecturers who desires to acquaint themselves
with the general topics in the module.
Based on the recommendations from some lecturers in the department, the

materials in this module have been selected with careful consideration. Accordingly,
emphasis has been placed upon the wholesome and uplifting rather than upon the ultra-
realistic. That is to say that the materials are selected under the consideration that some
common topics are needed by the students of S1 English program. Some other topics that
are related to linguistic branches are also included as the demands of the need for some
introduction to each of the branch. This module, therefore, meets the demands of both
the students and the lecturer. Although it is intended for in class as well as independent
reading, the materials should be sufficient as either one major resource or just as the
supplementary. If carefully studied and discussed in depth under the guidance from the
lecturer, it is believe this module will be very helpful in many ways for the purpose of
Linguistics for Language Teacher.
My greatest thanks go to some lecturers who offered their suggestions in selecting

the materials for preparing this module. My sincere gratitude also goes to all other
lecturers in the English Education Department in the Universitas PGRI Adi Buana
Surabaya (UNIPA) who always encourage me to prepare any resources for teaching
references. Last but by all means not the least my greatest thanks also go to my students
who always inspire me to prepare this module. I do—finally—hope that this module will
be an easy reference for both the students and the lecturers.
Surabaya August, 2019

Lecturer Head of English Department
Dr. Ahmad Idris Adh., M.Pd./ Dr. Siyaswati, M.Pd.

Dr. Siyaswati, M.Pd.
SYLLABUS
Course name : Linguistics for Language Teaching
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Course code :-----
Semester :-----
Credit points : 2 (two)
Prerequisite : --- none ---
Lecturer : Dr. Ahmad Idris Adh., M.Pd./ Dr. Siyaswati, M/Pd
Description of the Study:
This module provides an introduction to the study of language (linguistics)

intended for language teacher in particular and the students of English in general. It
begins with how linguists learn about language including its description and its
prescription. It then looks at the various levels of analysis open to the linguist starting
with the sound of languages and how these are combined, moving on to words and
sentences and then examining the construction of meanings, both explicit and implicit
(including intended) meanings. The module also looks at the relation between language
and the brain and how languages are acquired, how they are stored in the brain and how
this knowledge is deployed in communication. From a social point of view we will
examine the factors that influence different varieties of a language at any point in time,
and also how and why languages change and sometimes die. The study will be in the
forms of lectures and discussions where pre-set readings are discussed and appropriate
samples of (English) language examined.
Aims of the Module:
At the end of the semester it is expected that the students will able to identify, describe,
and explain the following points:
1. Basic levels on which the systematic study of language may be undertaken so that
the students as the future language teachers will have the basic for moving to
higher and deeper levels of linguistic studies.
2. The sounds of languages and how these are combined and move on to larger units
of sounds.
3. The words structures and sentences and then examining the construction of
semantic as well as pragmatic meanings.
4. The social and psychological aspects of the study of language.
5. The appreciation of the various ways in which the study of language may be
applied.
6. Framework for developing independent and effective study skills.
Learning Outcomes:
1. Understanding some basic background knowledge of linguistics.

2. Understanding some basic knowledge of each of the four branches of linguistics.
3. Understanding the sounds of languages and how these are combined and move
on to larger units of sounds.
4. Understanding the basic word formation processes.
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5. Understanding some basic word structures and sentences and then examining the
construction of meaning.
6. Understanding some various types of meanings in language (including semantic
as well as pragmatic meanings).
7. Being able to explain the basic and different types of meanings.
8. Understanding some basic psychological aspects of the study of language.
9. Understanding some basic social aspects of the study of language.
10. Understanding the relation between language and the human brain.
11. Show an awareness of how languages are acquired, stored and used.
12. Describe the main factors in social, geographical and historical language
variation.
13. Demonstrate confidence in the decoding of written material.
Media and Handouts
1. LCD for power points and sight words (in PPT or MS word).
2. Books and Handouts
Assessment:
Assessment is by participation (attendance) = 20%
Individual & group performance = 20%
Mid-term test (equivalent of 70minutes) = 30%
Final-term test (equivalent of 70 minutes) = 30%
Resources:
Bussmann, H. (1996). Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. London:
Routledge.
Naeem. (2010). “Definition, Nature, and Scope of Linguistics”. Retrieved from:

https://neoenglish.wordpress.com/category/linguistics/
O’grady, W. et al. (1996). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (3rd Ed.).

Harlow: Longman.
Radford, A.; Atkinson, M.; Britain, D.; Clahsen, H.; Spencer, A. (2009). Linguistics:
An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Suggested Resources:
Akmajian, A. et al. (2001). Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and
Communication (5th Ed.). Boston: MIT Press.
Fasold, R. W. and Connor-Linton, J. (2006). An Introduction to Language and

Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fromkin, V. et al. (2006). An Introduction to Language (8th Ed.). Boston: Thomson.
Yule, G. (2006). The Study of Language (3rd Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
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Outlines of the Syllabus:
1. Linguistics: Introduction
2. Linguistics as Hidden knowledge
3. Phonetics: The English Speech Sounds, Consonants
4. Phonetics: (continued): Vowels, Other Types of Phonetics
5. Introduction to Phonology
6. Introduction to Morphology
7. Introduction to Syntax
8. Syntactic and Grammatical relations
9. Introduction to Semantics
10. Layers of Linguistics: Pragmatics
11. Layers of Linguistics: Discourse Analysis
12. Introduction to Psycholinguistics
13. Introduction to Second Language Acquisition
14. Introduction to Sociolinguistics
Learning, teaching, and assessment strategy:
This module consists of lectures in which the central concepts are presented and
students encouraged to develop a factual and theoretical basis for further study. This is
followed up in discussions (or mini-seminars) and tutorials in which exercises are used
to consolidate and deepen students’ understanding of the issues and the problems they
give rise to.
The aim of this introductory module is to create a supportive infrastructure in

which students’ knowledge, confidence, and basic analytic and communication skills will
grow. Lectures will be used to explore the substantive material and reinforce knowledge
and understanding. In addition, discussions (or mini-seminars) will help in the
development of intellectual, practical and transferable skills.
The tutorial will address any individual difficulty, offer encouragement and give
additional feedback. The module will make appropriate use of the VLE. In addition to
learning during contact hours with the module tutors, students will be expected to
undertake both directed and independent learning.
Directed learning generally will take the form of preparation for seminars
(including both reading and written work) either individually or in small groups as well
as preparation for lectures. Independent learning generally will take the form of further
reading and investigation, the consolidation of lecture and seminar materials, and
revision/preparation for the assessment of the module.
At some levels, the primary emphasis will be on the development of foundational

knowledge; that is, understanding and skills in description rather than analysis/evaluation
and application/synthesis.
Generic Skills Development:
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1. Subject specific knowledge
2. Bibliographic and referencing skills
3. Reflective skills
4. Research skills
5. Time management
6. IT skills
7. Specific Skills Development
8. Oral communication skills
9. Presentation skills
10. Group working skills
11. Writing skills
Assessment Strategy:
Formative assessment: students will be given additional exercises which they

may submit in the individual and/or group presentation (min-seminars) for formative
feedback. In addition students will be offered tutorials to discuss progress.
Summative assessment: one at the end of each semester - will assess the broad
familiarity of students with the basic concepts and terminology of linguistics through
multiple choice and other closed question items.
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WEEKLY MEETING DETAILS
WE TOPICS AND SUB-TOPICS AND SPECIFIC RESOURCE &

EKS GENERAL INSRUCTIONAL REFERENCES
INSTRUCTIONAL OBJECTIVES
OBJECTIVE
Week Linguistics: Introduction Specific Instructional Objectives: after Naeem. (2010);
1 the discussion students will be able to
GIO: students understand how identify, explain, and exemplify: Radford, A.; Atkinson,
linguists learn about language, M.; Britain, D.;
and can distinguish between 1) how linguists learn about language Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
descriptive and prescriptive 2) distinguish between descriptive and A. (2009).
linguistics. prescriptive linguistics.
Week GIO: students understand that Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);
2 linguistics as hidden knowledge the discussion students will be able to
and understand the general identify, explain, and exemplify: Naeem. (2010);
outline of linguistic theory.
1) Linguistics as Hidden knowledge Radford, A.; Atkinson,
2) How linguistic inquiry works M.; Britain, D.;
3) The idea of deep structure Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) The general outline of linguistic theory A. (2009).
5) Use linguistic evidence cautiously
Week Introduction to Phonetics Specific Instructional Objectives: after Naeem. (2010);

GIO: students understand the identify, explain, and exemplify: Radford, A.; Atkinson,
English Speech Sounds, M.; Britain, D.;
Consonants, Articulatory 1) Phonetics (articulatory) Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
phonetics, the POA & MOA, 2) The English Speech Sounds A. (2009).
and a number of different 3) the English Consonants
variables. 4) the IPA
5) the POA
6) the MOA
7) the concept of Voicing & Nasality
Week Phonetics Specific Instructional Objectives: after Naeem. (2010);

general knowledge about M.; Britain, D.;
vowels as the English Speech 1) The English Vowels Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
Sounds (continued) and Other 2) the position of vowels A. (2009).
Types of Phonetics. 3) the combinations of vowels
4) Other Types of Phonetics (Acoustic
phonetics and Auditory phonetics)
Week Introduction to Phonology Specific Instructional Objectives: after Naeem. (2010);

general knowledge about the M.; Britain, D.;
English Phonemes, the rules, 1) English Phonemes, Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
and some related issues. 2) Allophones A. (2009).
3) Minimal pairs
4) Phonological Rules (Phonotactics)
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5) some issues related to phonology
Week Morphology: introduction Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

GIO: students understand the identify, explain, and exemplify: Naeem. (2010);
general knowledge about
morphology and the scope of 1) Words and Their Categories Radford, A.; Atkinson,
the study of morphology. 2) Word classes M.; Britain, D.;
3) Lexical categories Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) Functional categories A. (2009).
Week Morphology: Introduction Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

morphology and the scope of 1) Morphology: Introduction Radford, A.; Atkinson,
the studies of morphology. 2) Definition M.; Britain, D.;
3) Building words Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) Morphemes and allomorph A. (2009).
5) Morphological processes – derivation
and inflection O’grady, W. et al.
(1996).
Week
8 MID TERM MID TERM MID TERM
Week Introduction to Syntax Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);
syntax and its Units as Lexical 1) Morph and Allomorph Radford, A.; Atkinson,
categories, Constituent 2) Morpheme and Syllable M.; Britain, D.;
structure, Constituent 3) Compound words Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
Categories, and Constituent 4) Lexical categories A. (2009).
Analysis. 5) Constituent structure
6) Constituent Categories O’grady, W. et al.
7) Constituent Analysis (1996).
Week Introduction to Syntax Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

10 (continued) the discussion students will be able to
identify, explain, and exemplify: Naeem. (2010);
GIO: students understand the
general knowledge about tree 1) immediate constituent Radford, A.; Atkinson,
diagram, Movement, 2) grammatical relations M.; Britain, D.;
Recursion, and 3) tree diagram Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
Grammatical relations 4) Movement, A. (2009).
5) Recursion,
6) Grammatical relations O’grady, W. et al.
(1996).
Week Semantics: Introduction Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

semantics and the scope of 1) Semantics Radford, A.; Atkinson,
semantic studies. 2) Reference and Sense M.; Britain, D.;
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3) Semantic Features Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) Lexical Relations A. (2009).
5) Semantic Roles
6) Propositions O’grady, W. et al.
(1996).
Week Introduction to Layers of Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

12 Linguistics: Pragmatics the discussion students will be able to
general knowledge about 1) Pragmatics Radford, A.; Atkinson,
pragmatics. 2) Deixis (place, time, person) M.; Britain, D.;
3) Reference Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) Presupposition A. (2009).
5) Implicature
6) Speech acts O’grady, W. et al.
7) Searle’s classification (1996).
8) Felicity conditions
Week Introduction to Layers of Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

13 Linguistics: Discourse Analysis the discussion students will be able to
general knowledge Discourse 1) Discourse Analysis Radford, A.; Atkinson,
Analysis. 2) Coherence vs. Cohesion M.; Britain, D.;
3) The Cooperative Principle Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) The Maxims of Conversation A. (2009).
5) Maxim Violations
6) More on Conversational Implicature O’grady, W. et al.
7) Natural Language VS Logical (1996).
Language
8) Criticisms of the Maxims
Week Introduction to Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

14 Psycholinguistics the discussion students will be able to
general knowledge about 1) what psycholinguistics is Radford, A.; Atkinson,
psycholinguistics. 2) Speech and Comprehension Errors M.; Britain, D.;
3) Brain Division Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) Language and the Brain A. (2009).
5) Composition of human brain
6) Language Acquisition Device (LAD) O’grady, W. et al.
7) Language and Cognition (1996).
Week Second Language Acquisition Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);
second language acquisition 1) What is SLA Radford, A.; Atkinson,
(SLA). 2) Research background M.; Britain, D.;
3) Stages of acquisition Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) Comparisons SLA VS FLA A. (2009).
5) the best way to teach L2
6) How can a speech-language
pathologist help?
12
Week Sociolinguistics Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);
16 Introduction the discussion students will be able to
general knowledge about 1) Speech Communities Radford, A.; Atkinson,
Sociolinguistics. 2) Jargon & Slang M.; Britain, D.;
3) Prestige Clahsen, H.; Spencer,
4) Code Theory (Social language codes, A. (2009).
Restricted code, Elaborated code)
5) Deviation & language varieties O’grady, W. et al.
6) Covert prestige (1996).
7) Style Shifting
8) Speech Accomodation
9) Internal vs. external language
Wee
k 16 FINAL TERM FINAL TERM FINAL TERM
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Units (Weekly) Materials
Unit 1: Linguistics
Introduction
Language is all around us. Language allows us to share complicated thoughts,

negotiate agreements, and make communal plans. Our learning, our courting, our fighting
— all are mediated by language. You can think of language as a technology — humans
manipulate their bodies to produce sounds, gestures, and appearances that encode
messages using a shared system.
How then does the technology of language work? Answering this question is
surprisingly hard; our language skills are automatic and therefore hard to reflect upon.
Nevertheless, throughout the centuries, scholars have devised ways to study human
language, although there is still much more research to be done and many mysteries to
explore. The field of scholarship that tries to answer the question “How does language
work?” is called linguistics, and the scholars who study it are called linguists.
How do linguists learn about language?
Linguistics is a science. This means that linguists answer questions about

language by observing the behavior of language users. Astronomy has its enormous
telescopes, particle physics has its supercolliders, biology and chemistry have intricate
and expensive apparatus, all for learning about their particular facets of the world.
Modern linguists go straight to the source by observing language users in action.
One of the charms of linguistics is that the data is all around you; you need
nothing more than a patient ear and an inquiring mind to do original linguistic research
of your own. But you need not start from scratch — generations of linguists before you
have laid a fairly stable groundwork for you to build on. Throughout the history of
linguistics, the primary source of data for linguists have been the speech, writing, and
intuitions of language users around them.
This is not the only way one could imagine learning about language. For example,
one could study respected authorities. But this approach raises an obvious question: how
did the respected authorities learn what they knew? If each language were invented by
an ancient sage, who determined once and for all how that language worked, the
authoritative approach would have great appeal. We would go to the writings of the
Founding Sage of Danish, for example, and to the writings of the sage’s immediate
disciples, to find out the Original Intent, much as American judges refer to the
Constitution.
But, as far as we can tell, this is not how most languages come to be. We have
ancient authorities in plenty, but in most cases these authorities were merely trying to
codify the practices of the people who seemed to them most skillful in the use of
language. In other words, these authorities were themselves scientific linguists of a sort:
they observed language users and tried to describe their behavior.
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Describing and prescribing.
In literate cultures, it is common to have a tradition of language instruction. In

formal classes, students are taught how to read and write. Furthermore, the teacher tells
the students rules of proper usage. This is what is referred to as a prescriptive tradition,
in which students are told what to do. It is similar to being taught the proper way to do
arithmetic or knit a sweater. Formal language instruction is usually normative, which
means that it involves a sense of “should and shouldn’t”, a notion of right and wrong
behavior.
By contrast, linguists follow a descriptive tradition, in which the object is to

