LINGUISTICS

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CONTENTS
1.THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

2.PHONETICS (THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE)

3.PHONOLOGY(THE SOUNDS PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE)

WORD-FORMATION

4.MORPHOLOGY

5.GRAMMAR

6.SYNTAX

7.SEMANTICS

8.PRAGMATICS

9.DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

10.LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN

11.FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

12.SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

13.LANGUAGE HISTORY AND CHANGE

14.LANGUAGE AND REGIONAL VARIATION

15.LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL VARIATION

PREVIEW

Speakers of a language are able to produce and understand an unlimited number of utterances, including many
that are novel and unfamiliar. This ability, which is often called 'linguistic competence'.

In investigating linguistic competence, linguists focus on the mental system that allows human beings to form and
interpret the words and sentences of their language.This system is called 'grammar'.

We divide linguistics into two categories:

1.Microlinguistics (The components of a grammar)

Phonetics-Phonology-Morphology-Syntax-Semantics

2.Macrolinguistics

Pragmatics-Sociolinguistics-Language acquisition-Neurolinguistics

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UNIT 1 So, a group of early humans might develop a set
of hums,
THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE grunts, groans and curses that were used when
they were lifting and carrying large bits of trees or
Theories of Language Origin lifeless hairy mammoths.
Divine Source
Natural-sound Source **The appeal of this proposal is that it places the
Social Interaction Source development of human language in a social
context.
Physical Adaptation Source
Tool Making Source 4) Physical Adaptation
Genetic Source
*Human language developed as a result of
evolutionary change. (Biological adaptations.)
1)Divine Source
Standing on two legs The larynx changed in
*Language is a God-given gift to human species. a way to allow human to produce some consonant-
like sound distinctions.
*If a child was brought up without hearing any
language,then he would spontaneously begin Some effects of this type of change can be seen in
using the God-given language. physical differences between the skull of a gorilla and
that of a Neanderthal man from around 60,000 years
BUT, it’s a fact that children living without access ago. The
to human speech in their early years, grow up with reconstructed vocal tract of a Neanderthal
no language at all. suggests that some consonant-like sound
distinctions would have been possible.
NO SPEECH=NO LANGUAGE
*Human beings adapted some
2)Natural-Sound Source physiological changes (speech organs)
throughout their history and these changes
*People imitated natural sounds they heard
caused the emergence of human
around them.
language.
( Bow-wow Theory) echoing the sounds
of nature Teeth are upright, lips and tongue are
flexible, larynx is in a lower position,
Eg: Knock,cuckoo,hush,buzz,crunch, vızır
pharnyx has a longer cavity above the
onomatopoeic
vocal cords.
vızır, hav hav, kıtır kıtır, şırıl şırıl,…etc
words
*The overall effect of these small differences taken
onomatopoeic words
together is being capable of a wider range of shapes
*Unintentional sound production / natural cries of and a more rapid and powerful delivery of sounds
emotions such as pain,joy,anger,..etc produced through these different shapes.

Eg: Ouch!,Ah!,Oh!,Wow!,Uff!,Vay!,Hii!,…etc 5) Tool-Making Source

exclamations
Tool-making, or the outcome of manipulating objects
*This source can not explain how abstract things and changing them using both hands, is evidence of a
are called. brain at work.
The human brain is not only large relative to human
3) Social Interaction Source body size, it is also lateralized, that is, it has
specialized functions in each of the two hemispheres.
*Sounds of a person involved in a physical effort /
Those functions that control the motor movements
rhythmic chants (Yo-he-ho Theory) involved in complex vocalization (speaking) and
object manipulation (making or using tools) are very
Eg: Ha!,Hey!Hop!,..etc close to each other in the left hemisphere of the brain.

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 It may be that there was an evolutionary connection Auditory Phonetics : How speech sounds are
between the language-using and tool-using abilities of perceived, via the ear.
humans and that both were involved in the Consonant Description:
development of the speaking brain
*Voicing (presence or absence of vibration)
*All languages require the organising and *Place of articulation (where sounds are produced)
combining of sounds and signs in a specific *Manner of articulation ( how sounds are produced in
constructions. terms of airflow)
What this theory lacks is any structural organization.
A)Voicing:
6)Genetic Source
/p/,/f/,/t/,/s/,/t/,//,/k/,/h/, /θ/ are voiceless sounds
*Human beings are born with the capacity for (FıSTıKÇı ŞaHaP) θ NO VIBRATION
language. It’s innate. (Innateness Hypothesis.)
/b/,/m/,/w/,/v/,//,/d/,/n/,/z/,l/,/r/,//,/d/,/j/,/g/,//
Even children who are born deaf (and do not are voiced sounds There is
develop speech) become fluent sign language VIBRATION
users, given appropriate circumstances, very early B) Place of Articulation:
in life. This seems to indicate that human offspring Alveolar ridge: it is behind your teeth
are born with a special capacity for language.
Hard palate: it is the roof of your month
Soft palate(velum): it is behind the hard palate
UNIT 2 Uvula: the end of velum
Pharynx: the part between uvula and the larynx
PHONETICS (THE SOUNDS OF LANGUAGE) Glottis: the space between the vocal cords
Letter vs Sound:
Letters are symbols which represents sounds in a
language. Letters are language specific. 1. Bilabial (two lips together)
/b/, /m/, /w/, /p/
Phonetic Alphabet:(IPA) Eg: (BMW Porsche
It’s a separate alphabet with symbols that represent
2.Labiodental (lower lip and upper front
sounds.
teeth)
Why do we use it ?
Phonetic Alphabet is used internationally and creates a /f/ and //
standard form among languages. Eg: VeFa
*The writing systems of languages (letters) are not sufficient
to represent all sounds. 3.Dental (placing the tongue tip between
*A letter may represent different sounds in different language the teeth)
or each language may use different letters for the same /θ/ and //
sound.
Eg: think, thought, there, then,..
*Letters are language specific; letters of a specific language
cannot represent sounds that do not occur in that language.
4.Alveolar (tongue tip or blade is on the
alveolar ridge)
Phonetics /d/, /t/,/n/,/s/,/z/,/l/,/r/
deals with the articulation and perception of speech Eg: dertli sezen
sounds
5. (Alveo-Palatal) (tongue blade and
palatal)
Articulatory Phonetics : How speech sounds are
// , // ,/t/ ,/d/ ,/j/
produced
Acoustic Phonetics : The physical properties of
sounds

