Title of Assignment: Levels of Linguistics

Course Title: Introduction to Linguistics

Course Code: E 206

Date of Submission: 12 August, 2021

Submitted to:
Sumana Gupta
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Jahangirnagar University

Submitted by:
A.E.M. Zakaria Bin Zahid
Roll: 816
Batch: 47
Department of English,
Jahangirnagar University
Savar, Dhaka 1342, Bangladesh
 Levels of Linguistics

PHONETICS

"Phonetics" comes from the Greek "phone", which means sound voice. Phonetics is the

subfield of linguistics that scientifically studies, analyzes and interprets the

physical,physiological and psychological aspects and behaviours of speech sounds.

That is to say this science with three distinct but interrelated factors of speech sounds.

I) how they are produced and which speech organs take part in producing particular

speech sounds

ll) how they are are transmitted through the air from the speaker to the listener ; and

lll) how they are received and perceived by the listener.

However, the subject matter is not limited to the production, transmission and perception of

vowels and consonants. Of equal importance are such prosodic and suprasegmental aspects of

spoken English as duration, fundamental frequency and intensity as they determine such

linguistically relevant phenomena as tone and intonation stress and emphasis and the signal

signalling of various boundaries of morphemes and words phrases clauses and sentences.

In sum, phonetics is a science of speech sounds which studies their production transmission and

reception as well as prosodic and suprasegmental aspects of spoken language in an important

and practical matter,even in the lab.

Branches of phonetics:-

We have already seen that phonetics performs three distinct but interdependent tasks such as

production transmission and reception of speech sounds.Based on these functions phonetics is

divided into three branches-

l) Articulatory phonetics

ll) Acoustic phonetics

lll) Auditory phonetics

Articulatory Phonetics :-

This branch of phonetics is concerned with the production of speech sounds. To produce speech

sounds we use different speech organs and articulators-leaps,teeth alveolar ridge,hard palate, soft

palate lungs etc. Different speech organs behave in different manners to articulate different

speech sounds.

To be brief,this branch of politics is concerned with how different speech sounds are articulated

by using different articulators.

Acoustic phonetics:-

This branch of kinetic studies how speech sounds journey from the speakers months to the

listeners ears. To clarify speech sounds articulated by the speaker are transmitted through the air

to the listener. The transmission of speech sounds is composed of some physical properties, such
as frequency(pitch)and amplitude (loudness or intensity)resulting in sound waves. These sound

waves are the subject matter of acoustic phonetics.

Briefly speaking,this branch of point explores and describes how speech sounds are transmitted

from the speaker to the listener through the air. Here,frequency is usually expressed in Hertz

(Hz) and amplitude is conventionally expressed in decibels(dB).

Auditory phonetics:-

This branch of phonetics deals with how the listener receives and realizes speech sounds.To be

more specific,speech sounds are articulated by the speaker and transmitted through the air make

our eardrum vibrate and they reach our middle ear and thus are heard and perceived by the

listener. So, to listen and realize speech sounds, the listener has to use his or her ears,auditory

nerve and brain.

Auditory phonetics studies auditory impressions of quality pitch length and loudness of speech

sounds. It is, therefore, found to be concerned with both physical and psychological aspects of

speech sounds. In short,this branch analyzes and examines how we receive and realize speech

sounds.

PHONOLOGY

Phonology is the study of sound systems of a specific language. It is the study of how

speech sounds are organised and used in natural languages.

Phonological system includes

I) The Inventory of sounds and their features.

ll) Grammatical component.

Within phonology, two branches of study are usually recognised:

Segmental– analyzes speech into discrete segments such as phonemes

Supra segmental– analyzes those features that extend over more than one segment such

as stress tone and intonation.

Phonology covers the study of how the speech sound operates the structuring and

functioning in language.

For example, the consonant cluster "st" is okay in English but "lk" is not okay in the beginning of

a word where it is common in German.

It also studies sound value in one language. For example, replacing one sound can change the

meaning of the word.

Brick

Trick

English vowels:

English vowels are basically divided into two types– monophthongs and diphthongs. And a

third type system can also be considered.