observe what people really do, and form theories to explain observed behavior. Any
specific use of language is only considered right or wrong on the basis of whether it
appears in ordinary, natural speech.
As a member of a literate culture, you have probably been exposed to a certain

amount of your culture’s traditional language instruction. When you first take up the
study of linguistics, you will probably experience some discomfort as you observe
language behaviors that you have been taught are wrong. It will be hard to suppress an
almost instinctive reaction: “This behavior is incorrect. My observation is no good; the
person I am observing is an unreliable source of information.”
It is important to remember that traditional language instruction and scientific

linguistics have completely different goals and methods. Traditional language instruction
is intended to train students to use a standard language. Language standards exist largely
to make sure formal communication is possible between distant regions, between
generations, between centuries, between social classes. Modern civilization arguably
depends on such formal communication. Its rules must be constant over wide areas, over
long spans of time, across different social and economic groups. This leads to an
interesting contradiction:
The formal rules of a standard language are almost arbitrary. It doesn’t matter in
detail what they are, so long as everyone agrees to them and more or less follows them
when formal communication is needed.
Traditional language teachers need to imbue these mostly-arbitrary rules with a

sense of rightness, in order to enlist the students’ moral sense in the cause of preserving
the stability of the standard language.
The natural result is that students emerge from traditional language instruction
with a strong sense that certain language behaviors are simply wrong. Most members of
a literate culture have this moral sense about language, and find it hard to suppress. Yet
to do objective science, to find out how language really works, it is necessary to adopt a
detached viewpoint and to treat all language users as valid. The first principle of
linguistics is: Respect people’s language behavior, and describe it objectively.
15
In this unit we will adopt this objective stance: language behaviors are not
intrinsically right or wrong, and we seek to describe what they are, not to prescribe what
they should be.
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Unit 2: Linguistics as Hidden knowledge
How linguistic inquiry works
Linguists often say that they study the knowledge that a native speaker must have
in order to use their language — not formal, school-learned knowledge, but a more subtle
kind of knowledge, a knowledge so deeply-ingrained that language users often do not
know they know it. We will illustrate the type of knowledge we mean with a
“consciousness-raising” exercise. We will show you some things about English that you
must already know, but almost certainly don’t ‘know you know’.
Case study 1: English plurals
A fork
Suppose you have one fork, and I hand you another one. Now you have two forks.
If you have a spoon and find another, you have two spoons. If your garden has
a rosebush, you might plant a second to have two rosebushes. (We will use boldface for
language examples, that is, things that people might actually say.)
In order to speak English, you have to know how to make the plural, or multiple
form, of most nouns you hear. You probably do this effortlessly. If you ask most people
how to do it, they will say “Oh, you just add s.”
But listen carefully.

To form the plural of fork, you add a hissing sound, the first sound in the word sap. To
pluralize spoon, you add a buzzing sound, the first sound in the word zap. To
pluralize rosebush, you add an entire extra syllable, sounding similar to the word is.
You use these three different plural endings every day, effortlessly, without
conscious reflection. You always use the right one. It is even amusing to try to use the
wrong plural ending. You can say *forkiz, or *spoonce, but you never do. (We use an
asterisk to draw your attention to the fact that few people would ever say these things.)
You must know the rules governing the use of these different plural endings somewhere
inside you, but in all likelihood you never knew you knew until this moment.
You must have some way to select the correct ending to use with each word,
otherwise you would occasionally say things like *rosebushss. But unless you have
thought about this before, it is almost certain that even now that you have been exposed
17
to the concept, you still have no idea how you manage to select the appropriate plural
suffix every time. Here is something that you definitely know, but you cannot state it out
loud. It is unconscious knowledge.
Can you analyze your own behavior and figure out how you decide whether to
use -s, -z, or -iz? Take a few minutes and try. Write out a dozen or so common English
nouns and classify them according to what plural ending you would use. Do you see any
patterns? (Watch out for completely irregular nouns like foot/feet; for now we are only
concerned with “S-plurals”.)
One theory you might come up with is that the correct plural suffix must simply
be memorized for each noun. This is a perfectly reasonable theory. Perhaps forks sounds
better to us than *forkiz simply because the former is the only plural we have ever heard.
However, this is not the case, because for new words we have never encountered we can
still pick out a plural ending that sounds right. For example:
If you have a zug, and you find another, you now have two ...
Mike just finished making his third bidge, so he has made three ...
I inherited a blick from each of my grandparents, which is why I have four ...
(Jean Berko-Gleason first studied examples similar to these as set in her wug test).
Complete these sentences with the appropriate plurals. Then have five English-
speaking friends do it, but don’t let them collude: force them to form their own plurals.
You and your five friends will all agree: the first example gets a buzzing plural -z, the
second gets a whole syllable -iz, and the third gets a hiss -s. And none of you have ever
heard those words before, nor do you have any clue what they mean. If plural endings
were simply memorized, you and your friends would have had to guess the endings, and
you would likely have made different guesses. The second principle of linguistics
is, Language knowledge is often unconscious, but careful inquiry can reveal it.
The idea of deep structure and the general outline of linguistic theory
What have linguists learned about how language works? What is the overall shape of
modern linguistic theory?
Linguists espouse a variety of theories about language; differences between these

theories are sometimes quite striking even to laypeople and sometimes so subtle that only
well-read linguists can understand the distinctions being made. Arguments between
linguists who support different theories can be quite heated. But underneath the noisy
debate about details there is widespread consensus, which has been coalescing since the
1950s.
This consensus sees, in every corner of human linguistic ability, at least two
layers: a surface structure consisting of the sounds we actually speak and hear, and the
marks we write and read, and a deep structure which exists in the minds of speakers. The
deep and surface structures are often strikingly different, and are connected
by rules which tell how to move between the two kinds of structure during language use.
These rules are part of every language-user’s unconscious knowledge.
18
The idea of deep structure is an unintuitive one. It is natural to be skeptical about
it. Why do linguists believe that language structures inside the mind are so different from
what we speak and hear? We will use another case study to give an example of the
evidence.
Case Study 2: The English auxiliary wanna
(1a) Rachel doesn’t want to do her linguistics homework.

(1b) Rachel doesn’t wanna do her linguistics homework.
In many varieties of English, the two words want to can often be contracted
into wanna. English users are more likely to do this in speech than in writing, and are
more likely to do it in relaxed, informal contexts. (Linguists use the word registers to
describe the different behaviors language-users adopt depending on context.) The
pronunciation of wanna lacks the clear t sound of want to. English users evidently must
know both variants.
Can want to always be contracted? Consider the following examples.
(2a) Who do you want to look over the application?

(2b) *Who do you wanna look over the application?
Again, we are using an asterisk to call your attention to the fact that the second
example is not natural English to most native users. It is, in fact, traditional in linguistics
to use an asterisk to mark an example that is somehow unacceptable or unnatural for
native users.
As in our first case study, we seem to have found a mysterious piece of

unconscious knowledge that English users all share. We do not resist changing (1a) into
(1b), but something makes the change from (2a) to (2b) much less comfortable. What
could it be? How do English speakers decide when want to may be contracted?
Perhaps the contraction is inhibited by the fact that (2a) is a question. We can test this
theory with a similar example.
(3a) Who do you want to invite to the party?

(3b) Who do you wanna invite to the party?
Here, the contraction works fine. So the question-theory cannot be correct. In

fact, the similarity between (2a) and (3a) makes (2a)’s resistance to contraction quite
puzzling.
What follows is not the answer to the puzzle. Rather, it is a sketch of part of a theory that
some linguists use to explain the observed behavior of wanna. This theory was arrived at
by considering many, many examples, and consulting many, many native English
speakers. It is not in any way authoritative, but it illustrates the point we are trying to
make. Consider some possible answers to questions (2a) and (3a), which we repeat for
ease of reference:
19
(2a) Who do you want to look over the application?
(2c) I want Yuri to look over the application.
(3a) Who do you want to invite to the party?
(3c) I want to invite Yuri to the party.
Notice that in sentence (2c), the name Yuri comes between want and to,
separating these two words, while in (3c), the words want to are still next to each other.
Let us hypothesize that in our minds, questions like (2a) and (3a) have some kind of mark
that shows where we expect the answer to be inserted. Linguists sometimes call such a
mark a trace, and symbolize it with t. So we might show this “mental form” of our two
questions as follows:
(2d) Who do you want t to look over the application?

(3d) Who do you want to invite t to the party?
If such traces really exist in our minds, they would provide a very elegant explanation of
when want to can be contracted. The proposed explanation is that we can contract want
to only when there is nothing between the two words in the mental form of the sentence.
We already knew this to be true when the interrupting material is audible. Of course want
to cannot be contracted in (2c), because Yuri is in the way. Our proposal is to extend this
explanation to inaudible material, and to say that want to cannot be contracted in (2a)
because a trace is in the way.
You might object that we have invented traces precisely to explain when want
to cannot contract; that we will simply hypothesize that every uncontractable example
has a trace in the middle. This is a fair objection. But remember that we are not putting
traces wherever we want, but only where we expect the answer to the question to fit. You
are encouraged to try more examples on yourself and your friends.
This step of introducing traces to explain when want to may be contracted is a

serious and profound piece of theory-building. We are saying that sentences in the mind
are not exactly like their counterparts spoken aloud. They are not mere mental tape-
recordings — they can possess aspects, like traces, that cannot be heard. As soon as we
take this theoretical step, we open up a new question: ‘How is language represented in
the mind?’. Linguists use the term deep structure to discuss the way sentences are
represented in the mind. In contrast, surface structure means sentences as we hear or read
them.
This leads to the third principle of linguistics: Sentences have a deep structure in
the mind that is not directly observable, but may be inferred indirectly from patterns of
language behavior. It is this third principle that separates recent linguistic scholarship
(since about 1950) from the centuries of work that went before.
Using linguistic evidence cautiously
Before we proceed, we must say a few words about the mode of inquiry we are
using. As we throw various examples at you, we are either marking them with asterisks
20
— starring them, as linguists say — or we are not. In essence, we are asking you to go
along with our judgment about whether or not the examples are natural, native English.
We would prefer to be scientific about it; one way of doing this would be to perform a
study in which we present our examples to a few hundred native English users, and have
our subjects tell us whether they thought the examples were good English or not.
But such studies take a lot of time and effort, and it’s easy to make mistakes in
experimental technique that would weaken our confidence in the results. It is extremely
tempting to use oneself as an experimental subject, and use one’s own judgment about
whether an example is natural English or not. There are obvious pitfalls to this approach.
One may not be as typical a speaker as one believes. Or one’s judgment may be unreliable
in the highly artificial situation of asking oneself questions about one’s own language.
But nevertheless, in some cases, the situation seems clear-cut enough that we can
give examples, as we have been, in the reasonable confidence that the reader will agree
with our judgments. This is a shortcut, and is not a good substitute for real data. But in
reality, a lot of linguistics gets done this way, with scholars using themselves as informal
experimental subjects. Doing research in this way incurs a debt, the debt of eventually
backing up our claims with real experimental studies. It’s fine to get preliminary insights
by probing our own intuitions about language. Eventually, though, we must do real
science, and we must remember that in any conflict between experimental data and our
own intuitions, real data always wins.
Exercise 1:
Me and John
If you took English classes at school, you may have been warned against using the
following sentence:
(4a) Me and John are friends.
You probably were instructed to replace it with the following:
(4b) John and I are friends.
Pronouns such as me, him, her, ... are termed ‘objective pronouns’ because traditionally
they are considered to never appear as the subject of a verb, and prescriptivists rule that
as such usage of them in this position is “incorrect”. However (4a) is not marked with an
asterisk because it is still largely acceptable to native English speakers, and as descriptive
linguists we are interested in both forms.
Now note that certain arrangements of pronouns (I, me, John, etc.) in the sentence make
it ungrammatical to all English speakers:
(4c) *I and John are friends.

(4d) *Her and John are friends.
(4d) *I and him are friends.
21
List all possible combinations of two pronouns in the sentence “___ and ___ are friends.”
that you can think of, and label each sentence which would not be said by native speakers
with an asterisk. Then create a theory as to what makes any sentence of this form
unacceptable.
---ooOoo---
22
Unit 3: Phonetics
Introduction
The English Speech Sounds
Consonants
If you have ever heard a Korean say “I want to go to the bitch” (meaning “I want
to go to the beach”), you should understand the importance of mastering phonetics when
learning new languages. To her credit, the Korean is entirely unaware of how she sounds
in English. In fact, if you tried to correct her by saying “It’s pronounced ‘beach’“, she
would probably respond with, “That’s what I said: bitch.”
As such an example illustrates, few people in our society give conscious thought
to the sounds they produce and the subtle differences they possess. It is unfortunate, but
hardly surprising, that few language-learning books use technical terminology to
describe foreign sounds. Language learners often hear unhelpful advice such as “It is
pronounced more crisply”.
As scientists, we cannot be satisfied with this state of affairs. If we can classify

the sounds of language, we are one step closer to understanding the gestalt of human
communication.
The study of the production and perception of speech sounds is a branch of

linguistics called phonetics, studied by phoneticians. The study of how languages treat
these sounds is called phonology, covered in the next chapter. While these two fields
have considerable overlap, it should soon become clear that they differ in important ways.
Phonetics is the systematic study of the human ability to make and hear sounds
which use the vocal organs of speech, especially for producing oral language. It is usually
divided into the three branches of (1) articulatory, (2) acoustic and (3) auditory phonetics.
It is also traditionally differentiated from (though overlaps with) the field of phonology,
which is the formal study of the sound systems (phonologies) of languages, especially
the universal properties displayed in ALL languages, such as the psycholinguistic aspects
of phonological processing and acquisition.
One of the most important tools of phonetics and phonology is a special alphabet
called the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA, a standardized representation of the
sounds used in human language. In this chapter, you will learn what sounds humans use
in their languages, and how linguists represent those sounds in IPA. Reading and writing
IPA will help you understand what’s really happening when people speak.
Phonetic transcription and the IPA

