Area: ENGLISH
Focus: Introduction to Linguistics
Competencies:
1.
demonstrate
familiarity with the theories of language and language learning and their
influence on language teaching
2.
revisit
the knowledge of linguistic theories and
concepts and apply it to the teaching of
communication skills – listening, speaking, reading, writing, and
grammar
3.
show
understanding of how language rules are
used in real conversations
A.
Linguistics and English Language Teaching
Teachers’ knowledge on the workings of language
and language teaching are essentially intertwined with each other. The
teachers’ competence on how a language behaves will certainly help teachers
explain to the students how the language works, as well as anticipate and
respond appropriately to possible learning difficulties.
1. Knowledge of linguistics, specifically phonology, may
be useful for explaining interference problems that may be experienced by
English language learners with the English sound system. To illustrate, in the
absence of the following sounds such as /f/ and /v/ in Philippine languages,
except in Ivatan and Ibanag, Filipino English learners are likely to
use /p/ and /v/ as substitute sounds,
e.g., /pæn/ for /fæn/ ‘ fan’ and /bæn/
for /væn/ ‘van’. Language teachers are advised to remember that each language
has its own inventory of phonemes that may differ from that of another
language. Such differences may result in using sounds that only approximate the target sounds, as shown
in the aforecited examples.
2. Language teachers need to realize that grammatical
units such as morphemes, words, phrases and clauses behave quite differently
across languages. For example, plurality, and tense in English are expressed
through inflections as is {-s/ -es} and {-ed}. However, Tagalog plurality is
expressed as separate words as in mga
bata ‘children’. Linguistically speaking, Tagalog verbs have no tense, only
aspects – perfective “kumain’ and
imperfective ‘kumakain’, which may
explain the Filipinos’ problems in dealing with English tenses.
3. Helping students to discover the meaning of words by
parsing them into small parts depends heavily on the teacher’s knowledge of
morphology or word formation rules. To exemplify, students may parse or segment
the following words, taking note of the morpheme {-ment} that recurs in embarrassment, government, disillusionment,
enhancement. As students discover the meaning of {-ment} as ‘state or condition’,
they may be able to give the meaning of the cited examples as: ‘state of being
embarrassed’, ‘state of governing’, ‘state of being disillusioned’, and ‘state
of enhancing’. Hence, the process of word formation such as derivation may help learners interpret
and remember meaning of words that follow certain patterns in forming short
words into longer words.
4. Teachers’
knowledge about larger units of language use – discourse structure – may be
relevant when teaching exchanges or conversations. The use of language for
social functions such as asking permission involves familiarity with modals
that express formality and a higher degree of politeness when speaking with
someone who is older, who occupies a higher position, or is an authority than
the speaker. In this context appropriacy has to be observed in selecting modals.
For example, it is appropriate to use may,
not can when asking permission from
someone who is older, higher in position than the speaker. e.g. May I use the office computer?
B.
Views about Language
1.
The
structuralists believe that language can be described in terms of observable
and verifiable data as it is being used. They also describe language in terms
of its structure and according to the regularities and patterns or rules in
language structure. To them, language is a system of speech sounds, arbitrarily
assigned to the objects, states, and concepts to which they refer, used for
human communication.
·
Language
is primarily vocal. Language
is speech, primarily made up of vocal sounds produced by the speech apparatus
in the human body. The primary medium of language is speech; the written record
is but a secondary representation of the language. Writing is only the graphic
representation of the sounds of the language. While most languages have writing
systems, a number of languages continue to exist, even today, in the spoken
form only, without any written form. Linguists claim that speech is primary,
writing secondary. Therefore, it is assumed that speech has a priority in
language teaching.
·
Language
is a system of systems. Language is not a disorganized or a chaotic
combination of sounds. Sounds are arranged in certain fixed or established,
systematic order to form meaningful units or words. For example, no word in English starts with bz-,
lr- or zl- combination, but there are those that begin with spr-
and str- (as in spring and string). In like manner, words
are also arranged in a particular system to generate acceptable meaningful
sentences. The sentence “Shen bought a
new novel” is acceptable but the group of words “Shen bought new novel a” is unacceptable, since the word order of
the latter violates the established convention in English grammar, the
Subject-Verb-Object or S-V-O word order.
Language
is a system of structurally related elements or ‘building blocks’ for the
encoding of meaning, the elements being phonemes (sounds), morphemes (words),
tagmemes (phrases and sentences/clauses). Language learning, it is assumed,
entails mastering the elements or building blocks of the language and learning
the rules by which these elements are combined, from phoneme to morpheme to
word to phrase to sentence.
·
Language
is arbitrary. There
is no inherent relation between the words of a language and their meanings or
the ideas conveyed by them. Put another way, there is no one to one
correspondence between the structure of a word and the thing it stands for.