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 6.Velar (back of tongue and the VOWEL
velum/soft palate) ENGLISH VOWEL CHART
/k/, /g/, / ŋ /
Eg: ki ŋ g FRONT CENTRAL BACK
i
7.Glottal (articulation involving glottis which is the
 u HIGH
space between vocal cords) 
/h/ e 
Eg: house, who, whose   o MID

C)Manner of Articulation: 

1.Stop: (the air is stopped somewhere in the oral tract so  a  LOW

the airstream cannot escape from the mouth.)
/p/, /b/, /t/,/d/, /k/,/g/
Eg: PaKeT BiGuDi [i] eat,key,see
[] hit,myth
2.Fricative (there is friction) [e] great,weight,tail
/f/,/s/,/z/,//,//,/v/,/h/,/θ/,// [] dead,pet,said
Eg: FuHuŞSuZ Jale Ve ,θ ,  [] ban,add,man
[] arrive,awhile,sofa
3.Affiricate ( combination of stop and fricative) [] fun,run,sun,blood
/t/ and /d/ (cam, çam)
[u] move,too,two
Eg: jeep, cheap, jungle, … [] good,could,put
[o] go,show,no
4.Nasal (the air escapes through the nose/nasal cavity )
[] ball,saw,song
/m/ ,/n/, / ŋ /
While producing /b/, you can’t hear a sound until you [] stop,job,bomb
open your lips. But you can produce /m/,while your lips
are closed. DIPHTHONG
Eg: MeaNiŋ We regularly create sounds that consist
of a
5.Liquid combination of two vowel sounds,
/l/ (Leteral liquid) and /r/ (lira) known as diphthongs.
Eg: let, red, rain …etc
*[] is called ‘schwa’. It’s the unstressed
6.Glide (the tongue in motion to/from the position of a vowel.
vowel) UNIT 3
/w/, /j/, So, these sounds are called semi vowels. PHONOLOGY (THE SOUND PATTERNS OF
Eg: wet, which, yes, you,,…etc LANGUAGE)
*How sounds are combined to form a meaningful
utterance
*How sound patterns come together.
*How speech is organized

eg: the sound /t/ in words “ tar, star, writer, eigth” in

phonological, they are represented same, but in actual
speech, /t/ sounds are very different.

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Phonology is concerned with the abstract or mental
aspect of the sounds in language rather than with the
actual physical production of speech sounds.
Phonemes
‘fine’ and ‘vine’ have different meanings. The difference is
in the initial sound. (eg: fat-vat)
Such sounds which cause a change in the meaning are
called phonemes.
*Phoneme is a sound which distinguishes the meaning.
*Slashes (/../) are used to represent phonemes.
Phones and Allophones
While the phoneme is the abstract unit (“in the
mind”), there are many different versions of that
sound produced in actual speech (“in the mouth”).
We can describe those different versions as
phones.
*Phones appear in square brackets [ ].
When we have a set of phones, all of which are
versions of one phoneme, we describe them as
allophones of that phoneme.
For example, the [t] sound in the word ‘tar’ is
normally pronounced with a stronger puff of air than
is present in the [t] sound in the word ‘star’.
This puff of air is called aspiration , accompanying
the [t] sound at the beginning of tar (but not in star).
**The crucial distinction between
phonemes and allophones is that:
Phonemes cause a change in the meaning
of the word
Allophones don’t cause a change in the meaning.
Eg: In English, there is a difference in the
pronunciation of /i/ in the words seed and seen.
In the second word, the effect of the nasal
consonant [n] makes the [i] sound nasalized. We
can represent this nasalization with a small mark
(˜),
So, there are at least two phones, [i] and [ ı̃],
used to
realize the single phoneme. They are both
allophones of /i/ in English.
Minimal pairs and sets
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A minimal pair is a pair of words with a
difference in only one sound.
Ex: pat-bat, bet-bat, site-side,…etc
-Minimal pairs help us determine phonemes!
*‘pat’ and ‘bat’ are identical in form except for a
contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same
position, the two words are described as a
minimal pair !!
**When a group of words can be differentiated ,each
one from the orhers, by changing a phoneme, then we
have a minimal set.
Eg: feat, fat, fate, foot
Big,fig,rig, pig,dig,wig
Phonotactics
There are definite patterns in the types of sound
combinations permitted in a language.
For example; English does not have form such as
lig and vig. But, they could be viewed as possible
English words. That is, our phonological knowledge
of the pattern of sounds in English would allow us
to treat these forms as acceptable.
However, forms such as fsig, rnig do not exist or
are unlikely ever to exist. They have been formed
without obeying some constraints on the sequence
or position of English phonemes.
*Such constraints are called the phonotactics.
(Permitted arrangements of sounds)
Syllables
A syllable must contain a vowel or vowel-like
sound, including diphthongs.
The most common type of syllable in language also
has a consonant (C) before the vowel (V) and is
typically represented as CV.
Technically, the basic elements of the syllable are
the onset (one or more consonants) followed by the
rhyme. The rhyme consists of a vowel, which is
treated as the nucleus, plus any
following consonant(s), described as the coda.
Syllables like me, to or no have an onset and a
nucleus, but no coda. They are open syllables.
When a coda is present, as in the syllables up, cup,
at or hat, they are called closed syllables.
 **In consonant clusters, especially in coda position,
/t/ is not pronounced.
Eg: [æspks] for aspects, or [himəsbi] for the
phrase ‘he must be’.