It is often convenient to split up speech in a language into segments, which are
defined as identifiable units in the flow of speech. In many ways this discretization of
speech is somewhat fictional, in that both articulation and the acoustic signal of speech
are almost entirely continuous. Additionally, attempts to classify segments by nature
must ignore some level of detail, as no two segments produced at separate times are ever
identical. Even so, segmentation remains a crucial tool in almost all aspects of linguistics.
23
In phonetics the most basic segments are called phones, which may be defined as
units in speech which can be distinguished acoustically or articulatorily. This definition
allows for different degrees of wideness. In many contexts phones may be thought of as
acoustic or articulatory targets which may or may not be fully reached in actual speech.
Another, more commonly used segment is the phoneme, which will be defined more
precisely in the next chapter.
It is important to keep in mind that while the segment may (or may not) be a
reality of phonology; it is in no way an actual physical part of realized speech in the vocal
tract. Realized speech is highly co-articulated, displays movement and spreads aspects
of sounds over entire syllables and words. It is convenient to think of speech as a
succession of segments (which may or may not coincide closely with ideal segments) in
order to capture it for discussion in written discourse, but actual phonetic analysis of
speech confounds such a model. It should be pointed out, however, that if we wish to set
down a representation of dynamic, complex speech into static writing, segmental
constructs are very convenient fictions to indicate what we are trying to set down.
Similarly, syllables and words are convenient structures which capture the prosodic
structure of a language, and are often notated in written form, but are not physical
realities.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation which

provides a standardized system of transcribing phonetic segments up to a certain degree
of detail. It may be represented visually using charts, which may be found in full in
Appendix A. We will leave a more detailed description of the IPA to the end of this
chapter, but for now just be aware that text in square brackets [] is phonetic transcription
in IPA. We will reproduce simplified charts of different subsets of the IPA here as they
are explained.
Variations of IPA such as the well-established Americanist phonetic notation and

a new, simplified international version called Say U are available, but IPA is more
comprehensive and so preferred for educational use, despite its complexity.
To understand the IPA’s taxonomy of phones, it is important to consider articulatory,
acoustic, and auditory phonetics.
Articulatory phonetics
Articulatory phonetics is concerned with how the sounds of language are

physically produced by the vocal apparatus. The units articulatory phonetics deals with
are known as gestures, which are abstract characterizations of articulatory events.
Speaking in terms of articulation, the sounds that we utter to make language can be split
into two different types: consonants and vowels. For the purposes of articulatory
phonetics, consonant sounds are typically characterized as sounds that have constricted
or closed configurations of the vocal tract.
Vowels, on the other hand, are characterized in articulatory terms as having

relatively little constriction; that is, an open configuration of the vocal tract. Vowels carry
much of the pitch of speech and can be held different durations, such as a half a beat, one
beat, two beats, three beats, etc. of speech rhythm. Consonants, on the other hand, do not
24
carry the prosodic pitch (especially if devoiced and not nasalized) and do not display the
potential for the durations that vowels can have. Linguists may also speak of ‘semi-
vowels’ or ‘semi-consonants’ (often used as synonymous terms). For example, a sound
such as [w] phonetically seems more like a vowel (with relative lack of constriction or
closure of the vocal tract) but, phonologically speaking, behaves as a consonant in that it
always appears before a vowel sound at the beginning (onset) of a syllable.
Consonants
Phoneticians generally characterize consonants as being distinguished by settings
of the independent variables place of articulation (POA) and manner of
articulation (MOA). In layman’s terminology, POA is “where” the consonant is
produced, while MOA is “how” the consonant is produced.
The following are descriptions of the different POAs:
A diagram of the vocal tract

showing the different places of articulation
Bilabial segments are produced with the lips held together, for instance the [p] sound of
the English pin, or the [b] sound in bin.
Labiodental segments are produced by holding the upper teeth to the lower lip, like in
the [f] sound of English fin.
Dental consonants have the tongue making contact with the upper teeth (area 3 in the
diagram). An example from English is the [θ] sound in the word thin.
Alveolar consonants have the tongue touching the area of the mouth known as the
alveolar ridge (area 4 in the diagram). Examples include the [t] in tin and [s] in sin.
Postalveolar consonants are similar to alveolars but more retracted (in area 5 in the
diagram), like the [ʃ] of shin.
25
Palatal consonants are articulated at the hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the
mouth, area 7 in the diagram). In English the palatal [j] sound appears in the word young.
Velar consonants are articulated at the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth,
known also as the velum, area 8 in the diagram). English [k] is velar, like in the word kin.
Glottal consonants are articulated far back in the throat, at the glottis (area 11 in the
diagram, effectively the vocal folds). English [h] may be regarded as glottal.[2]
Doubly articulated consonants have two points of articulation, such as the English labio-
velar [w] of wit.
Other POAs are also possible, but will be described in more detail later on.
MOA involves a number of different variables which may vary independently:
Voicing:
Try pronouncing the hissing sound [s] of the English word sip. Elongate the sound until
you can produce it continuously for five seconds. Then do the same for the [z] sound
in zip. Hold your hand to your throat, observing the different in tactile sensation between
the two. you should notice that [z] creates vibrations, while [s] does not. This rapid
vibration is in fact caused by the vocal folds, and it is referred to as voicing. Many
different sounds can contrast solely based on a voicing difference: English [b, p]
in bin, pin, [d, t] in din, tin, et cetera.
Nasality:
Some sounds are produced with airflow through the nasal cavity. These are known
as nasals. Nasal consonants in English include the [n] of not, the [m] of mit, and the [ŋ]
of sing. Nasals may also contrast for voicing in some languages, but this is rare — in
most languages, nasals are voiced.
Obstruency:
Consonants involving a total obstruction of airflow are known as stops or plosives.
Examples include English [p, b, t, d, k, g]. Fricatives are consonants with a steady
stricture causing friction, for example [f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ]. Affricates begin with a stop-like
closure followed by frication, like the [tʃ, dʒ] of English chip, jeans.
Sonorancy:
Non-obstruents are classed as sonorants. This includes the already-mentioned nasals.
Another important type of sonorant found in English is the approximant, in which
articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air
to flow without much audible turbulence. Examples include English [w, j, l, ɹ].
Knowing this information is enough to construct a simplified IPA chart of the consonants
of English. As is conventional, MOA is organized in rows, and POA columns. Voicing
pairs occur in the same cells; the ones in bold are voiced while the rest are voiceless.
26
Simplified IPA consonant chart (for English)
Bilabi
al
Labiodent Dent Alveol Postalveol Palat Vela Glott
(or
al al ar ar al r al
Labio-
velar)
Plosive pb td kg
Fricative fv θð sz ʃʒ h
Affricate tʃ dʒ
Nasal m n ŋ
Approxima
w ɹl j
nt
---ooOoo---
27
Unit 4: Phonetics
The English Speech Sounds (continued)
1. Vowels
2. Other Types of Phonetics
1. Vowels
The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness
Tongue positions of cardinal front vowels

with highest point indicated.
Vowels are very different from consonants, but our method of decomposing
sounds into sets of features works equally well. Vowels can essentially be viewed as
being combinations of three variables:
Height:
This measured how close your tongue is to the roof of your mouth. For example,
try pronouncing [æ] (as in “cat”) and [i] (as in “feet”). Your mouth should be much more
open for the former than the latter. Thus [æ] is called either open or low, and [i]
either closed or high.
Backness:
This is what is sounds like. Try, for example, alternating between pronouncing
the vowels [æ] (as in “cat”) and [ɑ] (as in “cot”), and get a feel for the position of your
tongue in your mouth. It should move forward for [æ] and back for [ɑ], which is why the
former is called a front vowel and the latter a back vowel.
Rounding:
Pronouncing the vowels [i] and [u], and look at your lips in a mirror. They should
look puckered up for [u] and spread out for /i/.[5]In general, this “puckering” is referred
to in phonetics as rounding.
28
Back vowels tend to be rounded, and front vowels unrounded, for reasons which
will be covered later in this chapter. However, this tendency is not universal. For
instance, the vowel in the French word bœuf is what would result from the vowel of the
English word bet being pronounced with rounding. Some East and Southeast Asian
languages possess unrounded back vowels, which are difficult to describe without a
sound sample.
The cardinal vowels are a set of idealized vowels used by phoneticians as a base
of reference.
The IPA orders the vowel in a similar way to the consonants, separating the three
main distinguishing variables into different dimensions. The vowel trapezoid may be
thought of as a rough diagram of the mouth, with the left being the front, the right the
back, and the vertical direction representing height in the mouth. Each vowel is
positioned thusly based on height and backness. Rounding isn’t indicated by location,
but when pairs of vowels sharing the same height and backness occur next to each other,
the left member is always unrounded, and the right a rounded vowel. Otherwise, just use
the general heuristic that rounded vowels are usually back. The following is a simplified
version of the IPA vowel chart:
Near- Near-
Front Central Back
front back
Close
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open
Many of these vowels will be familiar from (General American) English. The
following are rough examples:
[æ] cat [ɑ] cot [ɐ] cut

[ɛ] kelp [ə] carrot [ɔ] caught
[e] cake [o] coat [ɪ] kin
[ʊ] cushion [i] keep [u] cool
Note, however, that in phonetics we can describe any segment in arbitrarily fine
detail. As such, when we say that, say, the vowel in “cat” is [æ], we are sacrificing
precision.
29
Some of these vowels have no English equivalent, but may be familiar from
foreign languages. [a] represents the sound in Spanish “hablo”, the front rounded [œ]
vowel is that in French “bœuf”, [y] is that of German “hüten”, and [ɯ] (perhaps the most
exotic to most English speakers) is found as the first vowel of European Portuguese
“pegar”.
2. Other types of phonetics
Acoustic phonetics
Acoustic phonetics deals with the physical medium of speech -- that is, how
speech manipulates sound waves. Sound is composed of waves of high- and low-pressure
areas which propagate through air. The most basic way to view sound is as a wave
function. This plots the pressure measured by the sound-recording device against time,
corresponding closely to the physical nature of sound. Loudness may be found by looking
at the amplitude of the sound at a given time.
However, this approach is fairly limited. Humans, in fact, don’t process sound
using this raw data. The ear analyzes sound by decomposing it into its constituent
frequencies, a mathematical algorithm known as the Fourier transform.
As a sound is produced in the oral tract, the column of air in the tract serves as
a harmonic oscillator, oscillating at numerous frequencies simultaneously. Some of the
frequencies of oscillation are at higher amplitudes than others, a property called
resonance. The resonant frequencies (frequencies with relatively high resonance) of the
vocal tract are known in phonetics as formants. The formants in a speech sound are
numbered by their frequency: f1 (pronounced eff-one) has the lowest frequency,
followed by f2, f3, etc. The analysis of formants turns out to be key to acoustic phonetics,
as any change in the shape of the vocal cavity changes which resonances are dominant.
There are two basic ways to analyze the formants of a speech signal. Firstly, at
any given time the sound contains a mixture of different frequencies of sound. The
relative amplitudes (strengths) of different frequencies at a particular time may be shown
as a frequency spectrum. As you can see on the right, frequency is plotted against
amplitude, and formants show up as peaks.
Spectogram of American English vowels [i, u, ɑ]

showing the formants f1 and f2
30
Another way to view formants is by using a spectrogram. This plots time against
frequency, with amplitude represented by darkness. Formants show up as dark bands,
and their movement may be tracked through time. Given the development of modern
technology, acoustic analysis is now accessible to anyone with a computer and a
microphone.
Auditory phonetics
Auditory phonetics is a branch of phonetics concerned with the hearing of speech

sounds and with speech perception.
As a learner
Children learn the sounds made in their native language within their first year,
and after this it becomes difficult to produce sounds foreign to their native languages.
Even familiar segments are produced without reflection on the manner of their
production. As such, it is highly recommended that you practice pronouncing isolated
segments, and listen repeatedly to examples of those which seem exotic to you. Soon,
you will be noticing yourself becoming more observant as to the phones you hear in your
everyday life, and will be less puzzled by unfamiliar segments in other languages.
Exercise 1: English Places of Articulation
The following English words were tagged with the place of articulation of their
first segment, but the tags have been scrambled. Match each word with the correct POA:
cake palatal
bleed alveolar
zip alveolar
food dental
shack bilabial
team velar
thin labio-velar
wipe retroflex
yam post-alveolar
read labio-dental
---ooOoo---
31
Unit 5:
Phonology
Introduction
The human brain is an amazing piece of work. Every time you utter a sound, or
hear one, there are dozens of things that happen subconsciously and take the sound and
reduce it to one of several distinct sounds that we use in our language. The problem is
that these distinct sounds are different in different languages. When you come into a new
language and you hear a sound you’re not used to, you automatically try to fit it into one
of your previous categories of sounds. This can cause interesting problems.
Let’s illustrate this with a (slightly-hypothetical) analogy. There is one group of

people from the Land of Men, and another from the Land of Women. In the Land of Men
there are only a few colors: red, blue, brown, yellow, pink, green, and a few more. In the
Land of Women, however, there are many more: chartreuse, magenta, terracotta, viridian,
lavender rose, etc. Whole books could be written about the colors in the land of women,
and indeed, some have.
When the men visit the Land of Women, they have no end of trouble. You see
their road signs are color-coded. The women have no problem with this. Their stop signs
are rust-colored and their yield signs are painted in auburn. Now the men, they look at
both of these colors and see brown. So as far as they can tell, all stop signs are brown in
the Land of Women; however, sometimes women will stop at the stop signs and
sometimes they drive right through. Obviously the women must be terrible drivers.
Likewise, the women notice the men have an annoying habit of always stopping at yield
signs.
Similarly, speakers of different languages compartmentalize the sounds they hear

in words into different categories. For instance, in English the words ‘toe’ and ‘so’ are
distinguished by their initial consonants: ‘toe’ begins with the sound /t/ while ‘so’ begins
with /s/. However, many speakers of the language Tok Pisin do not differentiate between
these sounds, and they may be interchanged without changing the meaning of words (e.g.
[tupu] or [supu] for the word tupu, meaning ‘soup’). Thus knowing how languages
classify sounds is at least as important as knowing what sounds they use in the first place.
We can speak of a language’s phonology as being how it carves up the acoustic

space into meaningful units. This is an area of study practiced by phonologists.
Phonemes
The basic unit of study of phonology is the phoneme, which may be defined as
sets of phones which function as one unit in a language, and provide contrast between
different words. In other words, a phoneme is a category that speakers of a language put
certain sounds into. For instance, returning to the Tok Pisin example above, the sounds
[s] and [t] would both belong to the phoneme /t/. (In the IPA, phonemes are
conventionally enclosed in forward slashes //.)
32
As another example, try pronouncing the English words keys and schools
carefully, paying close attention to the variety of [k] in each. You should find that in the
first there is a noticeable puff of air (aspiration), while in the second it is absent. These
words may be written more precisely phonetically as [kʰiz] and [skulz]. However, since
aspiration never changes the meaning of a word, both of these sounds belong to the
phoneme /k/, and so the phonetic representations of these words are /kiz/ and /skulz/.
It should be evident why it is appropriate to refer to the phoneme as a level of
abstraction away from the phone. We have removed a layer of information which, while
interesting in itself, does not interact in many aspects of a language.
The phonemic inventory of a language is the collection of phonemes in a

language. We looked at English’s in the last chapter.
Allophony
Two phones are called allophones if they belong to the same phoneme. For
instance, in Tok Pisin [t] and [s] are allophones of /t/, and in English [k] and [kʰ] are
allophones of /k/.
Allophones are often conditioned by their environment, meaning that one can
figure out which allophone is used based on context. For example, in most varieties of
American English, the English phoneme /t/ is realized as a tap [ɾ] between vowels in
normal speech when not preceding a stressed vowel, for example in the word “butter”.
In a case like this we can say that the plosive [t] and tap [ɾ] allophones of the phoneme
/t/ are in complementary distribution, as every environment selects for either one or the
other, and the allophones themselves may be referred to as complementary allophones.
Similarly [k] and [kʰ] are in complementary distribution, as [k] mainly occurs in the
sequence /sk/, while [kʰ] occurs elsewhere/
By contrast, allophones may sometimes co-occur in the same environment, in

which case they are in free variation’. For example, the English word cats word-final /t/
phoneme may be realized either with an audible release, or as the tongue held in the
gesture without being released. These phones, notated as [t] and [t̚] in the IPA, are free
variants, as either is allowed to occur in the same position. Similarly [s] and [t] are free
variants for some speakers of Tok Pisin.
Minimal pairs
An important question which may have occurred to you already is: how can we
tell what is a phoneme? One of the most robust tools for examining phonemes is
the minimal pair. A minimal pair is a pair of words which differ only in one segment.
For example, the English words do /du/, too /tu/, you /ju/, moo /mu/ all form minimal
pairs with each other. In a minimal pair one can be sure that the difference between the
words is phonemic in nature, because the segments in question are surrounded by the
same environment and thus cannot be allophones of each other. In other words, they are
in contrastive distribution.
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This is not a foolproof tool. In some cases it may by chance be impossible to find
a minimal pair for two phonemes even though they clearly contrast. In many cases it is
possible to find near-minimal pairs, where the words are so similar that it is unlikely that
any environment is conditioning an allophone.
Finally this also requires some common sense, since phonemes may be in
complementary distribution without being likely allophones. For instance, the English
phonemes /h/ and /ŋ/ (both occurring in the word hung /hʌŋ/) can never occur in the same
environment, as /h/ is always syllable-initial and /ŋ/ always syllable-final. However few
would suggest that these phonemes are allophones. Since English speakers never confuse
them, they are auditorily quite different, and substituting one for another in a word would
render it unintelligible. Unfortunately there is no hard-and-fast consensus on precisely
how to be sure sounds are allophones or not, and in many languages there is vigorous
debate.
Phonological Rules
Phonotactics
Phonotactics are the rules that govern how phonemes can be arranged. Look at
the following lists of made-up words:
Pfilg
Dchbin
Riaubg
Streelling
Mard
Droib
The first three are ‘unpronounceable’ because they violate English’s phonotatic
constraints: ‘pf’ and ‘dchb’ aren’t allowed at the start of a syllable, while ‘bg’ isn’t
allowed at the end. The next three are nonsensical words, but they do not violate
phonotactics, so they have an ‘English-like’ feel. Lewis Carroll was particularly skilled
in the art of creating such words. Some of his creations were immortalised in his
poem Jabberwocky. Here are a couple of stanzas from his famed work:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Note that different languages have different phonotactics. The Czech Republic has cities
like Brno and Plzeň, while the Mandarin for Amsterdam is Amusitedan. Czech
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phonotactics allow for really complicated consonant clusters, while Mandarin allows for
none.
Coarticulation Effects
Morphophonology
Morphophonology (or morphophonemics) looks at how morphology (the