There is no ‘sacred’ reason why an animal that flies is called ibon in
Filipino, pajaro in Spanish, bird in English. Selection of these
words in the languages mentioned here is purely an accident of history that
native speakers of the languages have agreed on. Through the years reference to
such animal has become an established convention that cannot be easily changed.
That language is arbitrary means that the
relationship between the words and the ‘things’ they denote is merely
conventional, i.e. native speakers of English, in some sense, agreed to use the
sounds / kæt / ‘cat’ in English because native speakers of English ‘want’ it to
be.
·
Language
is a means of communication. Language
is an important means of communicating between humans of their ideas, beliefs,
or feelings. Language gives shape to people’s thoughts, as well as guides and
controls their activity.
2. The
transformationalists/ cognitivists believe that language is a system of
knowledge made manifest in linguistic forms but innate and, in its most
abstract form, universal.
·
Language
is innate. The presence of the language acquisition device (LAD) in the human
brain predisposes all normal children to acquire their first language in an
amazingly short time, around five years since birth.
·
Language
is creative. It enables native speakers to produce and understand sentences
they have not heard nor used before.
·
Language
is a mental phenomenon. It is not mechanical.
·
Language
is universal. It is universal in the sense that all normal children the world
over acquire a mother tongue but it is also universal in the sense that, at a
highly abstract level, all languages must share key features of human
languages, such as all languages have sounds; all languages have rules that
form sounds into words, words into phrases and clauses; and all languages have
transformation rules that enable speakers to ask questions, negate sentences,
issue orders, defocus the doer of the action, etc.
2.
The
functionalists believe that language is a dynamic system through which members
of speech community exchange information. It is a vehicle for the expression of
functional meaning such as expressing one’s emotions, persuading people, asking
and giving information, making people do things for others.
This
view of language emphasizes the meaning and functions rather than the
grammatical characteristics of language, and leads to a language teaching
content consisting of categories of meaning/notions and functions rather than
of elements of structure and grammar.
3.
The
interactionists believe that language is a vehicle for establishing
interpersonal relations and for performing social transactions between
individuals. It is a tool for creating and maintaining social relations through
conversations. Language teaching content, according to this view, may be
specified and organized by patterns of exchange and interaction.
B. Acquisition
of Language
1. Behaviorist
learning theory. Derived from a general theory of learning, the behaviorist
view states that the language behavior of the individual is conditioned by
sequences of differential rewards in his/her environment.
It regards language
learning as a behavior like other forms of human behavior, not a mental
phenomenon, learned by a process of habit formation. Since language is viewed
as mechanistic and as a human activity, it is believed that learning a language
is achieved by building up habits on the basis of stimulus-response chains.
Behaviorism emphasizes the consequences of the response and argues that it is the
behavior that follows a response which reinforces it and thus helps to
strengthen the association.
According to
Littlewood (1984), the process of habit formation includes the following:
a. The child imitates the sounds and patterns which s/he hears around her/him.
b. People recognize the child’s attempts as
being similar to the adult models and reinforce
(reward) the sounds by approval or some other desirable reaction.
c. In order to obtain more of these rewards,
the child repeats the sounds and
patterns so that these become habits.
d. In this way the child’s verbal behavior is
conditioned (‘shaped’) until the habits coincide with the adult models.
The behaviorists
claim that the three crucial elements of learning are: a stimulus, which serves to elicit behavior; a response triggered by the stimulus, and reinforcement, which serves to mark the response as being
appropriate (or inappropriate) and encourages the repetition (or suppression)
of the response.
2.
Cognitive
learning theory. Chomsky
argues that language is not acquired by children by sheer imitation and through
a form of conditioning on reinforcement and reward. He believes that all normal
human beings have an inborn biological internal mechanism that makes language
learning possible. Cognitivists/ innatists claim that the child is born with an
‘initial’ state’ about language which predisposes him/her to acquire a grammar
of that language. They maintain that the language acquisition device (LAD) is
what the child brings to the task of language acquisition, giving him/her an
active role in language learning.
One important
feature of the mentalist account of second language acquisition is hypothesis
testing, a process of formulating rules and testing the same with competent
speakers of the target language.
3. Krashen’s Monitor Model (1981). Probably this is the most
often cited among theories of second language acquisition; considered the most
comprehensive, if not the most ambitious, consisting of five central
hypotheses:
The five hypotheses
are:
a. The acquisition/
learning hypothesis. It claims that there are two ways of developing
competence in L2:
Acquisition - the subconscious process that results
from informal, natural communication between people where language is a means,
not a focus nor an end, in itself.