*The process of elision (of /k/) in casual conversation

is likely to produce [wiæstəm] for we asked him.
There are diagrams to show these syllables.
*Vowels also disappear, as in [vri] for every, [ntrst]
syllable for interest, [kæbnət] for cabinet, [kæmrə] for camera,
[prznər] for prisoner and [spoz] for suppose.
onset rime (vowel and consonant)
WORD FORMATION PROCESS
consonant(s) nucleus coda 1.COINAGE (to “coin” means “to invent”)

The invention of totally new items. The most typical

vowel consonant(s)
source is the usage of specific brand names of the
Consonant Clusters
products for the product in general. (usually without
Both the onset and the coda can consist of more
than one consonant, also known as a consonant capital letters)
cluster.
There are many CC onset combinations permitted Eg: selpak, sana yağı, aspirin, aygaz, nylon, zipper,
in English phonotactics. kleenex, teflon,xerox, granola,vaseline,….
Eg: stop, black, star, post, bread, trick, twin, flat,
throw New words based on the name of a person or a
place are called eponyms.
Eg: sandwich (from the eighteenth-century
Coarticulation Effects
Earl of Sandwich who first insisted on
The process of making one sound almost
having his bread and meat together while
at the same time as the next sound is
called coarticulation. gambling)
jeans (from the Italian city of Genoa where
There are two well known coarticulation the type of cloth was first made).
effects, described as assimilation and 2.BORROWING
elision.
It is a process in which the word is taken
Assimilation over from another language. (Technically,
When two sound segments occur in sequence it’s more than just borrowing because
and some aspect of one segment is taken or English doesn’t give them back.)
“copied” by the other, the process is known as
assimilation. Eg: croissant (French), dope (Dutch), lilac
(Persian), piano (Italian), pretzel
Eg: The word have /hæv/
Think of how it is pronounced in the phrase ‘I (German),sofa (Arabic), tattoo (Tahitian),
have to go’ in everyday speech. tycoon (Japanese), yogurt (Turkish) and
Eg: can [kæn], zebra (Bantu).
when we say ‘I can go’

Elision Some words are directly translated. This

The process of not pronouncing a sound segment in
translation is called loan-
the everyday pronunciation is described as elision.
translation/calque.

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 The English word superman = the German -Regular source of back formation verbs in English
Übermensch, is based on the pattern “-er”
Honeymoon- balayı Eg: worker = work
Spaceship- uzay gemisi Editor = edit
Total quality – toplam kalite 7.CONVERSION (To change)
Natural gas- doğal gaz category change” and “functional shift.
A change in the function of a word,
when a noun or adjective comes to be
3. COMPOUNDING (Combining two or used as a verb (without any reduction)
more things) is generally known as conversion.
Eg: bottle, butter, chair ,vacation, paper
We combine two separate words to
produce a single form. Can you give a paper? (n)
My father is papering the walls.(v)
Eg: bookcase, fingerprint, wastebasket, textbook

4. 8.ACRONYMS
BLENDING (to mix two or more things)
Breakfast + lunch = brunch  New words are formed from the initial letters of a
Television + broadcast = telecast set of other words.
Motor + hotel = motel Eg: ODTÜ = OrtaDoğu Teknik Üniversitesi
Modulator + demodulator = modem NATO= North Atlantic Treaty Organization
UNESCO = United Nations Educational Scientific
and Cultural Organization
5. CLIPPING (to make something shorter) CD = compact disk
ATM= Automatic Teller Machine
It is the reduction of a word of more than one PIN = Personal Identification Number
syllable, to a shorter form. SSK = Sosyal Sigortalar Kurumu
9.DERIVATION ( to develop from something)
Eg: Gasoline- gas
Advertisement – ad -The productions of new words are accomplished
Veterinarian – vet by means of affixes.
Facsimile- fax -Affixes are divided in three groups; suffix, prefix,
Fanatic- fan and infix.
Hypocorism (in Austrilia, Britain,England) -Suffix is placed at the end of the word (son ek)
A longer word is reduced to a single syllable, then “- Eg: happiness, respectful, childish, worker,
y” or “-ie” is added to the end. foolishness mutluluk, saygılı, çocuksu
Eg: Breakfast = brek+k+y = brekky -Prefix is placed at the beginning of the word (ön
Barbecue = barb + ie = barbie ek)
Television = tel+l+y = telly Eg: misuse, mislead unhappy,irregular,
6. BACKFORMATION disrespectful, illegal…
A word of one type (usually noun) is reduced to
form another word of a different type (usually a -Infıx is an affix which is incorporated inside
verb). The process is from complex to simple. another word
Eg: “television” came into use and then “televise” Eg: Hallebloodyluah! (Hallelujah
was created from it. Absogaddamlutely! (Absolutely)
Donation = donate Unfuckingbelivable! (unbelieveable)
Option= opt