structure of words) interacts with phonology. In morphophonology one may talk
about underlying or morpho-phonemic representations of words, which is a level of
abstraction beneath the phonemic level. To see how this follows from the definition of
morphophonology, it is necessary to look at an example. Compare the Biloxi words:
de ’he goes’ - da ’don’t go’

ande ’he is’ - anda ’be!’
ide ’it falls’ - ide ’fall!’
da ’he gathers’ - da ’gather!’
Some also use this approach to deal with cases

of neutralization and underspecification. Compare the Turkish words:
et ’meat’
eti ’his meat’
et ’to do’
edi ’he does’
Similar patterns in other words in Turkish show that while final stops are always
devoiced, some will always voice when followed by a vowel added by suffixing, while
the others always stay voiceless. Phonemically both ets must be represented as /et/,
because phonemes are defined as the smallest units that may make words contrast (be
distinguishable), so if we said the word for ‘to do’ was phonemically /ed/ then the two
words would have to contrast! Still, we would like to say that on a more abstract level
the word for ‘to do’ ends in a different segment, which doesn’t surface (be realized) in
some positions. The level of abstraction above the phoneme is known as
an underlying or morpho-phonemic representation, and as is conventional we will
indicate it here with pipes ||. Underlyingly, these Turkish words may be represented as
|et|, |eti|, |ed|, and |edi|, and in the same way other Turkish words with this type of voicing
alternation underlyingly end in a voiced stop, which surfaces as a voiceless phoneme
when word-final.
The parallelism between the morpho-phonemic layer and the phonemic layer
should be clear. Just like how phonemes surface as phones conditioned by their
environment, underlying segments surface as phonemes. The important difference is that
the surfacing of morpho-phonemic segments as phonemes occurs after morphological
processes (e.g. adding endings on to words) take place. In a sense, morphophonology is
morphologically informed, while plain phonology isn’t.
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Issues
In some theoretical frameworks of speech (such as phonetics and phonology for
applied linguistics and language teaching or speech therapy), it is convenient to break up
a language’s sounds into categorical sounds—that is, sound types called ‘phonemes’. The
construct of the phoneme, however, is largely a phonological concern in that it is
supposed to model and refer to a transcendental entity that superstructurally and/or
psychologically sits over the phonetic realizations and common variations of a sound in
a language.
For example, if the English phoneme /l/ is posited to subsist, it might be said to
do so because the /l/ of ‘light’ creates a clear contrast with a phonetically similar sounding
word, such as ‘right’ or ‘write’ (both of which have a distinct /r/ at the beginning instead
of a distinct /l/). Thus, ‘light’ and ‘write’ are a ‘minimal pair’ illustrating that, in English
at least, phonemic /l/ and phonemic /r/ are distinct sound categories, and that such a
distinction holds for realized speech.
Such a model has the profound weakness of circular logic: phonemes are used to
delimit the semantic realm of language (lexical or higher level meaning), but semantic
means (minimal pairs of words, such as ‘light’ vs. ‘right’ or ‘pay’ vs. ‘bay’) are then used
to define the phonological realm. Moreover, if phonemes and minimal pairs were such a
precise tool, why would they result in such large variations of the sound inventories of
languages (such as anywhere from 38–50 phonemes for counts of English)? Also, it is
the case that most words (regardless of homophones like ‘right’ and ‘write’, or minimal
pairs like ‘right’ and ‘light’) differentiate meaning on much more information than a
contrast between two sounds.
The phoneme is really a structuralist and/or psycholinguistic category belonging

to phonology that is supposed to subsist ideally over common variations (called
‘allophones’) but be realized in such ways as the so-called ‘clear’ [l] at the beginning of
a word like ‘like’ but also as the so-called ‘dark’ [l] at the end of a word like ‘feel’.
Such concerns are really largely outside of the realm of phonetics because
structuralist and/or psycholinguistic categories are really about cognitive and mentalist
aspects of language processing and acquisition. In other words, the phoneme may (or
may not) be a reality of phonology; it is in no way an actual physical part of realized
speech in the vocal tract. Realized speech is highly co-articulated, displays movement
and spreads aspects of sounds over entire syllables and words.
It is convenient to think of speech as a succession of segments (which may or

may not coincide closely with phonemes, ideal segments) in order to capture it for
discussion in written discourse, but actual phonetic analysis of speech confounds such a
model. It should be pointed out, however, that if we wish to set down a representation of
dynamic, complex speech into static writing, constructs like phonemes are very
convenient fictions to indicate what we are trying to set down (alternative units in order
to capture language in written form, though, include the syllable and the word).
---ooOoo---
36
Unit 6: Morphology
Introduction
Morphology is the identification, analysis and description of the structure of

words, practiced by morphologists. This unit will largely follow the morpheme-based
theory of morphology, but a description of other views of morphology will be presented
at the end.
Morphemes
A morpheme is roughly defined as the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic
meaning. For example, the word boy cannot be broken down into any further unit of
meaning. We can have:
b; o; y; bo; by and oy – none of which mean anything.
We say that boy is made of only one morpheme. But the word antigovernment can be
broken down into:
anti- = against
govern = to rule/administrate
-ment = noun suffix
Therefore, we say that antigovernment is made of three morphemes.
One should be careful not to break a single morpheme into multiple constituent
morphemes. This is a common error in the analysis of some languages, such as Chinese.
The word youyu (猶豫), meaning hesitate is a notorious example. As most Chinese
characters represent a single morpheme, linguists before the Qing Dynasty believed
that all characters represented a single morpheme. As a result, the word youyu has
become the subject of much nonsensical speculation. One scholar during the Tang
Dynasty believed that it originated from the description of a deer-like monkey that would
look left and right before climbing a tree. Later generations discovered that youyu was,
in fact, a single disyllabic morpheme, disproving these odd claims.
Classifying Morphemes
Morphemes are categorized thus:
Bound morphemes:
They cannot stand alone, i.e. they are affixes.
Derivational morphemes:
We change the grammatical category or the meaning of the word. Examples are re-, de-
, un-, -ness, -ly and so on.
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Inflectional morphemes:
We do not change the meaning or grammatical category of the word with these. We use
them to mark plurality, tense, agreement, case and so on.
Free morphemes:
They can be used alone.
Lexical morphemes:
They represent the concepts of the message we wish to bring across. Ship, orange and
president are some examples. They are an open set of words in a language.
Functional morphemes:
They are functional words, like determiners, pronouns, conjunctions and so
on. Whatever, because and against are some examples.
Affixation
Affixes are our workhorse morphemes—the tools we use again and again to
assemble new words. There are several kinds of affixes:
Suffixes Suffixes: are morphemes that attach to the end of a word. Examples are -
ion in motion and -ate in investigate. Suffixes are written with an initial hyphen.
Prefixes Prefixes: attach to the beginning of a word. Examples

are re- in redo and un- in unthinkable.
Prefixes: are written with a terminal hyphen.
Infixes: Although English generally does not have infixes, or morphemes that go “in the
middle” of a word, other languages do. An exception in English might be -bloody- in the
following:
Q: Are you going to the concert tonight?

A: Absobloodylutely.
Infixes are written with initial and terminal hyphens, as above.
Circumfixes: Circumfixes are affixes that “surround” the word, attaching to the
beginning and end of the word. Although English has few examples of this type of affix,
other languages use it. The circumfix is probably most widely known from the German
past participle (ge- -t for regular verbs). Probably the only circumfixes in English are en-
-en in enlighten and em- -en in embolden, which are essentially the same circumfix, as
we will see below. In older usage, however, the present participle could be formed using
the circumfix a- -ing: a- -ing in a-flying or a- -ing in a-caroling. Circumfixes are written
with initial and terminal hyphens.
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Sometimes, multiple affixations can take place. The original word, which is a free
morpheme, is known as the stem or root. We can attach affixes to it in a continual
manner:
anti- inter- govern -ment -al -ist
Here, govern is a root, anti- and inter- are prefixes, and -ment, -al and -ist are suffixes.
Inflection and Derivation

Inflectional Morphology
Illustration of the possible inflections of the Spanish word “gato”, meaning “cat”, for
gender and number.
Inflectional morphology is a type of morphology that deals only with the

grammatical function of the word. In other words, it marks the grammatical categories.
For example, you’d add -ing when you want to put a verb in the progressive aspect.
English only has eight inflectional morphemes, all of which are suffixes:
39
-s (after a noun) indicates plurality
-’s indicates the possessive case
-s (after a verb) indicates the third-person singular
-ing indicates the progressive aspect, or participles
-en indicates the perfect aspect in some irregular verbs
-ed indicates the past tense
-er indicates comparatives
-est indicates superlatives
Technically, -’s is actually not an affix, but a clitic. This is because it does not
necessarily attach to the end of a noun. For example, you can say The man from
Moscow’s book. Here, -’s attaches to Moscow, even though the book belongs to the man,
not Moscow. This shows that although -’s attaches itself onto another word, it functions,
in terms of its position in the sentence, like a word in its own right.
The types of inflection that occur depends very much on the language. The most common
grammatical categories marked by inflection are below:
Tense: Verbs are inflected based on when an action or stated occurred, such as -ed in
English.
Mood: Verbs are inflected based on the probability that the proposition is true (we will
look at propositions in the semantics chapter). For example, in English, we strip down
the verb to the root form in the imperative mood (Get out!) and the subjunctive
mood (that he get out, in sentences such as I insisted that he get out). This is a ‘zero
morpheme’, which we will cover below.
Person: Verbs are inflected based on the subject, such as -s for the third person in
English.
Number: Words are inflected based on the number, such as -s for plural nouns in
English. Note that some languages, like Chinese, have no plurals, while others, like
Arabic, can have a dual value, i.e. two, that is distinct from plurality.
Gender: Words are inflected based on noun class, such as -e for French adjectives. For
example, in French, you would say un homme chantant (a singing man) but une femme
chantante (a singing woman). Note how chantant (‘singing’) becomes chantante.
Aspect: Words are inflected based on whether it is finished, such as -ing and -ed/-en in
English. Comparison: Adjectives are positive (no inflection in English), comparative (-
er in English) or superlative (-est in English).
Case: Nouns are marked according to their roles in a sentence. For example, in
Latin, nauta (‘sailor’) is in the nominative case (subject position), nautae is in
the genitive case (usually marks possession) or the dative case (marks indirect objects),
and nautam is in the accusative case (marks direct objects).
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Evidentiality: Although it is not present in major languages, a quarter of the world’s
languages have this category. Consider this example from McLendon (2003):
Evidentials in Eastern Pomo

Evidential type Example verb Gloss
“burned”
nonvisual sensory pʰa·békʰ-ink’e
[speaker felt the sensation]
“must have burned”
inferential pʰa·bék-ine [speaker saw circumstantial
evidence]
“burned, they say”
hearsay (reportative) pʰa·békʰ-·le
[speaker is reporting what was told]
“burned”
direct knowledge pʰa·bék-a [speaker has direct evidence,
probably visual]
Sometimes, a single inflection can handle multiple grammatical categories. For

example, in French, the suffix -ions can mark:
First person + Plural number + Subjunctive mood: que nous allions

First person + Plural number + Imperfect tense: Nous allions
It is important to note that grammatical categories are not always marked by

inflection. They can also be marked using function words.
Derivational Morphology
While English is poor in inflectional morphology, it has a complicated system of
deriving new words from old.
Word-formation processes:
Concatenative morphology
Concatenation is a process which deals with the formation of new lexical items
by putting at least two distinct morphemes together. Concatenative processes are by far
the ones which happen to be the most productive in the Indio-European language family.
Thus, they are of major concern when it comes to discussing word-formation processes
in English. These include compounding, affixation and incorporation. Their presence in
the language varies with the last one being even non-existent in English.
Non-concatenative morphology
When a word is created as a result of linguistic operations on one morpheme,
such process belongs to the branch of non-concatenation. Here are some examples:
Clipping/Truncation: A polysyllabic word is reduced. Advert and ad are clipped
from advertisement.
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Apocope/Back-clipping:
We cut off all but the beginning of the word, like hippo from hippopotamus.
Apheresis/Fore-clipping:
We cut off all but the end of the word,
like bot from robot and phone from telephone.
Syncope:
We cut off the middle part. This is rare and occurs in ma’am from madam.
Mixed clipping:
We cut off both the beginning and the end, e.g. fridge from refrigerator.
Hypocorism:
It is a type of clipping associated with child talk. We take the first syllable, then
add an /i/ sound to the end. Examples are Aussie and telly.
Backformation:
A word is reduced to a simpler form by removing a supposed affix,
e.g. swindler (noun) → swindle (verb).
Conversion:
A word is changed to another category without changing its form at all,
e.g. chair (noun) → chair (verb). Many linguists suggest, however, that this is a case
of zero-derivation, which means an empty morpheme is concatenated with the word.
Ablaut
Reduplication:
An element of a word is repeated. This is not found in English. Chinese uses
reduplication for a variety of purposes. For example, qiao (knock) is reduplicated to
produce qiaoqiao, which can be used as a polite command to knock once.
Acronymisation:
An acronym becomes a word. Scuba (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing
Apparatus), radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) and laser (Light Amplification by
Stimulated Emission of Radiation) are common examples.
Other Morphemes
Certain processes which apply to words are often considered to be “morphemes”,
despite having no single surface realization.
Other Theories of Morphology
Lexeme-based morphology views words as being the result of the application of

rules to lexemes, rather than the concatenation of morphemes.
42
Word-based morphology or Realizational morphology views what would
traditionally be considered derived or inflected words to be paradigms which bear
internal similarity and often systematic relationships to other paradigms due to analogy.
---ooOoo---
Unit 7: Syntax
Introduction
The field of syntax looks at the mental ‘rules’ that we have for forming sentences
and phrases. In English, for instance, it is grammatical to say ‘I speak English’, but
ungrammatical to say ‘English speak I’ — this is because of a rule which says that
subjects normally precede verbs which precede the object.
Academic syntacticians often study either the grammar of a particular language,

or study the various theories of a generative grammar — a theory which claims there is
a universal underlying grammar in our heads, which different languages activate in
different ways. The main concern of generative grammar is discovering the grammatical
rules which apply to all languages, and determining how the manifest differences in
world languages can be accounted for.
However, there are many competing theories which do not make — or at least
remain neutral on — such a strong claim regarding a universal grammar. They include
construction grammar and cognitive linguistics. There are a number of grammatical
theories that stand more or less in opposition to the perspectives of generative grammar,
like systemic functional grammar or word grammar.
At the level of syntax, it is important to understand the distinction between