Learning - the conscious process of knowing about language and
being able to talk about it, that occurs in a more formal situation where the
properties or rules of a language are taught. Language learning has
traditionally involved grammar and vocabulary learning.
Acquisition parallels first language development in children while learning approximates the formal
teaching of grammar in classrooms. Conscious thinking about the rules is said
to occur in second language learning while unconscious feeling about what is
correct and appropriate occurs in language acquisition.
b. The natural
order hypothesis. It suggests that grammatical structures are acquired in a
predictable order for both children and adults, that is, certain grammatical
structures are acquired before others, irrespective of the language being
learned. When a learner engages in natural communication, then the standard
order below will occur.
Group
1: present progressive -ing (She is reading)
plural -s (bags)
copula ‘to be’ (The girl is at the library.)
Group
2: auxiliary ‘to be’ (She is
reading.)
articles the and an (That’s a
book.)
Group
3: irregular past forms (She drank
milk.)
Group 4: regular past -ed (She prayed last
night.)
third-person-singular -s
(She prays every day.)
possessive -s (The girl’s bag is
new.)
b. The monitor
hypothesis. It claims that conscious learning of grammatical rules has an
extremely limited function in language performance: as a monitor or editor that
checks output. The monitor is an editing device that may normally operate
before language performance. Such editing may occur before the natural output
or after the ouput.
Krashen
suggests that monitoring occurs when there is sufficient time, where there is
pressure to communicate correctly and not just convey meaning, and when the
appropriate rules are known.
d. The input hypothesis. Krashen proposes that when learners are exposed
to grammatical features a little beyond their current level (i.e., i + 1),
those features are ‘acquired’. Acquisition results from comprehensible input,
which is made understandable with the help provided by the context. If learners
receive understandable input, language structures will be naturally acquired.
Ability to communicate in a second language ‘emerges’ rather than indirectly
put in place by teaching.
c. The affective
filter hypothesis. Filter consists of attitude to language, motivation,
self-confidence and anxiety. Thus
learners with favorable attitude and self-confidence may have a ‘low filter’
which promotes language learning. Learners with a low affective filter seek and
receive more input, interact with confidence, and are more receptive to the
input they are exposed to. On the other hand, anxious learners have a high
affective filter which prevents acquisition from taking place.
d. Implications for teaching:
1. Teachers must continuously deliver at a
level understandable by learners.
2. Teaching must prepare the learners for
real life communication situations. Classrooms must provide conversational
confidence so that when in the outside world, the student can cope with and
continue learning.
3. Teachers must ensure that learners do not
become anxious or defensive in language learning. The confidence of a language
learner must be encouraged in a language acquisition process. Teachers should
not insist on learners conversing before they feel comfortable in doing so;
neither should they correct errors nor make negative remarks that inhibit
learners from learning. They should devise specific techniques to relax
learners and protect their egos.
4. Teachers must create an atmosphere where
learners are not embarrassed by their errors. Errors should not be corrected
when acquisition is occurring. Error correction is valuable when learning
simple rules but may have negative effects in terms of anxiety and inhibitions.
5. Formal grammar teaching is of limited
value because it contributes to learning rather than acquisition. Only simple
rules should be learned.
6. Teachers should not expect learners to
learn ‘late structures’ such as third person singular early.
C. Influences of
Theories on Language Teaching
1. Applied linguists claim that theories of
language learning as well as theories of language may provide the basis for a
particular teaching approach/method. To illustrate, the linking of
structuralism and behaviorism has produced the audiolingual method (ALM), oral
approach/situational language teaching, operant conditioning approach,
bottom-up text processing, controlled-to-free writing, to cite a few. These
methods underscore the necessity of overlearning, a principle that leads to
endless and mindless mimicry and memorization (‘mim-mem’). They are also
characterized by mechanical habit-formation teaching, done through unremitting
practice: sentence patterns are repeated and drilled until they become habitual
and automatic to minimize occurrences of mistakes. Grammar is taught through
analogy, hence, explanations of rules are not given until the students have
practiced a pattern in a variety of contexts.
2. The cognitive learning theory has given
birth to the cognitive approach to learning that puts language analysis before
language use and instruction by the teacher, before the students practice
forms. It is compatible with the view that learning is a thinking process, a
belief that underpins cognitive-based and schema-enhancing strategies such as
Directed Reading Thinking Activity, Story Grammar, Think-Aloud, to name a few.
3. The functional view of language has
resulted in communication-based methods such as Communicative Language
Teaching/Communicative Approach, Notional-Functional Approach, Natural
Approach, Task-Based Language Teaching. These methods are learner-centered,
allowing learners to work in pairs or groups in information gap tasks and
problem-solving activities where such communication strategies as information
sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction are used.