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UNIT 4
MORPHOLOGY
Morphology: Morphology analyzes all the basic
elements which are used in a language. What we’ve
been describing as elements in the form of a
linguistic message are more technically known as
morphemes.
Derivational Morphemes: We use these bound
morphemes to make new words or to make words
of a different grammatical category from the stem.
Eg: care-careful, care-careless, pay-payment, fool-
foolish,bad-badly, change-exchange, operate-
cooperate, good-goodness…

-Another definition of a morpheme is “a minimal unit

of meaning or grammatical function.” Units of Inflectional Morpheme: They are not used to
grammatical function include forms used to indicate produce new words in English language but
past tense or plural,… etc. indicates aspects of the grammatical function of a
word.
FREE AND BOUND MORPHEMES  Plural /-s/
 Possession /-‘s/
FREE MORPHEME  Third person singular /-s/
 Present participle /-ing/
 Past tense /-ed/
 Past participle /-en/
 Comperative /-er/
Lexical morpheme Functional morpheme
 Superlative /-est/
(they have lexical and (they have grammatical …etc
content meaning) functions) Morphological Description
verbs conjunctions
nouns prepositions  Inflectional markers do not change the
adjectives articles grammatical category of the verb.
adverbs pronouns Eg: cold(adj)- colder(adj)

Eg: lexical morpheme:  The derivational markers can change the

man,house,tiger,yellow,sincere,open,look,break,
follow…
Eg: functional morphem:
and,but,when,because,on,near,above,in,the,that…
 The bound morpheme /-er/ can be derivational
BOUND MORPHEME: They cannot normally stand
alone and are typically attached to another form.
grammatical category or the meaning of the
words
Eg: teach (verb) – teacher (noun)
and inflectional. If it change the meaning or
grammatical category, it is derivational. If it
does not change the meaning or grammatical
category, it is inflectional.
Eg: stronger – teacher

Bound morphemes can be divided into two

categories: derivational and inflectional morpheme -The derivational morphemes come before the inflectional
morphemes.
BOUND MORPHEMES
Eg: teach- er – s

DERIVATIONAL MORPH. INFLECTIONAL ?? the cow jumped over the moon

MORPH. MORPHS AND ALLOMOPHS

Morphs are the actual forms used to realize

morpheme.

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The form “cats” consists of two morphs; lexical
morpheme and inflectional morpheme.
The plural form of “cat”, the plural form of “sheep”
and the plural form of “man” are the same?
Eg: cat = cat + s = morph
bus = bus + z = morph
(We use an asterisk * to indicate that a form is
unacceptable or ungrammatical.)
From these examples, we can see that English has
strict rules for combining words into phrases. The
article (the) must go before the adjective (lucky),
which must go before the noun (boys). So, in order to
be grammatical, this type of phrase must have the
sequence article + adjective + noun.

sheep = sheep+  (zero+morph) = morph TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR

man = men (irregular morph) = morph
The terms “article,” “adjective” and “noun” that we
used to label the grammatical categories of the words
in the phrase the lucky boys come from traditional
grammar, which has its origins in the description of
UNIT 5 languages such as Latin and Greek. Since there were
GRAMMAR well-established grammatical descriptions of these
languages, it seemed appropriate to adopt the
Two levels of description; a sequence of sounds existing categories from these descriptions and apply
(phonetically) and a sequence of morphemes. them in the analysis of “newer” languages such as
English.

Phonetically:
The best-known terms from that tradition are those
lkibz used in describing the parts of speech.

The parts of speech:

Voiced fricative voiceless stop diphthong The lucky boys saw the clown at

Morphologically: Article adj. Noun verb Art Noun

Prep.

the circus and they cheered

The luck y boy s loudly

Func. Lexical. Deriv. Lexical inflectinal. article noun conj. noun

verbadverb

With these description, we can analyze all the words

in terms of their phonetics and morphology.

Grammar: It’s the way of describing the structure of Agreement:

phrases and sentences which will account for all of
the grammatical sequences and rule out all the Traditional grammatical analysis gives us a
ungrammatical sequences. number of other categories:
number,person,tense,voice,gender.