Monophthongs:-
 "Monophthong" is a term used in phonetic classification of sounds on the basis of their manner

of articulation. That is, a monophthong is a simple pure vowel articulated without any obstacles

in the vocal tract. The English language has 12 monophthongs as listed below:
Diphthongs:

A diphthong is a speech sound that is usually considered as one distinctive power of a

particular language. But in fact, it involves two pure vowels or monophthongs, with one vowel

gliding into the other.

For example, the diphthong /aɪ/ in the English word 'my' ; /maɪ/ consists of the vowel /a:/

gliding into the vowel /ɪ/. The English language has eight diphthong phonemes.

We can categorise the diphthongs as demonstrated below:

Figure: Diphthongs Diagram

Triphthongs:

A triphthong can be defined as a combination of three pure vowels or monophthongs, in

which the first one glides into the second one and then the second one preceded by the first one

glides into the third one.

For example, /a:/ glides into /ʊ/, and then /ʊ/ preceded by /a:/ glides into /ə/, and thus the

triphthong /aʊə/ is constituted as in the word 'hour'. The English language possesses five

triphthongs.

Consonant:

Consonants can be defined as the speech sounds articulated with interruption in the lung

air and some obstacles in the vocal tract.

We can classify consonants in terms of the state of the larynx (phonation) during their

pronunciation.

I) Voiced consonant– [b,g,d,v,z,ð,z,ʒ,dʒ,m,n, ŋ,l,j,w] are accompanied by voicing.

II) Voiceless consonants– [p,t,ɵ,ʃ,k,f,s,h,tʃ] the glottis is more open, so that air passes

through without vibrating.

Finally, consonants can be described in terms of where the obstruction occurs in the vocal tract

(place of articulation).

Places of articulation:
 Bilabials:- (bi-two,labium lip): The lips are close together or touching. [p,b,m,w]

Labiodental:- (dental-teeth): The lower lip up is against the upper front teeth. [f,v]

Inter dental:- (inter between): The tip of the tongue is between the front teeth. [ð,ɵ]

Alveolar:- The tip of the tongue is at the alveolar ridge (the rich just behind the teeth).

[t,n,d,l,s,z,r]

Post-alveolars (palato-alveolars):- The tip of the tongue is just behind the alveolar ridge.

[ʒ,ʃ,tʃ,dʒ]

Palatals:- The tongue is near the hard palate (hard part of the roof of the mouth). [ j ]

Velar:- The tongue approaches the velum (soft part of the roof of the mouth). [k,g,ŋ]

Glottal:- The glottis is the point of constriction. [h]

Manners of articulation:-

By manner of articulation, we mean the kind of closure or construction used in making the

sound. According to the manners of articulation the consonants in the English language can be

categorised as follows:

Plosive or Stops:- Made by completely obstructing (stopping) the flow of air.

[p,b,t,d,k,g]

Fricatives:- Made by forming a very narrow construction and forcing air through

producing a hissing turbulent sound because of the friction between the air and the sides of the

construction [f,v,s,h,z,ð,ɵ,ʒ,ʃ]

Affricates:- Stop immediately followed by a fricative. [tʃ,dʒ]

Trills:- Produced by rapidly vibrating and articulating. [r]

Nasals:- The velum is lowered, it also passes through the nose. [m,n,ŋ]
 Lateral or Liquids:- Narrow passage, but not narrow enough to cause friction. [ l ]

Glides or Approximants:- Almost a vowel, but slightly more constricted. The least

constricted type of consonant. [j,w]

Lens and Fortis:

In linguistics fortis and lenis also called tense and lax, refer to consonants pronounced

with greater and lesser energy.

Phonetically, lenis refers to the consonants articulated with relatively less muscular

energy and weacker breath effort. English has lenis alphabets, [b,d,g]; such as the "b" in the bat,

whereas fortis describes the consonants pronounced with more muscular energy and stronger

breath effort. For example, [p,t,k] as the "p" in pat.

Lenis fortis consonants may be distinguished by tenseness or other characteristics, such as

voicing, aspiration,glottalization, velarization,length and length of nearby vowels.