4. The view that is both cognitive and
affective has given rise to a holistic approach to language learning or
whole-person learning which has spawned humanistic techniques in language
learning and Community Language Learning. In these methods, the whole person
including emotions and feelings as well as language knowledge and behavior
skills become central to teaching. The humanistic approach equips learners
“vocabulary for expressing one’s feelings, for sharing one’s values and
viewpoints with others, and for developing a better understanding of their
feelings and needs.”
D. Linguistic
Concepts:
Scope of Linguistic Studies:
1. Phonology. It studies the combination of sounds into organized units of
speech, the combination of syllables and larger units. It describes the sound
system of a particular language and distribution of sounds which occur in that
language. Classification is made on the basis of the concept of the phoneme.
Phonology
is the study of the sound system of language: the rules that govern
pronunciation. It comprises the elements and principles that determine sound
patterns in a language.
2. Phonetics. It studies language at the level of
sounds: how sounds are articulated by the human speech mechanism and received
by the auditory mechanism, as well as how sounds can be distinguished and
characterized by the manner in which they are produced.
3. Morphology. It studies the patterns of forming words
by combining sounds into minimal distinctive units of meaning called morphemes. It deals with the rules of
attaching suffixes or prefixes to single morphemes to form words.
Morphology
is the study of word formation; it deals with the internal structure of words.
It also studies the changes that take place in the structure of words, e.g. the
morpheme ‘go’ changes to ‘went’ and ‘gone’ to signify changes in tense and
aspect.
4. Syntax. It deals with how words combine to form
phrases, phrases combine to form clauses, and clauses conjoin to make
sentences. Syntax is the study of the way phrases, clauses and sentences are
constructed. It is the system of rules and categories that underlies sentence
formation. It also involves the description of rules, of positioning of
elements in the sentence such as noun phrases, verb phrases, adverbial phrases,
etc.
Syntax
also attempts to describe how these elements function in the sentence, i.e.,
the function that they perform in the sentence.
For example, the noun phrase “the student” has different
functions in the following sentences:
a) The student is writing a new play.
b) The teacher gave the student a new play.
In sentence a), the student functions as the subject of the sentence while in
sentence b), it functions as indirect object.
5. Semantics. It deals with the level of meaning in
language. It attempts to analyze the structure of meaning in a language, e.g.,
how words are related in meaning; it attempts to show these inter-relationships
through forming ‘categories’. Semantics accounts for both word and sentence
meaning.
6.
Pragmatics. It deals with the contextual
aspects of meaning in particular situations. Pragmatics is the study of how language is used in real
communication. As distinct from the study of sentences, pragmatics considers
utterances – those sentences which are actually uttered or said by speakers of
a language.
7. Discourse. It is the study of chunks of language
which are bigger than a single sentence. At this level, inter-sentential links
that form a connected or cohesive text are analyzed. The unit of language
studied in discourse and pragmatics may be an utterance in an exchange or a
text in written form.
Phonology:
1. Phoneme is a distinctive, contrasted sound unit,
e.g. / m /, / æ /, / n /. These distinct sounds enter into combination with
other sounds to form words, e.g., /mæn/ ‘man’.
Phoneme is the smallest
unit of sound of any language that causes a difference in meaning. It is a
phone segment that has a contrastive status. The basic test for a sound’s
distinctiveness is called a minimal pair test. A minimal pair consists of two
forms with distinct meaning that differ by only one segment found in the same
position in each form. For example, [sɪp] ‘sip’ and [zɪp] ‘zip’ form a
minimal pair and show that the sounds [s] and [z] contrast in English because
they cause the difference in meaning between the words ‘sip’ and ‘zip’; hence,
they are separate phonemes - /s/ and
/z/.
2. Allophones are variants or other ways of producing a
phoneme. They are phonetically similar and are frequently found in
complementary distribution. For example, the systematic variations of /t/ are:
The
/t/ in top is aspirated [th];
the /t/ in stop is released [t]; the
/t/ in pot is unreleased [t7].
3. Sounds
are categorized into two major classes: vowels
and consonants.
4. Consonant sounds are
produced with some restriction or closure in the vocal tract as the air from
the lungs is pushed through the glottis out the mouth. The airflow is either blocked momentarily or
restricted so much that noise is produced as air flows past the constriction.
Consonants are described in terms of physical dimensions: place of
articulation, manner of articulation, voicing, as shown in Figure 1.