Eg: *boys the lucky or *boys luck the

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 These categories can be discussed in
isolation, but their roles in describing
language structure become more clearer
when we consider them in terms of
“agreement”.
Eg: the verb “likes” agrees with the boy or
the girl not agree with they or you.
The boy/the girl likes his/her dog is a
correct sentence
This agreement based on the category of number
(singular or plural). Also, ıt is based on the person
(1st person,2nd person or 3rd person and their singular
or plural types)
Eg: *they watches tv?
* she play football?
tense: simple presen/ past ,..etc or active voice-
passive voice.
eg: the boy likes his dog (active)
(the boy liked his dog)
his dog is liked by him (passive)
Gender: we have two types of gender: natural and
grammatical gender.
Natural gender deals with masculine,feminine and
neuter. In English, male entities (he,his), female
entities (she/her) and sexless entities or animal (it/its)
Grammatical gender: nouns are classified according
to their gender class. For example; Spanish has two
grammatical gender masculine and feminine. In
Spanish, el sol (the sun/masculine), la luna (the
moon/feminine
PRESCRIPTIVE APPROACH
Rules for the “proper” use of English
This approach was taken by grammarians in 18th
century in England to set out rule for the correct and
proper use of English
This rules about “proper English” can still be found in
today. Some familiar examples are
1) you must not split an infinitive
2) you mustn’t end a sentence with a preposition
3) never begin a sentence with and
eg: “mary runs faster than me” is corrected “mary runs
faster than I”
“who did you see?” is corrected “whom did you see?
Q1. that’s the girl I gave my roller skates to.
He wanted to simply borrow your car for an hour.
What prescriptive rules for the proper use of English
are not obeyed in the sentences?
Linguistic etiquette→ the identification of the proper
or best structures to be used in language. It deals with
people’s social attitudes and values.
DESCRIPTIVE APPROACH
It may be that using well-established grammatical
description of Latin is useful guide for studying some
languages (eg,Italian,Spanish) and is less useful for
others (eg;English)
Analysts collect samples of the language they’re
interested in and attempt to describe the regular
structures of the language as it is used, not according
to some view of how it should be used. This is called
the descriptive approach.
Structural analysis:
its main concern is to investigate the
distribution of forms (e.g. morphemes)
in a language. It involves the use of
test-frames that can be sentences with
empty slots.
The __________ makes a lot of noise
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 I heard a ________ yesterday In this sentence, there are some
constituents.

“her father, a shotgun, the wedding” are

noun phrases,
Her father brought a shotgun to the wedding
The man saw the thief in a car to the wedding is preposional phrase,

The label , we give to this grammatical category is brought a shotgun is verb phrase.
“noun”

However, there are many forms which

are not fit text-frames above (eg: a This type of diagram can be used to show the
child, Cathy, it,a car…) types of forms which can substitute for each
other at different levels of constituents structure.

Labeled and bracketed sentences:

For these forms, we require different
test-frames.

__________ makes a lot of noise Art (= article) V (= verb)

I heard ________ yesterday N (= noun) VP (= verb phrase)

NP (= noun phrase) S (= sentence)

There are a lot of forms which can fit into

these slots to produce good grammatical S
sentences of English. We can suggest
that because all of these forms fit in the
same test-frame, they are likely to be
examples of the same grammatical
category. The common label for this
The  dog followed  the] boy
category is “noun phrase.”

By developing a set of test-frames of this

type and discovering which forms fit the
slots in the test-frames, we can produce
a description of (at least some) aspects
of the sentence structures of a language.
In performing this type of analysis, we have not only
labeled all the constituents , we exposed the
hierarchical organization of those constituents.
UNIT 6

SYNTAX
Immediate constituent analysis:
Syntax: the structure and ordering of the
The tecnique is designed to show how components within a sentence. Syntax means “a
small constituents (or components) in setting out together” or “arrangement”.
sentences go together to form larger
constituents.

Eg: her father brought a shotgun to the Generative grammar:

wedding.

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- all the structures of the language will be well-formed
(grammatical) not ill-formed (ungrammatical)
- “all and only” criterion (all sentences are
grammatical and only these grammatical sentences
are acceptable)
- The grammar will have a finite number of rules but
will be capable of generating infinite number of well-
formed sentences
- The productivity of language is in the limits of the
grammar
The rules of the grammar will also need the crucial
property of recursion.The capacity to be applied
more than once in forming (generating) a structure
eg: the dog chased the cat. Which one?
The cat that ate the rat
This is the dog that chased the cat that ate the rat
that ate the cheese which was on the table…

Structural ambiguity:
Examine the sentence:
“Annie whacked a man with an
umbrella”
In deep structure, ıt has two meaning (ıt
has two underlying interpretation)
Eg: the book was on the table near the window in
the hallway in the first floor….
- there is no end to recursion
- a sentence can have another sentence inside it
- a phrase can have another phrase of the same type
inside it

1) annie whacked a man with an umbrella

2) the man was carrying an umbrella and Tree diagrams
Annie whacked that man.
One of the most common ways to create a visual
representation of syntactic structure is through tree
Eg: “ I shot the elephant in my pyjamas”
diagrams
1) the elephant was in my pyjamas , I shot
that elephant
2) I wore my pyjamas. While I was in my
pyjamas, I shot the elephant
Ex: the monkey
Can you find the ambiguity in the
following sentences?
the  monkey
“ I saw the man with the telescope”
NP
 Phrases can also be ambiguous
 Eg: old men and women = old
men and old women / women and
old men
 Blue jacket and skirt = blue
Art N
jacket and blue skirt / skirt and
blue jacket (the) (monkey)
 an American history teacher
 the parents of the Ayşe and
Ahmet

Recursion:
- This tree diagram involves all the grammatical
information and it is more explicit. It shows different
levels in the analysis.