In English there are 8 lenis-fortis pairs.

MORPHOLOGY

The term "morphology" is Greek and consists of "morph" standing for "shape" or "form"

and "ology" suggesting "the study of something". In linguistics, it generally refers to the study

of form and structure of words.

The term of "morphology" can refer to three different things–

I) Description of the behaviour of morphemes and how they are combined.

ll) Derivational, inflectional process in a specific language

 lll) Description of such word formation process.

Morphology forms a core part of linguistics or fundamental level of the linguistic analysis of

language.

Morpheme:-

The term 'morpheme' is exploited to refer to the minimal meaning bearing unit in a

language which cannot be divided without altering or destroying its meaning.

"Morph morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit."

– lngo Plag (2003)

For example:-

"Sing" is a morpheme. But if we remove "g" or "s" it changes into "sin" or "ing" which

have quite different meanings and if we remove " si", "sing" loses its meaning.

Classification of morphemes:-

-Morphemes can be divided into two major classes:

I) Free morphemes

ll) Bound morphemes

Free morphemes:-

Free morphemes are those that can stand on their own as words. They are also called

unbound morphemes or free-standing morphemes.

For example, man, boy, girl, and, but etc.

This type of morpheme is again categorized into two subclasses:

I) Lexical or referential morphemes include noun, verb, adverb,adjective, free sample

length read shortly kind it is.

ll) Grammatical morphemes:- lt includes preposition, conjunction, pronoun, articles,

auxiliary verb, determiners.

Bound morphemes:-

These are some morphemes that occur only in combination and are added to root words.

This type of morphine is called bound or dependent morphemes.

For example: less, pre and so forth.

Bound morphemes are of two types:

i) roots and

ii) affixes

Again according to the function affixes fulfil in the language, affixes are classified into:

I) Derivational affixes.

ll) Inflectional affixes.

 Figure: Morphemes Classification

SYNTAX

In linguistics, "syntax" refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine

to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. The term "syntax" comes from the Greek, meaning

"arrange together." The term is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of a

language. In computer contexts, the term refers to the proper ordering of symbols and codes so

that the computer can understand what instructions are telling it to do.

Examples of Syntactic Structures in language:

1. Embedding:

It is possible to construct sentences which are more complex than the example above.

This is done by embedding further phrases within the basic structure. For example, in the

sentence:

"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball."

"with red shorts" is a prepositional phrase that further describes “the boy”.

This can be represented, within the basic sentence structure, as follows:

Here we can see how the Prepositional Phrase (PP) “with red shorts” is embedded within the

subject Noun Phrase (NP) so that the subject is subdivided into a Noun Phrase and Prepositional

Phrase (PP). The Prepositional Phrase itself contains a further Noun Phrase. The parsing diagram

clearly shows the hierarchical relationship between the sentence and its components. There are

many other ways of extending this structure by embedding subordinate phrases at different parts

of the basic structure.

2. Conjoining:

It is also possible to extend sentences by joining together complete structures or complete

and incomplete structures, for example:

"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball and scored a goal"

The conjunction “and” joins together the complete sentence:

"The boy with red shorts kicked the ball" and the verb phrase: “scored a goal"
This could be represented as follows:

3. Recursion:

It is the reoccurrence of the same element. It is a a generative and infinite process.

For example:

(adding adjectives)

The old man.

The little old man.

The poor little old man.

(using relative pronoun)

This is the cat that killed the rat that was sold by the old man who lived in the city that was on

the river.

4. Movement:

There are some processes of movement of sentence constituents. They are:

a) Discontinuation: He pulled down the thief.

 -He pulled the thief down.

b) Deletion: You close the door.

-Close the door

c) Rearrangement: The door is white.

-Is the door white?

d) Passive: He was driving the car.

-The car was being driven by him.

SEMANTICS

Semantics is one of the basic levels or branches of linguistics which focuses on the study

of meaning. This level endeavours to understand what meaning is as an element of language and

how it is constructed by language. It is concerned with the investigation of meaning in a

language without any reference to the context of the situation. That is semantics studies meaning

of words, phrases, clauses, sentences and the like of a language not in use in some

communicative activity in real life situations.