Bilabial
|
Labiodental
|
Interdental
|
Alveolar
|
Palatal
|
Velar
|
Glottal
|
||
Stops
|
voiceless
|
p
|
t
|
k
|
||||
voiced
|
b
|
d
|
g
|
|||||
Fricatives
|
voiceless
|
f
|
θ
|
s
|
š
|
h
|
||
voiced
|
v
|
ð
|
z
|
ž
|
||||
Affricates
|
voiceless
|
č
|
||||||
voiced
|
ǰ
|
|||||||
Nasals
|
voiceless
|
|||||||
voiced
|
m
|
n
|
ŋ
|
|||||
Liquids
|
voiceless
|
|||||||
voiced
|
l
|
r
|
||||||
Glides
|
voiceless
|
|||||||
voiced
|
w
|
y
|
Source: Parker, F.
& K. Riley. (1994). Linguistics for Non-Linguists.Boston:
Allyn and Bacon.
FIGURE 1. Consonant Phonemes
of English
Place of Articulation. For any articulation corresponding to one
of these consonant phonemes, the vocal tract is constricted at one of the
following points.
(a) Bilabial (from bi ‘two’ + labial
‘lips’). The primary constriction is at the
lips
(/p,b,m,w/).
(b) Labiodental (from labio ‘lip’ + dental
‘teeth’). The primary constriction
is
between the lower lip and the upper teeth (/f,v/).
(c) Interdental (from inter ‘between’ + dental
‘teeth’). The primary
constriction
is between the tongue and the upper teeth (/θ,ð/).
(d) Alveolar (from alveolar ridge). The
primary constriction is between the
tongue
and the alveolar ridge (/t,d,s,z,n,l/).
(e)
Palatal (from palate). The primary constricton is between the tongue and the
palate (/š,ž,č,ǰ,r,y/).
(f) Velar (from velum). The primary constriction is between the tongue and
the
velum (/k,g,ŋ/).
(g)
Glottal (from glottis, which refers to the space between the vocal cords). The
primary constriction is at the glottis (/h/).
Manner of Articulation. For any articulation corresponding to one
of these consonant phonemes, the vocal tract is constricted in one of the
following ways.
(a)
Stops. Two articulators (lips,
tongue, teeth, etc.) are brought together such that the flow of air through the
vocal tract is completely blocked (/p,b,t,d,k,g/).
(b)
Fricatives. Two articulators are
brought near each other such that the flow of air is impeded but not completely
blocked. The air flow through the narrow opening creates friction, hence the
term fricative (/f,v,θ,ð,s,z,š,ž,h/).
(c)
Affricates. Articulations corresponding to affricates are those that begin
like stops (with a complete closure in the vocal tract) and end like fricatives
(with a narrow opening in the vocal tract) (/č,ǰ/). Because
affricates can be described as a stop plus a fricative, some phonemic alphabets
transcribe / č/ as /tš/ and /ǰ/ as /dž/.
(d)
Nasals. A nasal articulation is one
in which the airflow through the mouth is completely blocked but the velum is
lowered, forcing the air through the nose (/m,n,ŋ/).
(e)
Liquids and Glides. Both of these
terms describe articulations that are mid-way between true consonants (i.e.,
stops, fricatives, affricates, and nasals) and vowels, although they are both
generally classified as consonants. Liquid
is a cover term for all l-like and r-like articulations (/l,r/).
Voicing. For any articulation
corresponding to one of these consonant phonemes, the vocal cords are either
vibrating (/b,d,g,v,ð,z,ž,ǰ,m,n,ŋ,l,r,w,y/)
or not (p,t,k,f,θ,s,š,č,h/). Stops, fricatives, and affricates come in voiced
and voiceless pairs (except for /h/); nasals, liquids, and glides are all
voiced, as are vowels.
Each
consonant phoneme is not really an indivisible unit, but rather a composite of
values along these three dimensions. Each such dimension constitutes a distinctive feature. For example, from
one perspective /p/ and /b/ are not really units in themselves, but rather each
is bundle of feature values, as follows.
+bilabial
+bilabial
/p/ = +stop /b/
= +stop
−voice +voice
5. Vowels are produced with
little obstruction in the vocal tract and are generally voiced. They are
described in terms of the following physical dimensions: tongue height,
frontness, lip rounding, tenseness. Different parts of the tongue may be raised
or lowered. The lips may be spread or pursed. The passage through which the air
travels, however, is never narrow as to obstruct the free flow of the
airstream.
Vowel sounds carry pitch and
loudness; one can sing vowels. They may be long or short.
Front
|
Back
|
|
i
ɪ
|
u
℧
|
|
e
ε
|
Λ (ә)
|
o
|
æ
|
a
|
Ɔ
|
Spread
|
Round
|
|
High
Tense
Lax
Mid
Low
Source:
Parker, F. & K. Riley. (1994). Linguistics
for Non-Linguists.Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Figure 2. Vowel Phonemes of
English
6. Suprasegmentals are
prosodic properties that form part of the makeup of sounds no matter what their
place or manner of articulation is. These properties are pitch, intonation, stress,
and juncture. They are variations in intensity, pitch, and timing.