13
 Eg: the monkey ate a banana Adj. adjective

N noun

S V verb

Phrase structure rules:

NP VP We can analyse a sentence in two different ways.

1) tree diagram: static representation of

the structure of the sentence
Art N V NP 2) phrase structure: (dynamic format) with
a small number of rules we can
(the) (monkey) (ate) generate a very large number of
sentences with similar structures. It is
an alternative format to the tree
diagram.
Art N

(a) (banana) Complement phrases:

Symbols used in Syntactic description The word that, as used in these examples, is called
a complementizer (C). The role of that as a
we discussed about some of the abbreviations for
complementizer is to introduce a complement
grammatical categories
phrase (CP). For example, in the second sentence
Art (= article) (Cathy knew…), we can identify one CP which
contains that plus Mary helped George. We already
V (= verb) know that Mary helped George is a sentence (S).
So, we are now in a position to define a CP in the
N (= noun)
following way: “a complement phrase
VP (= verb phrase)
rewrites as a complementizer and a sentence,”or
NP (= noun phrase) CP → C S.

S (= sentence) Eg: John believed that Cathy knew that Mary helped
George
PP (=prepositional phrase)
UNIT 7
A list of symbols and abbreviation found in syntactic
description SEMANTICS
S sentence (Study of meaning in language)
Adv. Adverb * ungrammatical
 It is the study of the meaning of words, phrases and
sentences.
PN proper noun “consists of”
 Linguistic semantics deals with the conventional
VP verb phrase (…) optional constituents meaning conveyed by the use of words and
sentences of a language.
Art article {…} only one of these

Pro pronoun Prep preposition

Meaning
NP noun phrase PP prepositional phrase

14
 Conceptual Meaning vs. Associative Meaning

 conceptual meaning: - Why is the first sentence not acceptable?

- essential components of meaning
- What makes “hamburger” different from
- literal use of a word “man”?

- type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to

describe
 “eat” must denote entities that are
Ex: capable of “eating”. It needs the
feature “+animate”
needle - sharp +animate (denotes an animate
being)
- thin
-animate (does not denote an
- steel animate being)
- instrument
 features such as “ +animate, -
animate, +human, -human,
 associative meaning:
+male, -male, +adult, -adult……”
- the meaning which comes to mind whenever it is used
can distinguish the meaning of
- not the first meaning
each word in the language from
- it may differ from one person to another
every other word.
- poets and advertisers use it
Ex:
Ex:
The _________ is reading the
needle - painful
newspaper .
-illness
N [ +human ]
-drugs
- blood
- knitting
yüzük - evlilik This approach would give us the
ability to predict which nouns
-bağlılık make this sentence semantically
odd.
Ex: dog = animal, puppy, barking,… } conceptual
meaning Table Girl Woman Boy Man
dog = faithfull } associative meaning Animate - + + + +

Semantic features Human - + + + +

Male - - - + +

* The hamburger ate the man. Adult - - + - +

This sentence is syntactically good

(grammatical), but semantically odd
(unacceptable).
Semantic roles

The man ate the hamburger (grammatical

and acceptable)

15
We look at the “roles” of the words (instead He drew the picture with a crayon.
of considering them as “containers” of (instrument)
meaning.)

Experiencer: An entity as the person who

Agent and Theme has a feeling , a perception or a state.

Ex: I heard a noise ( I is an experiencer, a

noise is a theme)
Agent: It performs the action
Ayşe saw him (Ayşe = experiencer,
They are generally human him=theme)
Ex: The man ate the hamburger Did you hear that noise? (you =
experience)
(the man performs the action : agent)
The boy feels sad. (the boy =
However, non-human components
experience)
also can be agent

The dog caught the ball (the dog is

an agent)

Theme: It is involved in or affected by the Location, Source and Goal

action

Ex: The man ate the hamburger (theme)

Location: describes where an entity is in
The dog caught the ball (theme) the describtion of the event.

Ex: He put the book on the table (“on the

table”=location)
The theme can also be human.
Source/goal : The entity moves from is the
Ex: The boy kicked himself (the
source
boy=agent, himself=theme)
and where it moves to is the
goal.
Instrument and Experiencer Ex: I borrowed a magazine from George
(source)

She gave the book to George (goal)

Instrument: If the agent uses another
entity in performing an action, that entity is
in the role of instrument.
Mary saw a fly on the wall.
Ex: The man ate the hamburger with a fork
Exper. Theme Location
(instrument)

He locked the door with a key

(instrument) She borrowed a magazine from George.
He wrote a letter with a pen (instrument)

16
She squashed the bug with the magazine. (comperative constructions)

She handed the magazine back to George.

Lexical relations: Non-gradable antonymys: dead-alive, true-

false, male-female…
We characterize the meaning of a word not
only in terms of its component features or
roles, but in terms of its relationship with
each other. If something isn’t big, that doesn’t mean “it
is small” (gradable)

If something isn’t dead, that means “it is

Synonymy: words that are closely related alive” (non-gradable)
in meaning (sameness of meaning)

Ex: broad/wide, hide/conceal, almost/near,

cab/taxi, liberty/freedom, answer/reply,
couch/sofa,…etc
But, sometimes, they aren’t used in the
same context.
Reversives: they do opposite of the action
enter/exit, tie/untie, pack/unpack,
raise/lower, dress/undress, fair/unfair,…etc

Eg: Who wants to answer/reply?