Meaning relations:

Hyponyms, homonyms and homophones:

 A hyponym is a word whose meaning is encompassed by the meaning of the other word.

For example in English language the words 'human' and 'woman' are related in such a way that

'woman' stands for a kind of 'human' and 'human' is a general term that covers 'woman' and 'man'

and is called a superordinate.

Homonyms refer to the words which are written and pronounced in the same way, but

which are used to convey different meanings. For example, in the following sentences the verbs

'lie' and 'lie' are written and pronounced in the same way, but they give different meanings:

Please lie down.

Don't lie, tell the truth.

Homophones stand for the words that are pronounced in the same way, but are written

differently and often have different meanings. For example, the English words 'no' and 'know' are

pronounced in the same way, but are written differently and have different meanings. Similarly,

'so' and 'sew' are homophones.

Synonyms and antonyms:

Synonyms: When a word possesses the same or nearly the same meaning as another

word, it is called a synonym. For example: in the English language the words 'hide' and 'conceal'

are synonyms since they are used to express the same meaning as in the sentences below:

He has hidden the mobile phone under the pillow.

He has concealed the mobile phone under the pillow.

Antonyms: A word or expression that is opposite in the meaning to another word or

expression is an antonym. For example: in the English language 'big' and 'small', 'boy' and 'girl',

'men' and 'women' and so forth are antonyms.

Ambiguity and polysomy:

Ambiguity: Ambiguity is a meaning relation that involves only one expression having

more than one interpretation. Lexical ambiguity arises when the context is insufficient to

determine the sense of a single word that has more than one meaning. For example, can, bank,

duck and so forth. Again syntactic ambiguity arises when a sentence can be parsed in more than

one way, for example: The chicken is ready to eat.

Polysemy: Polysemy is a meaning relation that involves a word or phrase with multiple

or related meanings or interpretations, for example:

a) The house is at the foot of the mountains.

b) One of his shoes feels too tight for his foot.

In (a) foot refers to the bottom part of the mountains, whereas in (b) foot refers to the bottom part

of the leg.

Types of meaning:
 1. Conceptual or Denotative Meaning:

Conceptual meaning is also called logical or cognitive meaning. It is the basic propositional

meaning which corresponds to the primary dictionary definition.

2. Connotative Meaning :

Connotative meaning is the communicative value of an expression over and above its purely

conceptual content. It is something that goes beyond mere referent of a word and hints at its

attributes in the real world.

3. Social Meaning :

The meaning conveyed by the piece of language about the social context of its use is called the

social meaning. The decoding of a text is dependent on our knowledge of stylistics and other

variations of language. We recognize some words or pronunciation as being dialectical i.e. as

telling us something about the regional or social origin of the speaker. Social meaning is related

to the situation in which an utterance is used.

4. Affective or Emotive Meaning :

It refers to emotive association or effects of words evoked in the reader and listener. It is what is

conveyed about the personal feelings or attitude towards the listener.

5. Reflected Meaning :
Reflected meaning arises when a word has more than one conceptual meaning or multiple

conceptual meaning.

6. Collocative Meaning:

Collocative meaning is the meaning which a word acquires in the company of certain words.

Words collocate or co-occur with certain words only e.g. Big business not large or great.

7. Thematic Meaning:

It refers to what is communicated by the way in which a speaker or a writer organizes the

message in terms of ordering focus and emphasis.

PRAGMATICS

Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with the use of language in social

contexts and the ways people produce and comprehend meanings through language. The term

pragmatics was coined in the 1930s by psychologist and philosopher Charles Morris. Pragmatics

was developed as a subfield of linguistics in the 1970s.

Pragmatics in Action:

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association gives two examples of how

pragmatics influences language and its interpretation. In the first, it notes:

"You invited your friend over for dinner. Your child sees your friend reach for some cookies and

says, 'Better not take those, or you'll get even bigger.' You can't believe your child could be so

rude."

In a literal sense, the daughter is simply saying that eating cookies can make you gain

weight. But due to the social context, the mother interprets that sentence to mean that her

daughter is calling her friend fat. The first sentence in this explanation refers to the

semantics—the literal meaning of the sentence. The second and third refer to the pragmatics, the

actual meaning of the words as interpreted by a listener based on social context.