grammaticality and semantic soundness. Sentences such as Me Tarzan, you Jane clearly
make sense even though they sound “wrong”. Conversely, the sentence Colorless green
ideas sleep furiously, famously created by Noam Chomsky, doesn’t sound ‘wrong’ in the
way the last sentence did, but it is hard to imagine anything which it would describe. We
can say that these two aspects of acceptability vary independently: grammaticality,
or well-formedness, gives the rules for how sentences must be constructed, but does not
restrict their content, while semantic acceptability may occur even in ill-formed
sentences. When we say that something may occur grammatically, we mean that well-
formedness is preserved, with complete disregard for semantics.
Units
The basic units of syntax are words and clitics. A word is the smallest free form
in language that can be spoken in isolation or in varying positions within a sentence and
retain its semantic and pragmatic content, which we can informally refer to as its
meaning. As we’ve seen, a clitic is syntactically indistinguishable from a word, but,
unlike a word, it is phonologically dependent upon some other constituent of a sentence.
Lexical categories
43
In general, words and clitics can be divided into groups called lexical categories.
This grouping is accomplished by observing similarities in words and clitics according
to several factors, such as their distribution within a sentence, the types of affixes that
can be attached to them, and the type of meaning they express. All of these factors can
be taken into account together because words and clitics that correlate well with each
other according to one factor generally also correlate well according to the others. While
classifications according to meaning or inflection can sometimes remain subject to
significant ambiguity, tests of distribution are generally very reliable. Words of certain
categories are restricted to occurring or not occurring alongside words of other specific
categories, and these restrictions can allow simple determinations of category based on
distributions to be made.
While syntactic categories can vary somewhat from language to language, most
languages nonetheless possess a similar set of categories. A typical list of such categories
with their most common linguistic abbreviations is given as follows:
Noun (N)
Proper noun (PN)
Pronoun (Pr)
Verb (V)
Adjective (A)
Adposition (P)
Adverb (Adv)
Degree word (Deg)
Auxiliary (Aux)
Modal auxiliary (Mod)
Interjection (I)
Determiner (D or Det)
Conjunction (Con)
Coordinate conjunction (Co)
Subordinate conjunction (Sub)
The twice-indented categories can often be treated as simply a part of the

categories they fall under; treating them separately is unnecessary for the purposes of
most basic syntactic investigation.
The last several categories in the list, from degree words onward, are referred to
as functional categories in contrast with other lexical categories because their words have
little lexical meaning but instead express such things as grammatical relationships and
functions between other words in a sentence. Words that fit these criteria but cannot be
comfortably placed in any group are sometimes given the generic label of particle (Par),
though the term ‘particle’ generally refers to a much broader set of words and clitics than
this, also encompassing some conjunctions, interjections, determiners, etc.
Constituent structure
Theories of syntax generally view sentences as being made up of constituents,

which are either made up of constituents themselves or are irreducible units. Constituents
44
which are made up of multiple words are traditionally known as phrases. For now, we
provisionally use this traditional definition. However, some refinements of the theory of
constituent structure give a different and more specific meaning to the term “phrase”,
which permits the existence of certain types of one-word phrases; we will encounter this
meaning later.
Constituent Categories
For each lexical category, there is a corresponding constituent or phrasal

category, and taken together, these are referred to as syntactic categories. Each
constituent is assigned to one of these categories according to much the same criteria as
those used for assigning words and clitics to lexical categories. Consequently, because
of the reliable distribution factor, constituents of a category generally may always appear
in the same position in a sentence. For instance, in the sentence
(1a) I see _____
Constituents of the same category as the big man (e.g. the doll, a fast, red car, this
quickly-moving snowflake, Barack Obama) may occur in the gap, whereas constituents
similar to “eats pie” (e.g. “drives fast”, “writes a letter”) cannot. Note that certain phrases
similar to the acceptable constituents, such as doll or happy camper, do not.
The particular structure that can fit into our blank will, for the purpose of this
book, be called a noun phrase (NP). Now, let’s alter (1a) a bit and obfuscate the
word see as well:
(1b) I _________
There are various types of phrases that can fit into this sentence, including fly, am
completely fed up with this, read a book of linguistics and have been struggling for years
to understood linguistics in vain. Note that the final sentence is still acceptable, even
though it’s very long. These are called verb phrases (VP) in this book.
There are two other basic types of phrases. They fit into (1c) and (1d) respectively:
(1c) I feel ______. (1d) There is a book ______.
(1c) can be filled by happy, foolish or a little squirmy. These are adjective phrases (AP).
(1d) can be filled by on the table, in the drawer or at school. These are prepositional
phrases (PP).
The type of analysis we are doing here is structural analysis. We are trying to
analyse what sort of constituent we can plug inside a certain part of our sentence.
However, this does not allow us to see the forest for the trees.
Constituent Analysis
Since our previous analysis has proven to be insufficient, we can take another
approach, known as constituent analysis.
45
Hierarchical Organization of Constituents
Yet constituent analysis is still not enough. In constituent analysis, we viewed our
sentences as simple blocks of constituents that can be lumped together in various ways,
but actual sentences in language do not work that way. Consider this sentence:
(2a) I hit the big man
Reflecting upon the meaning of this sentence, we see that there are three semantic
components of what is being stated:
There is an action occurring, which is hitting.

The speaker is the person performing the action.
The big man is the person undergoing the action.
Thus it seems natural that “I”, “hit”, and “the big man” should function as units, while “I
hit the” and “hit the big” should not. This was not clear in our previous analysis.
In addition, there seems to be a hierarchical organisation in the sentence. The

phrase hit the big man likely makes sense to you, since it describes a real action: hitting
a big man. However, I hit does not make sense: hit is a transitive verb which needs an
object. This seems to tell us that I and hit the big man are two larger constituents, known
as subjectand predicate in traditional grammar. For now, sentence (2a) can be separated
into constituents like this:
(2b) [I [hit [the big man] ] ]
We can fill up our bracketed sentence with our lexical and constituent categories to
produce this:
(2c) S[ Pr[I] VP[ V[hit] NP[ Det[the] Adj[big] N[man] ] ] ]
Rewrite rules
Going back to our previous example, let’s look at a larger set of phrases which
can be inserted into (1a);
a cat; a dog; a fast, red car; a paper; a small toy

the big man; the doll; the house; the zebra
this Argentinian hyena; this umpire; this quickly-moving snowflake
that big-scale event; that wolf
every impressively large elephant; every person
Barack Obama; Nelson Mandela; Mao Zedong
He; she; it
What can we incur from these phrases? Well, we find that they have one of three
structures:
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Proper noun
Pronoun
Determiner + Noun, sometimes with an adjective in between
We can thus produce a rewrite rule:
(3a) NP → {PN, Pr, Det (Adj) N}
Where the braces indicate ‘choose one from the set’ and the round brackets indicate
optionality.
Similarly, we can produce a rewrite rule for verb phrases and sentences:
(3b) VP → V (NP) (Adv)

(3c) S → NP VP
All of the rewrite rules so far are phrase structure rules, which deal with phrases. We also
need lexical rules to inject the lexicon into our grammar. Let’s add some lexical rules:
(3d) Pr → {he, she, it, I}

(3e) PN → {Chomsky, Jackendoff, Pinker}
(3f) Det → {this, that, the, a, my, some}
(3g) Adj → {happy, green, lucky, colourless}
(3h) N → {computer, book, homework idea}
(3i) V → {defended, attacked, do, eat, slept, poisoned}
(3j) Adv → {furiously, happily, noisily}
Using these rules, we can produce sentences:
We start with a simple S.

We rewrite S as NP VP.
We rewrite NP as PN and VP as V.
We rewrite NP as He and VP as slept.
This gives us our final sentence: He slept. Here are some other possible sentences:
Chomsky defended a green idea furiously.
This green computer attacked Jackendoff.

She poisoned Pinker noisily.
It slept furiously.
Obviously, our grammar is not perfect. There are many things that we did not
take into account when we produced this very simplified grammar. However, this should
give us a general idea of how rewrite rules work, and that will suffice in our beginner’s
book.
---ooOoo---
47
UNIT 8:
MID TERM
Subject : Linguistics for Language Teacher

Time : 70 minutes
Date :----------
Lecturer : Ahmad Idris Adh./Siyaswati
Instruction
You are allowed to open any book or dictionary to do this test. However, you are
strictly requested to work independently. Try to answer the questions (in your own
English) on the basis of your understanding from our daily meetings. Do not copy
any sentences from any source any answer similar to any source or friend is deemed
wrong. Answer the questions briefly and accurately.
1. (a) What is a phoneme? (b) How many phonemes are there in these words:
SPECTACULARLY, PSYCHIATRISTS, WYOMING?
2. (a) As a branch of linguistics, what is morphology? (b) How many

morphemes are there in these words: JUSTIFICATION, UNLIMITED,
TESTIFYING?
3. How many kinds of meanings are there in linguistics? Mention at least three
different meanings and give examples to support your definitions.
4. Put this sentence into 2 (two) different tree diagrams so that it is clear the
ambiguity: “She talked to the man with the mobile phone”.
5. How would you prove that linguistics is science? Explain and give example
if necessary to support your answer.
---ooOoo---
➔ Learning is making a change for oneself; from not knowing something to

knowing something. Or more precisely, from not understanding something
to understanding something. Thus, sitting in a class and coming out without
any change is not learning. It is only wasting time.
So, have we learned so far?
48
Unit 9: Syntax Trees
Introduction
Bracketed sentences can get fairly ugly, as you’ve no doubt seen above. Most
syntacticians now use another technique known as syntax trees to map sentences in a
schematic manner. Each of constituent is known as a node. Nodes are connected
by branches.
Lexical categories are terminal nodes as they do not branch out further.
Phrases are usually made of two constituents. This is known as the binary branching
condition. The head is defined to be the obligatory element which gives the phrase its
defining properties, generally including the constituent category of the phrase. For verb
phrases, for example, the head is the verb.
For instance, this is the syntax tree of the sentence I hit a man:
You may be wondering how we could fit big in the sentence without violating the
binary branching condition. In fact, there are more layers involved than meets the eye,
but the other layers will not be presented here.
Movement
49
Recall from the introduction that sentences have a different structure in our minds
than are actually produced. The process of deriving the surface structure from the deep
structure is called movement since it involves moving things around. English has many
types of movements that apply to a wide variety of situations. Compare:
(4a) It seems that Wikibooks is useful.

(4b) Wikibooks seems to be useful.
(5a) You will try to steal what?
(5b) What will you try to steal?
(6a) Volunteers wrote the Linguistics textbook.
(6b) The Linguistics textbook was written by volunteers.
In the above set, the a-sentence is the deep structure, and the b-sentence is the
surface structure. Note that (5a) is not normally produced except in the case of echo
questions, such as the following situation:
(7a) A: The best website on the Internet is Wikipedia.

(7b) B: The best website on the Internet is what?
B was echoed A’s question because of disbelief, perhaps because he considers Wikibooks
to be the single best website.
Note:
Wikibooks are books published by Wikimedia Incorporation.
Let’s look at one specific type of movement: inversion in interrogative sentences.

Before we can do that, let’s change our rewrite rules a bit:
(8a) S → NP (Aux) VP
(8b) Aux → {will, may, might do}
This caters for sentences like this, which readers are likely intimately familiar with:
(9a) I will do my homework.
Now, let’s turn it into a question:
(9b) Will I do my homework?
Can you generalize a rule for this type of inversion? Here it is:
(10) NP Aux VP ⇒ Aux NP VP
Let’s wrap up by looking at the two trees.
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⇒
Again, this does not satisfy the binary branching condition, but how to alter the
tree to satisfy it is not within the scope of our book.
Recursion
Adjuncts
One of the most important features of human language is the ability to

process recursion, which is why it must be introduced in our book, even though it is a
more advanced concept. When we have an NP a book, we can expand the NP several
times: a book on the desk, a book on the desk in the classroom, etc. Each time, it remains
a noun phrase. This is known as recursion.
PPs are not the only phrases that can be added to another phrase recursively. Here
are some other examples:
Adverbials:
Colourless green ideas sleep furiously all day long.
Participle phrases:
He was standing by the door impatiently, waiting for John.
Complement clauses
Another notable type of recursion in linguistics is the complement phrase.

Consider the following:
I think John is a genius.

John is happy that I think he is a genius.
It is surprising that John is happy that I think he is a genius.
I believe that it is surprising that John is happy that I think he is a genius.
51
that is known as a complementiser (C) in English as it is capable of
producing complement clauses. We can generate lots of sentences in a recursive manner.
Other common complementisers are below:
I was asking whether John was happy or not.

He is wondering if I think he is a genius.
It would be strange for him to consider me a genius.
The clauses followed by a complementiser are called complement clauses. Note that
complementisers were erroneously classified as subordinating conjunctions in traditional
grammar!
Grammatical relations
Constituents bear grammatical relation (or grammatical function), which

determines how they behave syntactically within a proposition.
In a simplified analysis, the sentence may be viewed as generally consisting of

three major constituents, which play the grammatical roles of subject, object, and verb.
---ooOoo---
52
Unit 10: Semantics
Introduction
Semantics is the study of meaning. There are two types of meaning: conceptual
meaning and associative meaning. The conceptual meaning of the word sea is something
that is large, filled with saltwater, and so on. This meaning is true for everyone. The
associative meaning might be pirates, shipwreck, storms, battle and so on. These
associations vary from person to person. The conceptual meaning of concise is expressed
in few words, but concise being a good thing is part of the associative meaning.
Reference and Sense
Reference refers to what an expression refers to in the real world. For

example, Wikibooks refers to the website where you can find this book. Barack
Obama refers to the first black president of the United States. In the sentence Jimmy
Wales, who founded Wikipedia, is an intelligent man, who refers to Jimmy Wales.
Constant reference occurs when an expression always refers to the same thing, regardless
of context. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea usually has constant reference,
as does Noam Chomsky. Smith, Mary and the dog do not have constant reference.
Sense is different from reference in that sense does not take care of objects in the
real world. When you look in a dictionary, most of the definitions you get tell you the
senses of the words. Consider this extract from dictionary’s entry on plane:
An airplane; an aeroplane.
A level or flat surface.
A level of existence or development.
53
None of these are related to actual aeroplanes or surfaces in the real world. They are
senses.
Semantic Features
To express meaning, we use semantic features. For example, castle is something

that with the features [+large, +building, +fortified]. A house that is easy to attack
wouldn’t be a castle because it does not necessarily have the [+fortified] feature. We can
even list semantic features as a table:
large building fortified

Castle + + +
palace + + -
planet + - -
Fort - + +
Sometimes, a sentence is syntactically correct, but semantically meaningless.

Let’s revisit Chomsky’s example:
(1a) Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
Obviously, this sentence doesn’t make sense to us at all. We can often determine what
words can fit into a sentence by using semantic features. Consider this example:
(1b) The N[+living] was killed.
This would prevent us from saying ‘the homework was killed’ or ‘the building was
killed’.
Lexical Relations
A lexical relation is the relationships between the meanings of words. Here are
some important lexical relations:
Homophony:
When two words have the same pronunciation, but are written differently and mean
different things, such as bare and bear.
Homonymy:
When two words have the same pronunciation and spelling, but mean different things,
such as the verb bear and the noun bear.
Polysemy:
When a single word has multiple meanings. For example, the verb bear can
mean tolerate, but also bring (he bore gifts) or have (they bear a certain resemblance).
54
Synonymy:
When two words are close in meaning, such as the synonyms insinuate and suggest.
Although they are similar, they are not identical.
Antonymy:
When two words have opposite meanings, such as the unmarked pair of
antonyms happy and sad or the marked pair of antonyms unhappy and happy.
There are two types of antonyms:
Gradable antonyms:
These are words with various degrees, such as happy and sad. Not happy is not the same
as sad.
Non-gradable antonyms:
These are words without degrees; it’s either one way or the other, such as on and off.
Your computer is either one or the other: it is not onindicates it is off.
Reversives:
Sometimes, with a pair of antonyms X and Y, not X does not imply Y. For example, I
did not close the windows does not imply I opened the windows. These are reversives.
Converse or Reciprocal antonym:

If A happened before B, then B must have happened after A. If A is B’s parent, then B
is A’s child. This relationship is called converse.
Hyponymy:
When one word indicates a category of things that is a subset of the category of things
indicated by another word. For example, child is a hyponym of human, which is a
superordinate of child. Child and adult are called cohyponyms.
Prototype:
Sometimes, a certain hyponym is more representative of the superordinate than most. For
example, when you hear the word ‘fish’, you probably don’t think about weird fish like
seahorses or swordfish. You are more likely to think of, say, salmon, which is said to be
the prototype of the hyponymy.
Metonymy:
When a word is used in place of another related word. For example, you can say he found
solace in the bottle if you want to express the idea that he drank alcohol to comfort
himself. Using bottle instead of alcohol is metonymy.
Synecdoche:
It is a type of metonymy when you’re substituting a word for a part of it, e.g. farm hands.
Metaphor:
55
When a word is replaced with another because of similar attributes. For example, the
Chinese word for communication, goutong, originally meant ‘to merge two river
channels into one by dreding’.
Transferred epithet:
It is when a word, usually an adjective, describes another word, but actually describes a
third concept. For example, happy in a happy morning describes not the morning, but the
mood of the speaker during the morning.
Collocation:
When two words go well with each other, such
as deliver and speech, formulate and policy, and interesting and proposition. These are
found by looking at statistics in a corpus, or a collection of language in use.
Semantic Roles
The role played by a word in expressing meaning is called the semantic

role or thematic role. Here are some common ones:
Agent/Actor:
The ‘doer’ of an action, like the cat in The cat scratched the sofa.
Theme or Patient:
The ‘receiver’ of the action, like the sofa in The cat scratched the sofa.
Experiencer:
Someone or something that ‘experiences’ the situation, like the child in The child saw
the cat scratching the sofa.
Instrument:
Something that the agent uses to do something, like its paws in The cat scratched the sofa
with its paws.
Recipient:
Something or someone that receives something, like the cat in The child gave the cat its
food.
Time:
Surprisingly enough, that is the time when an action is done, such as midnight in The cat
scratch the sofa at midnight.
Propositions
A proposition is something that can either be true or false. Consider these examples:
(2a) Xi Jinping is the President of China.