Hyponymy: the meaning of one form is
Please , answer the phone (not reply) included in the meaning of another

Ex: dog-animal, cabbage-vegetable, rose-

flower, table-furniture, rose-flower…etc
Sometimes, synonymous forms may also
differ in terms of formality

Eg: My father purchased a large “dog” is hyponym of animal

automobile.
“ant” is hyponym of insect
My dad bought a big car.
“animal” and “insect” are co-hyponyms of
creature

Antonymy: two forms with opposite “creature” is the superordinate form of

meaning “animal” and “insect”

Ex: quick/slow, big/small, long/short,

rich/poor, happy/sad, old/young,
male/female,alive/dead…etc Hyponym= “is a kind of”

Eg: “dog” is a kind of animal == dog is

hyponymy of animal
There are two types of antonyms:

gradable and non-gradable antonym

Prototypes: the idea of ‘the characteristic
instance’ of a category is known as the
prototype.
Gradable antonyms: big-small, young-old,
hot-cold

17
 Ex: “canary, dove, parrot and penguin” are
co-hyponyms of bird. But, “canary and
parrot” are the prototypes of bird. They are
the first examples of bird that comes to
mind.
Ex: trousers and shoes are co-hyponymy
of clothing.
But, trousers are the prototype of clothing.
Homophones and homonyms:
bat (flying creature), (used in sports)
there are two or more different entries of
homonyms (in the dictionaries)
Polysemy: a word has multiple meanings
which are related to the general concept of
the word. There is one entry with a
numbered list of the different meanings of
the word.

Homophones: two different (written) Ex: head: top of your body

forms have the same pronunciation
Top of a glass of beer

Top of a company/department
Ex: to-two

tale-tail they have different

Run: person does
spelling and meaning,
water does
but, have the same
pronunciation

Bacak /ayak : insan bacağı/ayağı

Ex: Bare-bear, meat-meet, flour-flower, Masa bacağı/ayağı
pale-pail,…

Kanat: uçak kanadı

 sometimes, more than two forms may be
homophones: Kuş kanadı
ex: to-too-two

buy-by-bye cite-sight-site
Metonymy: close connection between the
homonyms: one form has two or more words in everyday experience
unrelated meanings
1- container-contents relation
bottle-coke ; can-juice

Ex: bank ( of a river), (financial institutions) tencere-yemek ; şişe-su/kola/rakı

race (ethnic group), (contest of speed)

pupil (at school), (in the eye) eg; bütün şişeyi içti

mole (on skin), (small animal) tencerenin hepsini yedi

18
 Pragmatics is the study of ‘Invisible’
meaning or how we recognize what is
2- whole-part relation meant even when it is not actually said.
house-roof, car-wheels
Ex:
house-door
A: telefon çalıyor!! (could you answer
tha phone?) (invisible meaning)
eg: bir çatım olsun yeter
B: banyodayım! (I can’t
gidecek bir kapım olsun yeter answer)(invisible meaning)

3- representative-symbol relation Ex: baby & toddler sale (not selling

cumhurbaşkanı-çankaya babies but selling clothes for babies.)

door-guest

king-crown

The president-The White House

Context

We have got two kinds of contexts.

eg: bildiriyi Çankaya onayladı

Answering the door..

 Linguistic context (co-text): the
Giving someone a hand..
co text of a word is the set of
other words used in the same
The White House announced that…
phrase or sentence.

Collocation: one word occur with Ex: ‘bank’ if it is used in a sentence

another with words like ‘steep’ or ‘overgrown’
we can decide which type of bank is
Ex: butter-bread, table-chair, salt- meant. If we hear someone say that
pepper ’she has to go to the bank to withdraw
soma cash’ we know from this
Tuz-biber,karı-koca,siyah-beyaz,iğne- linguistic context which bank is meant.
iplik,çatal-bıçak…

Eat breakfast, have breakfast, but not

*make breakfast Ex: there is a pupil at the school

UNIT 8 “pupil” is homonymy (the student and

in the eye)
PRAGMATICS
By looking at other words in the
The study of intended speaker sentence we know which type of
meaning(what speakers mean) is called “pupil” is intended.
Pragmatics.

19
  physical context : interpreting temporal deixis : yesterday, tomorrow,
the statements considering the then, next week,now,..
physical context it is uttered in.

eg: BOĞAZ there is no ex: “free beer tomorrow”

linguistic context.
bu ayın beşinde = deictic (we don’t know
the month)

But in a road, when we see that sign, beşinçi ayın onbeşinde = not deictic( we
we immideately think of “boğaz” know fifth month is “may”)
connecting two places (not neck)
15. yüzyıl = not deictic

Yarım saat içinde döneceğim = deictic

RACE
eg: There is no
linguistic context.

When we saw the sign in a crowded There is a distinction between what is

marked as close to the speaker ( this, that,
place, we only think of “a contest” not
“ethnic group” now ) . What is marked as distant ( that,
there, then ).

 time,place and physical context

help us understand linguistic Reference:
expressions.
-Reference is an act by which a speaker
uses language to enable a listener to
Deixis identify something.