7. Stress is a property of a
syllable rather than a segment. It is a cover term for a combined effect of
pitch, loudness and length --- the result of which is vowel prominence; hence,
it refers to the relative prominence of syllables. The syllable that receives
the most prominent stress is referred to as primary stress. To produce a
stressed syllable, one may change the pitch (usually by raising it), make the
syllable louder, or make it longer.
e.g.
2 1 2 1 1 2
fundamental introductory secondary
8. Pitch is the auditory
property of a sound that enables us to place it on a scale that ranges from low
to high.
9. Intonation is the rise and fall of pitch
which may contrast meanings of sentences. The pitch movement in spoken
utterances is not only related to differences in the word meaning, but serves
to convey information of a broadly meaningful nature such as completeness or
incompleteness of an utterance. Intonation refers to the pitch contours as they
occur in phrases and sentences.
In
English, the statement ‘Marian is a linguist’ ends with a
fall in pitch while as a question, ‘Marian is a linguist?’ the pitch
goes up.
10.
Juncture
refers to the pauses or breaks between syllables. It refers to the transition
between sounds. The lack of any real break between syllables of words is
referred to as close juncture; plus juncture or open juncture is used to describe a break or pause between
syllables in the same word or adjacent word; e.g. nitrate vs. night
rate; why try vs. white rye; black bird vs. blackbird
Morphology:
1. Morpheme is a short segment of language that meets
three criteria:
a. It is a word or part of a word that has
meaning.
b. It cannot be divided into smaller
meaningful parts without violation of its meaning or without meaningless
remainders.
c. It recurs in different words with a
relatively stable meaning.
The
word unhappiness has 3 morphemes:
{un-}, {happy}, {-ness} while the word salamander is a single
morpheme.
2. Allomorphs are morphs which belong to the same
morpheme. For example, /s/, /z/ and /əz/ in /kæts/ ‘cats’, /bægz/ ‘bags’ and /
bΛsəz/ ‘buses’ are allomorphs of the plural morphemes {(e)s}. Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme
that may be phonologically or morphologically conditioned; e.g. {-en} as in oxen
and children are allomorphs of
{plural} morpheme.
3. Free morphemes are those that can stand on their own as
independent words, e.g. {happy} in unhappily,
{like} in dislike, {boy} in boyhood. They can also occur in isolation; e.g.
{happy}, {like}
4. Bound
morphemes are those that cannot stand on their own as independent
words. They are always attached to a free morpheme or a free form, e.g. {un-}, {-ly}, {dis-} {-hood}. Such
morphemes are also called affixes.
Bound morphemes are
those that cannot stand alone as words; they need to be attached to another
morpheme; e.g. {con-}; {de-}, {per-} to be attached to {-ceive} as in conceive, deceive, perceive.
5. Inflectional morphemes are those that never change the form class
of the words or morphemes to which they are attached. They are always attached
to complete words. They cap the word; they are a closed-ended set of morphemes
- English has only 8 inflectional morphemes.
-s third person sing. pres. She stay-s at home.
-ed past tense She
stay-ed at home.
-ing progressive She is stay-ing
at home.
-s plural She wrote
novel-s.
-‘s possessive Marie’s car is new.
-er comparative This road
is long-er than that.
-est superlative This is the long-est
road.
6. Derivational morphemes are those that are added to root
morphemes or stems to derive new words. They usually change the form class of
the words to which they are attached; they are open-ended, that is, there are
potentially infinite number of them; e.g. actual
+ {-ize} à actualize; help + {-ful} à helpful; {un-} + lucky à unlucky.
7. Word – Formation processes
Derivation. This
involves the addition of a derivational affix, changing the syntactic category
of the item to which it is attached (e.g., discern (V) àdiscernment
(N); woman (N) à womanly
(Adj)).
Category Extension. This
involves the extension of a morpheme from one syntactic category to another
(e.g., house (N) à house (V); fast (Adj) àfast (Adv))
Compounding. This
involves creating a new word by combining two free morphemes (e.g., sunset;
drugstore).
Root Creation. It is a brand new word based on no
pre-existing morphemes (e.g., Colgate; Xerox).
Clipped Form. It is a shortened form of a pre-existing forms (e.g., gym <
gymnasium; mike < microphone).
Blend. It is a combination of parts of two pre-existing forms (e.g., smog
< smoke + fog; motel < motor + hotel).
Acronym. It is a word formed from the first letter(s) of each word in a phrase
(e.g., NASA < National Aeronautics and Space Administration; SARS < Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome).
Abbreviation. It is a word formed from the names of the first letters
of the prominent syllables of a word (e.g., TV < television) or of
words in a phrase (e.g., FBI < Federal Bureau of Investigation).