(2b) Tomatoes are blood-sucking mammoths.
(2c) Is Wikibooks a city in Canada?
(2d) Get out of my house!
56
All of these are propositions. The first two are statements in which the truth value
of the propositions are asserted to be true, although the speaker of (2b) was clearly
mistaken. The third and fourth are a question and a command respectively; they are both
propositions, even though the speaker did not assert their truth values.
These sentences all have the same proposition:
(3a) Roses have thorns.

(3b) Plants of the genus rosa possess spinose structures.
(3c) Do roses have thorns?
(3d) Let roses have thorns!
Even though the sentences are different, the proposition is the same: roses have thorns.
---ooOoo---
Unit 11: Layers of Linguistics

Introduction 1
Pragmatics is the study of language at the discourse level; or, how language is
used. Pragmatics adds the importance of context to the study of language. Discourse
analysis takes things further, studying communication, such as dialogue or written texts.
As you may already have noticed, language is a hugely multifaceted entity. When
we learn how to write in school, we are taught that individual letters combine to create
words which are ordered into sentences that make up a composition. Spoken language is
similar, but the reality of language is much more subtle.
The structure of language may be separated into many different layers. On the
surface utterances are constructed out of sequences of sounds. The study of the
production and perception of these sounds is known as phonetics. These sounds pattern
are different in different languages.
The study of how they group and pattern is known as phonology. These groups
of sounds then combine to create words, which is morphology. Words must be ordered
in specific ways depending on a language’s syntax. The literal meaning assigned to
words and sentences is the semantic layer, and the meaning of sentences in context is
known as pragmatics. Each of these may be considered a branch of theoretical linguistics,
which studies the structure of models of language.
57
Don’t worry if it’s not yet clear to you what each of these subfields of linguistics
deals with. The first chapters of this book go through these fields layer by layer, building
up a clear picture of what linguistics is. We will then explore various topics of inquiry
which apply our linguistic knowledge of these layers to solve real-life problems, a pursuit
known as applied linguistics.
Pragmatics:
Pragmatics is the study of how context affects meaning. There are two types of
context: physical context (such as where a sign is located) and linguistic context (such as
preceding sentences in a passage).
Deixis
Deixis means ‘pointing’. Sometimes, in discourse, you may ‘point’ to a person,

time or place. Context is always necessary to understand deixis. Consider this example:
He saw a dog here last night.
There are three types of deictic expressions in this sentence:
Person deixis:
He is refers to a person, understood by the listener in context.
Spatial deixis:
Here refers to a place, understood by the listener in context.
Temporal deixis:
Last night refers to the night before the utterance of the sentence, which also depends on
context.
Reference
Reference means, as we have seen in the last chapter, to refer to something in the
real world. The problem is that, constant reference aside, context is usually needed to
determine the reference, and this is where pragmatics comes in. There are several topics
involved in reference:
Inference:
Sometimes, inference is needed to identify what a speaker is referring to. For example,
when we hear I played some Chopin on the piano, we can infer that ‘some Chopin’ refers
to piano works by Frederic Chopin.
Anaphora:
It occurs when we refer back to something previously mentioned. Take the following
example: I saw a strange guy last night. He was wearing a T-shirt with the Wikibooks
logo. I tried waving, but the guy didn’t respond. The anaphoric expressions he and the
guy (with a definite article) both refer back to a strange guy, which is the antecedent.
Presupposition
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Sometimes, there are hidden assumptions when we talk. A famous example is a
referendum in New Zealand which asked its citizens, ‘ Should a smack as part of good
parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand? ’ In this question, no matter
whether the answer is Yes or No, there is a common assumption: A smack is a part of
good parental correction. Constancy under negation - that the ‘No’ answer still admits
that smacking is ‘good parental correction’ - helps us identify this presupposition.
Here are some more examples of presupposition:
Where is your book about pragmatics? - The listener has a book about pragmatics.
Why do you like pragmatics? - The listener likes pragmatics.
Implicature
There are two main types of implicatureː
Conventional implicatureː
When a phrase implies something in any context. For example, ‘He is sometimes
nasty’ implies that he isn’t always nasty.
Conversational implicatureː
When the implicature depends on the context. we will look at conversational
implicature in the next chapter.
Implicature should not be confused with entailment (which is not covered in this
book) and presupposition. Implicatures are not logical necessities which you can deduce
from the sentence, while entailment and most presuppositions are.
Speech acts
According to speech act theory, the purpose of an utterance is not just to convey
the intended information. There are three levels of speech acts:
Locution: The act of saying an utterance.

Illocution: The purpose of saying an utterance.
Perlocution: The effect of saying an utterance.
Speech acts can be classified into two categories:
Direct:
The syntactic structure determines the illocutioanry force. For example, Please turn on
the fans. is a direct speech act asking the listener to turn on the fans, since it’s an
imperative sentence used as a command.
Indirect:
The speech act is not associated directly with the syntactic structure. For example, Could
you please turn on the fans? is an indirect speech act. It is an interrogative acting as a
command.
Searle’s classification
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Searle classified speech acts into five types:
Directive:
Refers to commands. Examples include Please turn on the fans., You should probably
turn on the fans. and Could you please turn on the fans?.
Expressive:
Expresses a feeling. Examples include Nice to meet you!, Why, oh why, did you
go? and I’m really excited about the camp.
Declarative:
The speech actually does something. An example is I hereby declare Wikibooks to be the
Website of the Year. In older systems, this is known as a performative. A common test
for declarations is to insert hereby before the verb and see if it works.
Commissive:
When you promise to do something in the future. Examples include I’ll be there by
noon and I’ll see what I can do about your request.
Representative:
This is the simplest. The speech act describes a state of affairs, e.g. I’m a little teapot.
Felicity conditions
The felicity conditions are conditions for the speech act to take effect. There are
many different conditions in the literature, but these are the most common:
Preparatory conditions: The speaker has the authority or ability to perform the act, and it
is the right situation for the speech act to take place. For example, if someone with no
knowledge of computers says I will fix the computer tomorrow, a preparatory condition
is not met.
Sincerity conditions:
The speaker must mean what he or she says. For example, if a son says Yes to his
mother when asked to tidy up his room, he may not really intend to clean it.
Essential conditions:
The listener should understand the purpose of the speech act. For example, if you
say, Let’s break the ice and the listener actually finds some ice and breaks it, the essential
condition is not met.
---ooOoo---
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Unit 12: Layers of Linguistics
Introduction
Coherence vs. Cohesion

In linguistics, we differentiate between coherence and cohesion. Cohesion is the
use of linguistic means to ‘tie’ material together. Examples of cohesive devices includeː
The use of connectives (but, if, however), the use of anaphora and definite expressions
to refer to previously mentioned concepts (the man, it)
The correct use of tenses and moods (He had done this before, but this time, the
situation was different).
But a cohesive text is not necessarily coherent:
Firstly, red apples are red. Secondly, such apples are very tasty. Moreover, tastiness is
quite subjective. Subjectivity affects our perception of apples.
This is a very cohesive text, but not coherent in the least. Coherence is more than
linguistics: It requires extralinguistic knowledge to judge whether a piece of discourse
‘makes sense’. By contrast, a text can be coherent yet not cohesive. In the next section,
we will see some of these situations, when we deal with the flouting of maxims.
In this unit these points will be discussed in brief:
- Grice’s Cooperative Principle, Maxims of Conversation & Conversational

Implicature
- The Cooperative Principle
- The Maxims of Conversation
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- Maxim Violations
- Natural Language vs. Logical Language
- More on Conversational Implicature
- Criticisms of the Maxims
Grice’s Cooperative Principle, Maxims of Conversation & Conversational

Implicature
The Cooperative Principle

A basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we
are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations. This
assumption is known as the Cooperative Principle. As stated in H. P. Grice’s “Logic and
Conversation” (1975):
Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which

it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged. In other words, we as speakers try to contribute meaningful, productive
utterances to further the conversation. It then follows that, as listeners, we assume that
our conversational partners are doing the same.
You can think of reasons why someone might be uncooperative in conversation

(maybe they’re being interrogated for information they don’t want to give up; maybe
they hate the person they’re talking to; maybe they’re just crazy) but in the vast majority
of conversations, it’s safe to assume that both participants are trying to be cooperative.
This assumption (that the cooperative principle holds, and the people we’re
speaking to are trying to cooperate) explains two things:
(i) why speech errors are often ignored (or even go unnoticed) in conversation. As long
as the meaning the speaker is trying to get across is clear, the listener usually gives them
the benefit of the doubt and focuses on the meaning.
(ii) why we can find meaning in statements which, on the surface, seem ridiculous, untrue
or unrelated (i.e. metaphors, sarcasm, overstatement, understatement, etc.) Rather than
assuming that our conversational partner is lying, crazy, or speaking at random, we
assume they’re trying to get across some meaning, and we can figure out what that
meaning is.
The Maxims of Conversation

Grice came up with the following maxims of conversation. (A “maxim” is kind
of like a rule of thumb. But these rules aren’t nearly as hard and fast as the Cooperative
Principle, as we’ll see.)
1. Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as required. (Don’t say too

much or too little.). Make the strongest statement you can.
2. Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you
lack adequate evidence.
3. Relation: Be relevant. (Stay on topic.)
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4. Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid
unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly.
The simplest way to think of Grice’s maxims is general rules we follow in conversation.
However, that’s not entirely accurate. The interesting thing about these “rules” is that
often, we don’t follow them.
Maxim Violations
There are several ways/reasons a speaker might break one of the rules:
1. Violating the Cooperative Principle. (See “Grice’s Cooperative Principle.”) One
instance in which a speaker might break the maxim of quality is if they are really trying
to deceive the listener; but this would also be a violation of the cooperative principle. For
the really interesting violations, let’s assume the Cooperative Principle holds.
2. Signaling a violation (minor violation). A person might essentially come out and tell
you they are violating a maxim and why.
Examples:
“I don’t know if this is relevant, but...” (relation)
“I’m not sure how to say this, but...” (manner)
“I can’t tell you; I’m sworn to secrecy.” (quantity)
“This is just the word on the street; I can’t vouch for this information.” (quality)
3. Maxim clash. A speaker might violate one maxim in order to preserve another.
Example: Carson is driving John to Meredith’s house.
CARSON: Where does Meredith live?

JOHN: Nevada.
Maxim Violated: Quantity.

Why: There is clash between quantity and quality. Carson is looking for a street address,
but John gives a weaker, less informative statement (hence the quantity violation). If John
really doesn’t know anything more specific, however, he cannot give a more informative
statement without violating quality.
4. “Flouting” a maxim (major violation) to create a conversational implicature. By

clearly and obviously violating a maxim, you can imply something beyond what you say.
Examples:
JOHN: Where’s Meredith?
ELIZABETH: The control room or the science lab.
Maxim Violated: Quantity; Elizabeth didn’t give as much information as John wanted
(Meredith’s exact location), but instead gave a weaker statement (giving two possible
options).
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Implication: Elizabeth doesn’t know which of the two places Meredith is.
SIMON: When are you coming home?

ELIZABETH: I will codify that question to my superiors and respond at such a time as
an adequate answer is preparable.
Maxim Violated: Manner; Elizabeth is using unnecessarily complicated and confusing

words and construction.
Implication: Elizabeth does not know or does not wish to give an answer to the question.
MEREDITH: You really love me?

JOHN: I like Ferris wheels, and college football, and things that go real fast.
Maxim Violated: Relation; John is changing the topic.

Implication: Either John doesn’t want to respond to Meredith (perhaps he has problems
discussing his feelings) or the answer is “no.”
ELIZABETH: A lot of people are depending on you.

MEREDITH: Thanks, that really takes the pressure off.
Maxim Violated: Quality; knowing that “a lot of people are depending on you” does
not, in fact, take the pressure off. Meredith is saying something obviously untrue.
Implication: By saying something clearly untrue, Meredith is implying that the opposite
is true (sarcasm). The true meaning being expressed here is probably more like “That
really puts a lot of pressure on me” and perhaps, by extension, “Stop pressuring me.”
More on Conversational Implicature

As you can see from the above examples, flouting maxims to create implications
can be a powerful and creative way to get across a point.
Why imply instead of just saying what we mean? Well, implication can get across
a great deal of meaning with relatively little actual speech. Thinking of what you want to
get across, and interpreting what other people have said, seems to take much quicker than
the relatively slow process of actually verbalizing all the necessary sounds. So saying a
little, while implying a lot, is a way to avoid this “phonological bottleneck” and
communicate more efficiently.
Of course, we’re not always saving time. Sometimes, maxim violations are
creative. After all, without this capacity to draw inferences and understand
implications—to assume that speakers are being cooperative even when they are saying
things which are on the surface untrue, irrelevant, ambiguous or unclear—we couldn’t
have neat stuff like sarcasm, metaphor, hyperbole, irony, etc.
Natural Language VS Logical Language

Here’s another way to understand the maxims. In Grice’s original paper
presenting the maxims, he explained them as systematic ways that natural language
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differs from logical language. If you’ve had any exposure to symbolic logic, you know
that there’s a difference between, for example, the logical statement Meredith is in the
control room ∨ (OR) Meredith is in the science lab and the natural language statement
Meredith is in the control room or the science lab.
All we know about the logical statements is that at least one of the propositions
is true. But we know more than that about the natural language statement: we know (or,
we have a good reason to assume) that the speaker doesn’t know which of the two places
Meredith is, or they would say so. According to the maxim of quantity, a person shouldn’t
give a weaker statement when a stronger one is available. But logical language has no
such rules about cooperation. If we used strictly logical language, the weaker statement
would be equally acceptable, as long as it was true. (This natural/ logical language
distinction also explains why we get so mad when people do smartass things like say
“Yes” to the question “Can you pass the salt?” We then fix them with a withering glare
and say “You know what I mean.”).
Some people have argued that natural language is inferior to logical language
because it is less precise and more ambiguous, but using the maxims and the idea of
implicature, Grice argued that natural language, while different, is just as good. Indeed,
more often than not, listeners do know what the speaker means, even if it’s not explicitly
stated.
Criticisms of the Maxims
• It’s not clear whether the maxims work in other languages and cultures.
• Some key concepts are undefined. A lot of intuition must be used to figure out, for
example, when a speaker is being irrelevant.
• They’re not a complete listing of the rules we follow in conversation; for example, there
are also rules about, say, politeness, which are not addressed.
• There is some overlap, so it’s not always clear-cut which maxim is being violated. For
example, take a dialogue like this:
JOHN: Are you done yet?