Pragmatics vs. Semantics:

Morris explained that pragmatics is different from semantics, which concerns the

relations between signs and the objects they signify. Semantics refers to the specific meaning of

language; pragmatics involves all the social cues that accompany language.

Pragmatics focuses not on what people say but how they say it and how others interpret their

utterances in social contexts, says Geoffrey Finch in "Linguistic Terms and Concepts."

Utterances are literally the units of sound you make when you talk, but the signs that accompany

those utterances give the sounds their true meaning.

Importance of Pragmatics:
 Pragmatics is the "meaning minus semantics," says Frank Brisard in his essay

"Introduction: Meaning and Use in Grammar," published in "Grammar, Meaning and

Pragmatics." Semantics, as noted, refers to the literal meaning of a spoken utterance. Grammar,

Brisard says, involves the rules defining how the language is put together. Pragmatics takes

context into account to complement the contributions that semantics and grammar make to

meaning, he says.

David Lodge, writing in the Paradise News, says that pragmatics gives humans "a fuller,

deeper, and generally more reasonable account of human language behavior." Without

pragmatics, there is often no understanding of what language actually means, or what a person

truly means when she is speaking. The context—the social signs, body language, and tone of

voice (the pragmatics)—is what makes utterances clear or unclear to the speaker and her

listeners.

GRAPHOLOGY

"Graphology is the study of the writing system of a language--the orthographic

conventions that have been devised to turn speech into writing, using any available technology

(e.g. pen and ink, typewriter, printing press, electronic screen). For Modern English, the core of

the system is the alphabet of 26 letters, in its lower case (a, b, c...) and upper case (A, B, C...)

forms, along with rules of spelling and capitalization which govern the way these letters are

combined to make words. The system also includes the set of punctuation marks and the
conventions of text positioning (such as headlines and indents), which are used to organize text

by identifying sentences, paragraphs, and other written units."

-(David Crystal, Think on My Words: Exploring Shakespeare's Language. Cambridge University

Press, 2008).

The term graphology in its broadest sense refers to the visual medium of language. It

describes the general resources of a language's written system, including punctuation, spelling,

typography, alphabet and paragraph structure, but it can also be extended to incorporate any

significant pictorial and iconic devices which supplement this system.

"In their explanations of graphology, linguists often find it useful to draw parallels

between this system and the system of spoken language... The study of the meaning potential of

clusters of sounds is referred to as phonology. By the same principle, the study of the meaning

potential of written characters will be enveloped by our term graphology, while the basic

graphological units themselves are referred to as graphemes."

-(Paul Simpson, Language Through Literature. Routledge, 1997)

LEXICOGRAPHY

Lexicography is the process of writing, editing, and/or compiling a dictionary. It is

derived from the Greek, "word" + "write". An author or editor of a dictionary is called a

lexicographer. The processes involved in the compilation and implementation of digital

dictionaries (such as Merriam-Webster Online) is known as e-lexicography.

 "The fundamental difference between lexicography and linguistics," says Sven Tarp, "is

that they have two completely different subject fields: The subject field of linguistics is language,

whereas the subject field of lexicography is dictionaries and lexicographic works in general"

("Beyond Lexicography" in Lexicography at a Crossroads, 2009).

In 1971, historical linguist and lexicographer Ladislav Zgusta published the first major

international handbook on lexicography, Manual of Lexicography, which remains the standard

text in the field.

WORKS CITED:

● Brown, H., Douglas. 2007. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach

to Language Pedagogy. San Francisco: Longman.

● Carstairs, Andrew and Mccarthy. 2002. An Introduction to English Morphology:

Words and their Structure. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

● Chierchia G and McConnell-Ginet. 1990. Meaning and Grammar: an Introduction

to Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Express.

● Griffiths, Patrick. 2006. An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics.

Edinburg: Edinburg University Press Ltd.

● Halliday, M A K. 1990. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Sevenoaks: St

Edmundsbury Press Ltd.