Proper Name. This process forms a word from a proper name (e.g., hamburger
< Hamburg (Germany); sandwich < Earl of Sandwich).
Folk Etymology. This
process forms a word by substituting a common native form for an exotic (often
foreign) form (e.g., cockroach <
Spanish cucuracha ‘wood louse’).
Back Formation. This process forms a word by removing what is mistaken for an
affix (e.g. edit < editor; beg < beggar).
8. Morphophonemic
Processes
There
are processes that produce a great deal of linguistic variability: assimilation, dissimilation, deletion,
epenthesis, metathesis.
Assimilation is a
process that results from a sound becoming more like another nearby sound in
terms of one or more of its phonetic characteristics; a process in which
segments take on the characteristics of neighboring sounds; e.g. probable – improbable;
potent -impotent; separable – inseparable; sensitive – insensitive
Dissimilation is a
process that results in two sounds becoming less alike in articulatory or
acoustic terms; a process in which units which occur in some contexts are
‘lost’ in others; e.g. ‘libary’ instead of ‘library,’ ‘ govenor’
for ‘governor’
Deletion is a
process that removes a segment from certain phonetic contexts. It occurs in
everyday rapid speech; e.g. [blaɪn mæn] ‘blind man ’
Epenthesis is a
process that inserts a syllable or a nonsyllabic segment within an existing
string of segment; e.g. [plæntɪd]
‘planted’
Metathesis is a
process that reorders or reverses a sequence of segments; it occurs when two
segments in a series switch places, e.g. ask à aks; ruler à lurer;
violet à viloyet
Syntactic Structures
1. Structure
of Predication has two components: a subject and a predicate; e.g. the
seagull flies, the water level rose
abruptly, the trial has begun
2. Structure
of Complementation has two basic components: a verbal element and a complement; e.g. disturbed the
class, rendered service, be conscientious
3. Structure
of Modification has two components: a head word and a modifier, whose meaning
serves to broaden, qualify, select, change, or describe, or in some way affect
the meaning of the head word; e.g. responsible
officers, trusted friend, impartially conducted
4. Structure of Coordination has two basic components:
equivalent grammatical units and joined often but not always by a coordinating
conjunction; e.g. bread and butter, peace not war, neither extrovert nor introvert
Semantics
1.
Lexical ambiguity
refers to a characteristic of a word that has more than one sense, e. g. the
English word fly is ambiguous because it has more than one meaning: ‘an
insect,’ ‘a zipper on a pair of pants,’ or ‘a baseball hit into the air with a
bat.’
2. Syntactic ambiguity refers to the
characteristic of a phrase that has more
than one meaning, e.g. English literature teacher can mean ‘a
teacher of English literature’ or ‘a literature teacher who is from England.’
3. Synonymy
refers to words having the same sense; that is, they have the same values for
all of their semantic features. happy and glad; reply and respond;
hastily and hurriedly are synonymous words in English.
4. Hyponymy is a
characteristic of a word that contains the meaning of another word; the
contained word is known as the superordinate. For example, sampaguita
contains the meaning of flower; therefore, sampaguita is a
hyponym of the superordinate flower. Put another way, a hyponym is a
word whose meaning contains all the same feature values of another word, plus
some additional feature values.
5.
Antonymy refers to the characteristic of two words which are different
both in form as well as meaning. An antonym conveys the opposite sense (binary
antonyms), e.g. rich - poor; good – bad. They are also
words whose meanings differ only in the value for a single semantic feature;
e.g. rich – poor; rich is marked [+wealth] and poor
is marked [- wealth]; dead – alive; dead is marked [-life] and alive is marked [+life]. Gradable antonyms are words
that describe opposite ends of a continuous dimension, e.g. hot and cold.
Not everything that can be hot or cold is, in fact, either hot or cold. Liquid,
for example, may be warm or cool.
6. Homonymy refers to sense
relation in words with the same phonetic form but different in meaning, e.g. bat
meaning ‘a nocturnal animal’ and bat meaning ‘an equipment used in
baseball or softball.’
7. Coreference refers to the sense
relation of two expressions that have the same extralinguistic referent. In the
sentence “Mercury is the nearest planet from the sun,” Mercury and the
nearest planet from the sun are coreferential because they both refer to
the same extralinguistic object – the planet Mercury in the solar system.
8. Anaphora is a linguistic
expression that refers to another linguistic expression; e.g. “The tsunami
killed thousands of people. It was devastating.” It in the second
sentence is used anaphorically (to point backwards) to refer to ‘the
tsunami’.
9. Deixis refers to the characteristic
of an expression that has one meaning but can refer to different entities
within the same context of utterance. Deictic expressions have a ‘pointing
function.’ Examples of deixis are you, I, she (personal pronouns); here, there, right, left, (expressions of
place); this, that, those, these (demonstratives); now, yesterday,
today, last year (time expressions).
