Name:

Kayle Borromeo

Subject Name and Title:

ELT 4004 - introduction to Linguistics

Schedule:
Saturday 8:00-11:00 am

What is
Linguistics?
Linguistics is the objective study of
language, meaning that it is a
comprehensive, systematic, and precise
study of its structure (phonemes,
morphemes, lexemes, syntax, and
context)

What is
Language?
To fully understand linguistics and its importance,
one must also understand LANGUAGE, being the
very subject of the study. While language can be
broken down into three [(i)human language, (ii)
animal language, and (iii) programming language],
these are not the same due to their distinct
characteristics that make them unique from each
other.

Human language, which we are concerned about, is

further explained and discussed by Charles Hockett
in Designed Features which he published in 1960 and
is briefly discussed in the next pages.

Reference
https://youtu.be/GenkKxTk7bw
Design Features
of Language
Charles Hockett, 1960

Vocal-Auditory Channel
Natural language is vocally transmitted by
speakers as speech sounds and auditorily
received by listeners as speech waves. A good
example is listening to someone who gives a
verbal speech.

Broadcast Transmission and

Directional Reception
Language signals (i.e. speech sounds) are emitted as
waveforms, which are projected in all directions, but
are perceived by receiving listeners as emanating from
a particular direction and point of origin coming from
the vocalizing speaker. This is manifested when
someone verbally calls for your attention and you turn
your head to the direction of that person.

Transitoriness
Speech sounds only last for a short period of time as
sound waves rapidly fade after they are uttered. This
is why it is not possible to say “hello” and have
someone hear it at a later point in time.

Interchangeability
This means that speakers can be receivers as well,
and vice versa via turn taking within the context of
linguistic communication. This is a common
occurrence between or among people who are
engaging in a conversation.

Total Feedback
The speaker hears everything he/ she and
can internalize, control, or modify what
he/she says as he/ she speaks. As a result,
the speaker can modulate his/her voice, add
gestures, change facial expressions, etc. as
necessary.

References
https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hg3040-2014-1/?page_id=52
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4544681/
https://pages.uoregon.edu/redford/Courses/LING162/Handout
_1.pdf
Design
List Infographic Features Title
of
A list Language
infographic is used for presenting facts
about a topic. It can also be used to create a
Charles
"best of"Hockett, 1960
list, or cite an item's top features.

Specialization
The purpose of language signals is only for
communication purposes and not for any other
functions.

Semanticity
Specific words represent specific meanings. For
example, the verb walk indicates the action of moving
one foot in front of the other, and the color red
describes STOP. Semanticity helps explain an action
with just a symbol or item.

Arbitrariness
Arbitrariness refers to the quality of being determined
by randomness or for an unspecific reason. In
linguistics, arbitrariness is the absence of any natural
or necessary connection between a word's meaning
and its sound or form. The word "whale" is smaller
than the word "microorganism" but the meaning is
bigger and the sound is shorter compared to the
latter. There's no explanation for that but
randomness!

Discreteness
Discreteness describes the fact that human language is
composed of sets of distinct sounds. One sound on its
own may convey one meaning, multiple sounds
combined in a particular order convey a different
meaning.

Displacement
Displacement is the capability of language to
communicate about things that are not immediately
present (spatially or temporally); i.e., things that are
either are not here now or are not existing at all. Say,
for example, "Last week, I bought..." refers to the
past and is not currently occuring.

References
https://everythingwhat.com/what-does-discreteness-mean-in-
linguistics
https://dbpedia.org/page/Displacement_(linguistics)
Design
List Infographic Features Title
of
A list Language
infographic is used for presenting facts
about a topic. It can also be used to create a
Charles
"best of"Hockett, 1960
list, or cite an item's top features.

Productivity
Productivity is being referred to as openness or
creativity, entailing limitless ability to use language—
any natural language—to say new things. Example,
the past-tense affix -ed in English is productive, in that
any new verb will be automatically assigned this past-
tense form.

Cultural Transmission
Language is socially transmitted within the community
from one generation to the next, and a child reared in
isolation does not acquire language. This is why, in the
Philippines, specific regions or social groups have
dialects which are peculiar to them.

Duality of Patterning
The discrete speech sounds of a language combine (i)
to form discrete morphological units, which do not
have meaning in itself. These morphemes have to be
further combine (ii) to form meaningful words and
sentences. For example, the word "tin" can be
isolated into morphological units as "t", "i", "n" which
does not make sense; however, it creates a meaning
and can be used in a sentence if put together.

Prevarication
Prevarication is the ability to lie or deceive. When
using language, humans can make false or
meaningless statements.

Reflexiveness
The feature of language whereby it can be used to
refer to, or describe, itself, as in ‘This is a sentence’.

Learnability
Language is teachable and learnable. As a speaker
learns their first language, the speaker is able to learn
other languages if taught.

References
hhttps://www.thoughtco.com/productivity-language
https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/hg3040-2014-1/?page_id=52