MEREDITH: Well, let’s see, I’ve had to deal with seven near-catastrophic systems
failures in the last four hours, Elizabeth dragged me to four different useless meetings,
and someone replaced my regular coffee with decaf, so I’m only just getting caffeine in
my system and I still have to track down whoever did it and slowly eviscerate them, which
is a little higher on my to-do list at the moment than fixing your stupid computer, so no,
no, I’m not done yet, actually.
JOHN: Jeez, a simple “no” would have sufficed.
It looks like this is a quantity violation (too much information), but it could also be argued
that it is a violation of relation (since the extra information Meredith volunteers is largely
irrelevant to the question John asked). It could further be argued that this lengthy tirade
violates manner, since it’s unnecessarily prolix (wordy). It’s also probable that Meredith
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is exaggerating about the level of seriousness of the systems failures and about killing
that guy, so a quality violation is also likely.
---ooOoo---
Unit 13: Psycholinguistics

Introduction
Psycholinguistics is the study of how people understand language. It can cover a

number of fields, and provide important insights into our understanding of language.
Methodologies
Verbal Behavior
B.F.Skinner’s Verbal Behavior represents a conceptual, theoretical extension of

his powerful inductive approach innovated with lower organisms. This approach posits
that language, or what Skinner calls Verbal Behavior, is best explored in terms of
functional relationships.
This view represents a view opposed to the traditional hypothetico-deductive

approaches to language that are largely driven by speculative theories and not integrative,
data-driven theories.
Skinner’s view of Verbal Behavior was widely viewed to have been

“demolished” by Noam Chomsky’s critique. However, astute readers will have noted
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that little of what Chomsky said actually applied to Skinner’s work. See, for example,
Ken Maccorquodale’s On Chomsky’s Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior.
A general statement of the widely held perception is that Chomsky said almost
nothing about Skinner’s work. Skinner’s inductively driven conceptual extension to
human verbal behavior has seen an enormous resurgence in applied settings in the
treatment of autistic children who were considered “untreatable” by normal approaches.
Skinner’s position is that human verbal behavior is, like other behavior, driven by the
four-term contingency analysis discovered and refined in laboratory work: one or more
motivating operations (MO), one or more discriminative stimuli (Sd), one or more
responses (R), and one or more reinforcing stimuli (Sr) make up the four term
contingency. Human verbal behavior is analyzable in this functional context.
Children, then, learn language as a function of thousands of instances of verbal

prompting, shaping and reinforcement.
Grammar is universal in the sense that the world is universal. The same speakers
in all of the world deal with the same world and so speak about it in similar ways. Human
language is too young to be a part of the human genetic endowment.
Speech and Comprehension Errors
Although it is hard to cut up brains to discover how they work, there are still clues
as to how our brains process language. Speech errors are one of these. There are several
speech errors produced even by normal people. Here are several examples:
Tip of the tongue (TOT) phenomenon: It occurs when we can’t retrieve an entire word
from our brains, but have a vague idea of what its phonological structure, such as its first
letter, number of syllables or stress pattern. This phenomenon suggests that words are
stored in our brains based on phonological information. Sometimes, we say another,
similar word in place of it; this is called malapropism. For example, a baseball player
once said ‘Texas has a lot of electrical votes’ instead of ‘Texas has a lot of electoral
votes’.
Slip of the tongue: It occurs when we know how words are pronounced, but still
make errors as we produce the word. A specific type of slip is spoonerism, in which
initial sounds of words are switched. It is named after William Spooner, a clergyman at
Oxford, who famously made spoonerisms such as ‘You have hissed all my mystery
lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next town drain.’
Slip of the ear/Mondegreen: It occurs when we hear an expression but interpret it

as a near-homophonic one. An example is Gladly the cross-eyed bear in the hymn Keep
Thou My Way. The original sentence was Gladly the cross I bear.
These errors shed light on the difficulties that people with language disorders live
by. Some linguists have proposed models of how our brain processes language by
studying these speech errors in depth.
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Since human brain is the central discussion of psycholinguistics, below brief
discussion about brain is provided.
Brain Division
In general, the left hemisphere is dominant in language: processing what you hear
and handling most of the duties of speaking. It’s also in charge of carrying out logic and
exact mathematical computations. When you need to retrieve a fact, your left brain pulls
it from your memory. [5 Strange Facts About Memory]
The right hemisphere is mainly in charge of spatial abilities, face recognition and
processing music. It performs some math, but only rough estimations and comparisons.
The brain’s right side also helps us to comprehend visual imagery and make sense of
what we see. It plays a role in language, particularly in interpreting context and a person’s
tone.
As for whether a person is right-brained or left-brained or even right-handed or

left-handed the uses and preferences of the brain’s two sections are far more complex
than just a simple left vs. right equation. For example, some people throw a ball with
their right hand but write with their left. [Southpaw Stats: 11 Fun Facts About Lefties]
The brain carefully balances and assigns control of certain functions to each side
it’s all nature’s way of ensuring that the brain ultimately splits up tasks to maximize
efficiency. Most people are right-hand dominant which is actually controlled by the left
side of the brain.
“Brain asymmetry is essential for proper brain function,” professor Stephen

Wilson of University College London told Live Science, a sister site of Life’s Little
Mysteries. “It allows the two sides of the brain to become specialized, increasing its
processing capacity and avoiding situations of conflict where both sides of the brain try
to take charge.”
Since in psycholinguistics human brain is the central part of the discussion, below
are the topics that are usually discussed in PSYCHOLINGUISTICS.
1. The nature and methods of psycholinguistics (definitions, major topics,

differences in discipline of psycholinguistics and the teaching of
psycholinguistics);
2. First language VS second language acquisition: further studies and new topics
3. Psychological aspects of bilingualism (first language and second language);
4. Language development in human brain (brain, position of language, the
development of language, cognitive processes, etc.);
5. Language and the brain: aphasia, Broca’s aphasia, Vernicke’s aphasia, and
related sub-topics;
6. New findings in the relation between language and human brain
7. Human language VS animal communication: further studies
8. Language and Human behavior: Derek Bickerton
9. Language and understanding: further studies
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10 Language and meaning: further studies and discussions about the intended
meanings
11 Psycholinguistics and Foreign Language Teaching
12 Some prominent figures and their theories, new figures and their findings
13 New developments and findings in Psycholinguistics
Learning language = obtaining language intentionally, based on program, and structured.
Acquiring language = obtaining language unintentionally, not programmed, and not

structured.
First language:
- The language we learn first time after we were born. (time of mastery)
- The language that our mother (parents) use daily. (the origin of the speaker)
- The language that we master best. (competency)
Some linguists define Socio-linguistics as “the scientific study of language in

relations to social factors of the speaker”. Based on that, some linguists also define
Psycholinguistics as the scientific study of language in relations to psychological factors
of the speaker. Thus, Psycholinguistics is the combination between scientific study of
language and psychology.
Psycho- = psyche = brain
In relation to linguistics, Psycholinguistics is often defined as the scientific study

of language THAT DEALS WITH the development of language in human brain.
Language and the Brain
- Brain is divided into two parts

- Left hemisphere and right hemisphere
- Language is located in the left hemisphere: Vernicke and Broca areas
- Vernicke = the receptive area of language, Broca = the productive area of
language
Composition of human brain:
- Human brain consists of 10ⁱ⁵ cells called neurons

- One cell can make connections up to 10,000 connections called synapsis
- The speed of the connections is 00.1 second
- Only 30% of the whole brain is active, while 70% is passive (in the form of
files/memories)
- Only 16% out of 30% (16% from 30%) is active during a high order thinking (ex:
doing math assignment)
- If all 16% of the capacity functions at once, human may collapse.
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---ooOoo---
Unit 14: Second Language Acquisition

Introduction
What is second language acquisition (SLA)?
Second-language acquisition, second-language learning, or L2 (language

2) acquisition, is the process by which people learn a second language. Second-language
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acquisition (often abbreviated to SLA) is also the scientific discipline devoted to studying
that process.
The field of second-language acquisition is a sub-discipline of applied linguistics,

but also receives research attention from a variety of other disciplines, such as
psychology and education.
A central theme in SLA research is that of inter-language, the idea that the
language that learners use is not simply the result of differences between the languages
that they already know and the language that they are learning, but that it is a complete
language system in its own right, with its own systematic rules.
This inter-language gradually develops as learners are exposed to the targeted

language. The order in which learners acquire features of their new language stays
remarkably constant, even for learners with different native languages, and regardless of
whether they have had language instruction.
However, languages that learners already know can have a significant influence
on the process of learning a new one. This influence is known as language transfer. The
primary factor driving SLA appears to be the language input that learners receive.
Learners become more advanced the longer they are immersed in the language they are
learning, and the more time they spend doing free voluntary reading.
The input hypothesis developed by linguist Stephen Krashen makes a distinction

between language acquisition and language learning (acquisition–learning distinction),
claiming that acquisition is a subconscious process, whereas learning is a conscious one.
According to this hypothesis, the acquisition process in L2 is the same as L1

(Language 1) acquisition. The learning process is consciously learning and inputting the
language being learned. However, this goes as far as to state that input is all that is
required for acquisition.
Subsequent work, such as the interaction hypothesis and the comprehensible

output hypothesis, has suggested that opportunities for output and for interaction may
also be necessary for learners to reach more advanced levels.
Research on how exactly learners acquire a new language spans a number of

different areas. Focus is directed toward providing proof of whether basic linguistic skills
are innate (nature), acquired (nurture), or a combination of the two attributes.
Cognitive approaches to SLA research deal with the processes in the brain that
underpin language acquisition, for example how paying attention to language affects the
ability to learn it, or how language acquisition is related to short-term and long-term
memory. Sociocultural approaches reject the notion that SLA is a purely psychological
phenomenon, and attempt to explain it in a social context.
Some key social factors that influence SLA are the level of immersion,
connection to the L2 community, and gender. Linguistic approaches consider language
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separately from other kinds of knowledge, and attempt to use findings from the wider
study of linguistics to explain SLA.
There is also a considerable body of research about how SLA can be affected by
individual factors such as age, learning strategies, and affective factors. A commonly
discussed topic regarding age in SLA is the critical period hypothesis, which suggests
that individuals lose the ability to fully learn a language after a particular age in
childhood.
Another topic of interest in SLA is the differences between adult and child
learners. Learning strategies are commonly categorized as learning or communicative
strategies, and are developed to improve their respective acquisition skills.
Affective factors are emotional factors that influence an individual’s ability to

learn a new language. Common affective factors that influence acquisition are anxiety,
personality, social attitudes, and motivation. Individuals may also lose a language
through a process called second-language attrition. This is often caused by lack of use
or exposure to a language over time.
The severity of attrition depends on a variety of factors including level

of proficiency, age, social factors, and motivation at the time of acquisition. Finally,
classroom research deals with the effect that language instruction has on acquisition.
Second-language acquisition refers to what learners do; it does not refer to practices
in language teaching, although teaching can affect acquisition.
The term acquisition was originally used to emphasize the non-conscious nature
of the learning process, but in recent years learning and acquisition have become largely
synonymous. Most SLA researchers see bilingualism as being the end result of learning
a language, not the process itself, and see the term as referring to native-like fluency.
Writers in fields such as education and psychology, however, often use

bilingualism loosely to refer to all forms of multilingualism.
SLA is also not to be contrasted with the acquisition of a foreign language; rather,
the learning of second languages and the learning of foreign languages involve the same
fundamental processes in different situations.
Research background
The academic discipline of second-language acquisition is a sub-discipline
of applied linguistics. It is broad-based and relatively new. As well as the various
branches of linguistics, second-language acquisition is also closely related to
psychology, cognitive psychology, and education. To separate the academic discipline
from the learning process itself, the terms second-language acquisition research, second-
language studies, and second-language acquisition studies are also used.
SLA research began as an interdisciplinary field, and because of this it is difficult

to identify a precise starting date. However, two papers in particular are seen as
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instrumental to the development of the modern study of SLA: Pit Corder’s 1967
essay The Significance of Learners’ Errors, and Larry Selinker’s 1972
article Interlanguage.
The field saw a great deal of development in the following decades. Since the
1980s, SLA has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, and theoretical
perspectives. In the early 2000s, some research suggested an equivalence between the
acquisition of human languages and that of computer languages (e.g. Java) by children
in the 5 to 11 year age window, though this has not been widely accepted among
educators.
Significant approaches in the field today are: systemic functional linguistics,

sociocultural theory, cognitive linguistics, Noam Chomsky‘s universal grammar, skill
acquisition theory and connectionism.
There has been much debate about exactly how language is learned, and many
issues are still unresolved. There are many theories of second-language acquisition, but
none are accepted as a complete explanation by all SLA researchers. Due to the
interdisciplinary nature of the field of SLA, this is not expected to happen in the
foreseeable future.
Stages of acquisition
Haynes divided the process of second-language acquisition into five stages:
preproduction,
early production,
speech emergence,
intermediate fluency, and
advanced fluency.
The first stage, preproduction, is also known as the silent period. Learners at this
stage have a receptive vocabulary of up to 500 words, but they do not yet speak their
second language. Not all learners go through a silent period. Some learners start speaking
straight away, although their output may consist of imitation rather than creative
language use. Others may be required to speak from the start as part of a language course.
For learners that do go through a silent period, it may last around three to six months.
The second of Hayne’s stages of acquisition is early production, during which

learners are able to speak in short phrases of one or two words. They can also memorize
chunks of language, although they may make mistakes when using them. Learners
typically have both an active and receptive vocabulary of around 1000 words. This stage
normally lasts for around six months.
The third stage is speech emergence. Learners’ vocabularies increase to around

3000 words during this stage, and they can communicate using simple questions and
phrases. They may often make grammatical errors.
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The fourth stage is intermediate fluency. At this stage, learners have a vocabulary
of around 6000 words, and can use more complicated sentence structures. They are also
able to share their thoughts and opinions. Learners may make frequent errors with more
complicated sentence structures.
The final stage is advanced fluency, which is typically reached somewhere

between five and ten years of learning the language. Learners at this stage can function
at a level close to native speakers.
The time taken to reach a high level of proficiency can vary depending on the
language learned. In the case of native English speakers, some estimates were provided
by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the U.S. Department of State, which compiled
approximate learning expectations for a number of languages for their professional staff
(native English speakers who generally already know other languages).
Of the 63 languages analyzed, the five most difficult languages to reach

proficiency in speaking and reading, requiring 88 weeks (2200 class hours),
are: Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean.
The Foreign Service Institute and the National Virtual Translation Center both
note that Japanese is typically more difficult to learn than other languages in this group.
Comparisons with first-language acquisition

Adults who learn a second language differ from children learning their first language in
at least three ways:
children are still developing their brains whereas adults have conscious minds, and adults
have at least a first language that orients their thinking and speaking.
Although some adult second-language learners reach very high levels of proficiency,
pronunciation tends to be non-native. This lack of native pronunciation in adult learners
is explained by the critical period hypothesis.
When a learner’s speech plateaus, it is known as fossilization. Some errors that

second-language learners make in their speech originate in their first language. For
example, Spanish speakers learning English may say “Is raining” rather than “It is
raining”, leaving out the subject of the sentence. This kind of influence of the first
language on the second is known as negative language transfer.
French speakers learning English, however, do not usually make the same
mistake of leaving out “it” in “It is raining.” This is because pronominal and impersonal
sentence subjects can be omitted (or as in this case, are not used in the first place) in
Spanish but not in French. The French speaker knowing to use a pronominal sentence
subject when speaking English is an example of positive language transfer.
Also, when people learn a second language, the way they speak their first
language changes in subtle ways. These changes can be with any aspect of language,
from pronunciation and syntax to gestures the learner makes and the language features
74
they tend to notice. For example, French speakers who spoke English as a second
language pronounced the /t/ sound in French differently from monolingual French
speakers.
This kind of change in pronunciation has been found even at the onset of second-
language acquisition; for example, English speakers pronounced the English /p/, /t/, /k/
sounds, as well as English vowels, differently after they began to learn Korean.
These effects of the second language on the first led Vivian Cook to propose the
idea of multi-competence, which sees the different languages a person speaks not as
separate systems, but as related systems in their mind.
SLA is scientific study of how second language is acquired.
Second language acquisition, or sequential language acquisition, is learning a

second language after a first language is already established. Many times this happens
when a child who speaks a language other than English goes to school for the first time.
Children have an easier time learning a second language, but anyone can do it at any age.
It takes a lot of practice!
What is the best way to teach a second language?
There are many different things that factor into the decision about how to teach a
person a second language, including the following:
- language spoken in the home