10.
Entailment is a
proposition (expressed in a sentence) that follows necessarily from another
sentence. A sentence entails another if the meaning of the first includes the meaning of the second; it
is also called paraphrase. For example, the sentence, ‘Raul had a
fatal accident’ entails that ‘Raul died’ since it is impossible to
figure in a fatal accident without
loss of life. Semantically speaking, fatal
means [-life] while died also
means [-life].
11.
Presupposition refers to a proposition (expressed in a sentence)
that is assumed to be true in order to judge the truth or falsity of another
sentence. It also refers to the truth relation between two sentences; one
sentence presupposes another if the falsity of the second renders the first
without a truth value; e.g. The sentence ‘The King of Canada is dead.’
presupposes that ‘There exists (is) a King of Canada.’
The first sentence presupposes the second sentence because if the second
sentence is false, then the first sentence has no truth value.
Pragmatics
1. Speech act theory. Every utterance
of speech constitutes some sort of act
(promising, apologizing, threatening, warning, etc.). Every speech act
consists of three separate acts:
Locutionary force an
act of saying something; it is a description of what a speaker says, e.g., I promise to return your book
tomorrow.
Illocutionary act/force is
the act of doing something; it is what the speaker intends to do by uttering a
sentence, e.g., by saying “I promise to
return your book tomorrow,” the speaker has made an act of promising.
Perlocutionary act is an
act of affecting someone (i.e., the listener); it is the effect on the hearer
of what a speaker says, e.g., by saying “I
will return your book tomorrow,” the
hearer may feel happy or relieved that s/he will get the book back
2. Categories of Illocutionary Acts. These are categories proposed by John Searle to group together closely related
intentions for saying something.
Declaration. A declaration is an utterance used to
change the status of some entity – for example, Foul! uttered by a referee at a basketball game. This class
includes acts of appointing, naming, resigning, baptizing, surrendering,
excommunicating, arresting, and so on.
Representative. A representative is an utterance used to
describe some state of affairs – for
example, Recession will worsen in Europe
in the next five years. This class includes acts of stating, asserting,
denying, confessing, admitting, notifying, concluding, predicting, and so on.
Commissive. A commissive is an utterance used to commit
the speaker to do something – for example, I’ll
meet you at the library at 10:00 a.m. This class includes acts of
promising, vowing, volunteering, offering, guaranteeing, pledging, betting, and
so on.
Directive. A directive is an utterance used to try to
get the hearer to do something – for example, Review thoroughly for the exams. This class includes acts of
requesting, ordering, forbidding, warning, advising, suggesting, insisting,
recommending, and so on.
Expressive.
An expressive is an
utterance used to express the emotional state of the speaker – for example, Congratulations for topping the bar exam!.
This class includes acts of apologizing, thanking, congratulating, condoling,
welcoming, deploring, objecting, and so on.
Question. A question is an utterance used to get
the hearer to provide information – for example, Who won the presidential election? This class includes acts of
asking, inquiring, and so on. (Note: Searle treated questions as a subcategory
of directives; however, it is more useful to treat them as a separate
category.)
3. Conversational Maxims are
rules that are observed when communication takes place in a situation where
people are co-operative. When people communicate, they assume that the other
person will be cooperative and they themselves wish to cooperate.
In the
“Cooperative Principle,” the following maxims or rules govern oral
interactions:
Maxim
of quantity – a participant’s contribution should be as informative as
possible – “Give the right amount of information, neither less nor more than
what is required.”
e.g. A:
Are you attending the seminar?
B:
Yes, I am.
Maxim
of quality – a participant should not say that which is false or that which
the participant lacks evidence - “Make your contribution such that it is true;
do not say what you know is false or for which you do not have adequate
evidence.”
e.g. A: Who did you see enter the room last?
B: The janitor
Maxim
of relation – a participant’s contribution should be related to the subject of the conversation – “Be relevant.”
e.g. A: Why
did you come late?
B: I had to take my son to school.
Maxim
of manner – a participant’s contribution should be direct, not obscure,
ambiguous, or wordy – “Avoid obscurity and ambiguity; be brief and
orderly.”
e.g.
A: Are
you accepting the position?
B: Yes, I am. Thank you for your trust in me.
4. Implicatures refer
to statements that imply a proposition that is not part of the utterance and
does not follow as a necessary consequence of the utterance.
For
example: Dan says to his wife Nitz,“Uncle Ernie is driving us to Tagaytay” to which Nitz responds, “I
guess I’d better take tranquilizers.” Nitz’s
utterance raises the implicature that Uncle Ernie must be a fast, reckless driver.