- amount of opportunity to practice the second language
- internal motivation of the learner
- reason that the second language is needed (e.g., to learn at school, to talk to a
friend, or for work)
There are different ways that to introduce the second language:
- by setting (e.g., English is spoken only in the school, and Urdu is spoken only in
the home)
- by topic (e.g., French is spoken only during meal time, and Spanish is spoken
during school/work activities)
- by speaker (e.g., Mom will speak only in German, and Dad speaks Russian only)
The ability of a person to use a second language will depend on his or her family’s ability
to speak more than one language. It is important for parents/caregivers to provide a strong
language model. If you cannot use the language well, you should not be teaching it.
How can a speech-language pathologist help?
A speech-language pathologist (SLP) can provide elective services for

individuals who are learning English as a second language. These services are not
75
covered by insurance. The Preferred Practice Patterns for the Profession of Speech-
Language Pathology outline the common practices followed by SLPs when engaging in
various aspects of the profession.
Language Acquisition is the study of how children learn languages. It includes

the study of how phonology, lexicon, numbers, and morphology is acquired by both
children and adults.
Phonology
Children generally develop phonemes that are cross-linguistically more common,
before they develop rarer ones. For example, children tend to be slow to acquire the
English “th” sounds, pronouncing them as “d” and “t” and the “a” sound in American
English apple is likewise difficult. It may take as long as seven years for children to learn
all of a language’s phonemes.
Likewise, phonotactics may be difficult. The “str” cluster in “street” is rare cross-
linguistically, and difficult for children to pronounce, and they will tend to pronounce it
“sreet” at first.
Lexicon
Children learning languages fall into two types. They either learn social words
first, like “hi” and “more” or nouns, like “mama,” “dada,” and “doggy.”
Children are also limited in their lexicon, and will extend words they know to cover
similar cases. For example, the word “doggy” may be used to describe cats, cows, and
tables--anything with four legs.
Numbers
Children learn, 1, 2, and 3 in that order, and then suddenly learn to count.
---ooOoo---
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Unit 15: Sociolinguistics
Introduction
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.
Sociolinguistics studies the correlation between the social variable, e.g.,

ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education or class, and the linguistic variable,
or linguistic differences. 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.
Central to the discussion of sociolinguistics is style. It is a set of linguistic

variables that correspond to a certain value of a social variable.
Speech Communities
Speech communities can be members of a profession with a specialized jargon,
distinct social groups like high school students or hip hop fans, or even tight-knit groups
like families and friends.
A social network is another way of describing a particular speech community in

terms of relations between individual members in a community. A social network may
apply to the macro level of a country or a city, but also to the inter-personal level of
neighborhoods or a single family. Recently, social networks have been formed by the
Internet, through chat rooms, MySpace groups, organizations, and online dating services.
A network could be loose or tight depending on how members interact with each
other. For instance, an office or factory may be considered a tight community because all
members interact with each other. A large course with 100+ students would be a looser
community because students may only interact with the instructor and maybe one to two
other students. A multiplex community is one in which members have multiple
relationships with each other. For instance, in some neighborhoods, members may live
on the same street, work for the same employer and even intermarry.
The looseness or tightness of a social network may affect speech patterns adopted
by a speaker. For instance, linguists Sylvie Dubois and Barbara Horvath found that
speakers in one Cajun Louisiana community were more likely to pronounce English “th”
[θ] as [t] (or [ð] as [d]) if they participated in a relatively dense social network (i.e. had
strong local ties and interacted with many other speakers in the community), and less
likely if their networks were looser (i.e. fewer local ties).
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Closely related to the concept of speech communities is register. It is a particular
style of language used in a specific context, such as in a field of study like linguistic, a
profession like medicine, or a situation like ceremonies. Members of speech communities
will often develop specific vocabulary to serve the group’s special purposes and
priorities:
Jargon:
It is a type of specialised language used inside an established social group, like the legal
profession, e.g. tort, novation. It is often a means of excluding outsiders, which is why
legal jargon has been termed legalese.
Slang:
It is a type of colloquial language used outside those established social groups.
Taboo term (i.e. profanity): It is a type of language that is usually avoided out of
politeness. Note that these are not necessarily used to offend, e.g. that’s one hell of a
game. However, this type of language is avoided and frowned upon by established
groups.
Prestige
Crucial to sociolinguistic analysis is the concept of prestige. Certain speech habits are
assigned a positive or a negative value which is then applied to the speaker. This can
operate on many levels:
It can be realised on the level of the individual phoneme. The post-vocalic /r/ is used
among the upper class and avoided by the lower class in the USA, but the situation is
reversed in England.
It can be realised on the macro scale of language choice, as realised in the

various diglossias that exist throughout the world, where Swiss-German/High German is
perhaps most well-known.
An important implication of sociolinguistic theory is that speakers ‘choose’ a variety

when making a speech act, whether consciously or subconsciously.
There are actually two types of prestige:

Overt prestige: Prestige assigned to language features associated with the upper class.
Covert prestige: Prestige assigned to language features associated with the lower class.
Class aspirations affect the choice of style. Lower-class people who wish to move
upwards in the social ladder will likely adjust their speech habits to resemble speech with
high overt prestige. Hypercorrection sometimes occurs; for example, middle-class
citizens hoping to move upward have been known to assign the post-vocalic /r/ even
when it is not called for. Conversely, a lower-class person who, rather than hoping to
move upwards, values group solidarity among the lower class will likely use speech of
low overt prestige but high covert prestige, the language of their class.
Bernstein’s Code Theory: Social language codes

Basil Bernstein, a well-known British sociolinguist, devised in his
book Elaborated and restricted codes: their social origins and some consequences a social
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code system which he used to classify the various speech patterns for different social
classes. There were two codes:
Restricted code
In Basil Bernstein’s theory, the restricted code was an example of the speech
patterns used by the working-class. He stated that this type of code allows strong bonds
between group members, who tend to behave largely on the basis of distinctions such as
‘male’, ‘female’, ‘older’, and ‘younger’. This social group also uses language in a way
which brings unity between people, and members often do not need to be explicit about
meaning, as their shared knowledge and common understanding often bring them
together in a way which other social language groups do not experience. The difference
with the restricted code is the emphasis on ‘we’ as a social group, which fosters greater
solidarity than an emphasis on ‘I’.
The time when “restricted-code” matters is the day when children start school
where the standard variety of language is used. Moreover, the written form of a language
is already very different from the everyday form. Children with restricted-code,
therefore, struggle at school more than those who speak an “elaborated-code”.
The type of communication used by the working class reminds Paivio’s dual code theory.
According to Paivio, there are two types of codes; verbal and non-verbal.The dual coding
theory proposed by Paivio attempts to give equal weight to verbal and non-verbal
processing. Paivio (1986) states: “Human cognition is unique in that it has become
specialized for dealing simultaneously with language and with nonverbal objects and
events.
Moreover, the language system is peculiar in that it deals directly with linguistic
input and output (in the form of speech or writing) while at the same time serving a
symbolic function with respect to nonverbal objects, events, and behaviors. Any
representational theory must accommodate this dual functionality.” (p 53). The use of
context by members of working class to imply what they mean, therefore, may be a “non-
verbal code”. However, this type of communicative skills may not be understood by other
children who belong to other classes. What’s more, children with restricted-code may
have difficulty in understanding the teacher, the only source of information for them at
school. Therefore, it is suggested that working-class children should have pre-school
training within their early childhood period. Early schooling may provide them with
opportunities to acquire the way of speaking valid at school.
Elaborated code
Basil Bernstein also studied what he named the ‘elaborated code’ explaining that
in this type of speech pattern the middle and upper classes use this language style to gain
access to education and career advancement. Bonds within this social group are not as
well defined and people achieve their social identity largely on the basis of individual
disposition and temperament. There is no obvious division of tasks according to sex or
age and generally, within this social formation members negotiate and achieve their roles,
rather than have them there ready-made in advance. Due to the lack of solidarity the
elaborated social language code requires individual intentions and viewpoints to be made
explicit as the ‘I’ has a greater emphasis with this social group than the working class.
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Deviation from standard language varieties
A diagram showing variation in the English language by region

(the bottom axis) and by social class (the side axis).
The higher the social class, the less variation.
The existence of differences in language between social classes can be illustrated

by the following table:
Bristolian Dialect (lower class) ... Standard English (higher class)

I ain’t done nothing ... I haven’t done anything
I done it yesterday ... I did it yesterday
It weren’t me that done it ... I didn’t do it
Any native speaker of English would immediately be able to guess that speaker
1 was likely of a different social class than speaker 2, namely from a lower social class,
probably from a working class pedigree. The differences in grammar between the two
examples of speech are referred to as differences between social class dialects or
sociolects.
It is also notable that, at least in England and Australia, the closer to standard
English a dialect gets, the less the lexicon varies by region, and vice-versa.
Covert prestige
It is generally assumed that non-standard language is low-prestige language.
However, in certain groups, such as traditional working-class neighborhoods, standard
language may be considered undesirable in many contexts. This is because the working
class dialect is a powerful in-group marker, and especially for non-mobile individuals,
the use of non-standard varieties (even exaggeratedly so) expresses neighborhood pride
and group and class solidarity. There will thus be a considerable difference in use of non-
standard varieties when going to the pub or having a neighborhood barbecue (high), and
going to the bank (lower) for the same individual.
Style Shifting
Speech Accomodation
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Internal vs. external language
In Chomskian linguistics, a distinction is drawn between I-language (internal

language) and E-language (external language). In this context, internal language applies
to the study of syntax and semantics in language on the abstract level; as mentally
represented knowledge in a native speaker. External language applies to language in
social contexts, i.e. behavioral habits shared by a community. Internal language analyses
operate on the assumption that all native speakers of a language are quite homogeneous
in how they process and perceive language. External language fields, such as
sociolinguistics, attempt to explain why this is in fact not the case. Many sociolinguists
reject the distinction between I- and E-language on the grounds that it is based on a
mentalist view of language. On this view, grammar is first and foremost an interactional
(social) phenomenon (e.g. Elinor Ochs, Emanuel Schegloff, Sandra Thompson).
Sociolinguistic interview
Sociolinguistic interviews are an integral part of collecting data for
sociolinguistic studies. There is an interviewer, who is conducting the study, and a
subject, or informant, who is the interviewee. In order to get a grasp on a specific
linguistic form and how it is used in the dialect of the subject, a variety of methods are
used to elicit certain registers of speech. There are five different styles, ranging from
formal to casual:
Minimal pairs (MP): The most formal style would be elicited by having the subject read
a list of minimal pairs.
Word list (WL): Having the subject read a will elicit a formal register, but generally not
as formal as MP.
Reading passage (RP): The style is next down on the formal register
Interview style (IS): This is when an interviewer can finally get into eliciting a more
casual speech from the subject. During the IS the interviewer can converse with the
subject and try to draw out of them an even more casual sort of speech by asking him to
recall childhood memories or maybe a near death experience, in which case the subject
will get deeply involved with the story since strong emotions are often attached to these
memories.
Casual style (CS): This is the most sought-after type of speech. This type of speech is
difficult if not impossible to elicit because of the Observer’s Paradox. This means that
the subject will adjust his or her speech because of the presence of the linguist, and will
switch to a more formal style. The closest one might come to CS in an interview is when
the subject is interrupted by a close friend or family member, or perhaps must answer the
phone. CS is used in a completely unmonitored environment where the subject feels most
comfortable and will use their natural vernacular without overtly thinking about it.
---ooOoo---
81
UNIT 16:
FINAL TERM
Subject : Linguistics for Language Teaching

Time : 70 minutes
Date :----------
Lecturer : Ahmad Idris Adh./ Siyaswati
Instruction
You are allowed to open any book or dictionary to do this test. However, you are
strictly requested to work independently. Try to answer the questions (in your own
English) on the basis of your understanding from our daily meetings. Do not copy
any sentences from any source any answer similar to any source or friend is deemed
wrong. Answer the questions briefly and accurately.
Answer these questions in your own English.
1. What are the characteristics of a phoneme? Explain in your own English and
give examples to support your answer.
2. What is allomorph? Define and give some examples to support your answer
3. What is sociolinguistics? Define in your own English and do not copy from
any source.
82
4. A sentence is always constructed from NP + VP. How can you prove this
statement?
5. There are two types of antonym. What are they? Explain and give examples
if necessary.
---ooOoo---
➔ Learning is making a change for oneself; from not knowing something to

knowing something. Or more precisely, from not understanding something
to understanding something. Thus, sitting in a class and coming out without
any change is not learning. It is only wasting time.
So, have we learned so far?
83

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CONTENTS:

Weekly Meeting Details - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 10

How do linguists learn about language?

How linguistic inquiry works

Phonetic transcription and the IPA

Week/Unit 9: Syntax Trees - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 49

Week/Unit 10: Semantics - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 52

Reference and Sense

Week/Unit 11: Layers of Linguistics: -------------------- 57

Week/Unit 12: Layers of Linguistics: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- 61

Coherence vs. Cohesion

Week/Unit 13: Psycholinguistics - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 66

Speech and Comprehension Errors

Week/Unit 14: Second Language Acquisition --------------- 70

What is second language acquisition (SLA)?

Week/Unit 15: Sociolinguistics - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - 76

This module of Linguistics for Language Teaching is intended to be one major

Based on the recommendations from some lecturers in the department, the

My greatest thanks go to some lecturers who offered their suggestions in selecting

Surabaya August, 2019

Dr. Ahmad Idris Adh., M.Pd./ Dr. Siyaswati, M.Pd.

Course name : Linguistics for Language Teaching

Description of the Study:

This module provides an introduction to the study of language (linguistics)

Aims of the Module:

1. Understanding some basic background knowledge of linguistics.

Media and Handouts

Naeem. (2010). “Definition, Nature, and Scope of Linguistics”. Retrieved from:

O’grady, W. et al. (1996). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (3rd Ed.).

Fasold, R. W. and Connor-Linton, J. (2006). An Introduction to Language and

Fromkin, V. et al. (2006). An Introduction to Language (8th Ed.). Boston: Thomson.

Learning, teaching, and assessment strategy:

The aim of this introductory module is to create a supportive infrastructure in

At some levels, the primary emphasis will be on the development of foundational

Generic Skills Development:

Formative assessment: students will be given additional exercises which they

WE TOPICS AND SUB-TOPICS AND SPECIFIC RESOURCE &

Week Introduction to Phonetics Specific Instructional Objectives: after Naeem. (2010);

Week Phonetics Specific Instructional Objectives: after Naeem. (2010);

Week Introduction to Phonology Specific Instructional Objectives: after Naeem. (2010);

Week Morphology: introduction Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

Week Morphology: Introduction Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

Week Introduction to Syntax Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

Week Semantics: Introduction Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

Week Introduction to Layers of Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

Week Introduction to Layers of Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

Week Introduction to Specific Instructional Objectives: after Bussmann, H. (1996);

Language is all around us. Language allows us to share complicated thoughts,

How do linguists learn about language?

Linguistics is a science. This means that linguists answer questions about

In literate cultures, it is common to have a tradition of language instruction. In

By contrast, linguists follow a descriptive tradition, in which the object is to

As a member of a literate culture, you have probably been exposed to a certain

It is important to remember that traditional language instruction and scientific

Traditional language teachers need to imbue these mostly-arbitrary rules with a

Case study 1: English plurals

But listen carefully.

Linguists espouse a variety of theories about language; differences between these

Case Study 2: The English auxiliary wanna

(1a) Rachel doesn’t want to do her linguistics homework.

Can want to always be contracted? Consider the following examples.

(2a) Who do you want to look over the application?

As in our first case study, we seem to have found a mysterious piece of

(1c) I feel . (1d) There is a book .