If there is no physical context, we cannot

understand the meaning of some words.
To perform an act of reference, we can use
We can’t interpret them if we don’t know
proper nouns, phrases or pronouns.
who is speaking about whom, where and
when, it is impossible to understand some Inference:
sentences such as,
Ex: A: Can I look at your Chomsky ?

B: Sure. It’s on the shelf.

she will tell him that they will come here
two days later

Chomsky refers to sth. The key process

here is called inference.

deictic expressions:
An inference is any additionaal information
used by the listener to create a connection
between what is said and what must be
person deixis : he,she,it,you,we,they,..
meant .
spatial deixis : here,there,that,this…

20
- we don’t have to know a person’s name.
We can refer him/her.
Ex: Kılıbık geliyor.
Bodur nedere?
Desene sakarın başı belada..
Bay çok bilmiş teşrif ettiler..
-The listener has to infer that the name of
the writer of a book can be used to identify
a book by that writer.
Ex: Mozart dinlemeyi seviyorum
Picasso is in the museum
Jennifer is wearing Calvin Klein.
Anaphora
We usually make a distinction between
introducing new referents (a puppy) and
referring back to them ( the puppy, it).
The subsequent reference to any already
introduced entity is Anaphora. (referring
back )
The first mention is called Antecedent.
Ex: Have you seen my grammar book?
antecedent
It is on the shelf.
Anaphora
The first mention is called “antecedent” and
the second mention is “anaphora”
21
Ex: I was waiting for the bus. But he drove
by without stopping
-Dr.White gave Mary some medicine after
she asked him for it.
- We saw a funny home video about a boy
washing a puppy in a small bath. The
puppy started struggling and shaking and
the boy got really wet. When he let go, it
jumped out of the bath and run away.
Presupposition
When a speaker uses referring
expressions like “this, her or Picasso”, s/he
assumes that the hearer knows which
referent is intended. These assumptions
may be mistaken. But they try to reflect
what we say in the everday use of
language.
 what a speaker assumes is TRUE
or is KNOWN by the hearer is
describes as PRESUPPOSITION.
Ex: Your brother is waiting outside for
you.
(you have a brother)
My wife is pregnant (I am married)
You should have told me ( you didn’t
tell me)
My car is wreck ( I have a car)
When did you stop smoking? ( you
used to smoke cigars, you haven’t
used it now)
 Did you kill him with a gun (you killed
him)
- but, if the answer “yes”, your
presupposition is correct
- but, if the hearer denies
consistently, the presupposition is
not correct
do you want to do again? (you did it at
least one)
When a form such as “Did he…?, Are they…?, Can
you…?” is used to ask a question, it is described as
“direct speech act”.
Ex: Can you ride a bicycle? (real question - direct
speech act)
Can you pass the salt (request- indirect speech
act)
Sandelye boş mu? (may I use it - indirect
speech)

I didn’t undertand. (can you tell me again –

--consistency under negation indirect speech)

ex: my car is wreck

my car is not wreck A: Excuse me, do you know where Espark is?

(in both sentences, I have a car) B: Oh sure, I know where it is (then walks away). 

Indirect speech acts are more polite than direct speech

ex: I used to regret marrying him
acts
I don’t regret marrying him

(in both sentences, I am married) Politeness

Politeness is showing awareness of another

person’s face. Your face is your public self-image.

Speech acts

 face –threating act: give me the pencil! (you have

Actions such as requesting, commanding,
questioning, informing. We use some linguistic forms
with some functions.
more social power/threatening )
 face-saving act: could you please give me the
pencil? (less social power/less threatening)

Forms functions Negative and Positive Face

Interrogative question  negative face: need to be independent and free from

imposition.
Imperative command Ex:
(request)
I am sorry to bother you, but…
Declarative statement
I know you are busy, but… negative face

22
 positive face: your need to be connected, to be
belong to a member of the group (empahty)
Ex:
Let’s do it together
You and I have the same problem,so.. positive
face
Also, politeness may change from culture to culture.
UNIT 9
DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
How language-users interpret what other
language users intent to convey is based
on discourse.
Discourse: a speech talk or written text
The language speakers:
- make sense of what they read in
texts
- understand what speakers mean
(whatever they say)
- recognize the connection in
meaning (even if it is incoherent)
- are successful in the complex
activity “ conversation”
These are at the concern of discourse
analysis.
Discourse = ‘language beyond the
sentence’
Interpreting discourse:
We can recognize correct versus incorrect
form and structure (although we are
concerned with the accurate form &
structure in a language)
We can even cope with texts which appear
to break a lot of the rules of the language.
Ex:”Kennedy son dies”
“Prime Minister to see U.S President”
“Kennedy boy drugs death”
“Kıyamete kıl payı”
“Fener bu kez Alex’le vurdu”
23
- we cope with the fragments above
(which break some rules of
English and Turkish) although
they are ungrammatical.
- Also, we arrive at a reasonable
interpretation of what the writer
/speaker intended to convey.
- To interpret discourse, we use
correct and incorrect form and
structure.
- We rely on what we know about
linguistic form and structure.
Cohesion:
The ties and connections which exist within
texts.
Cohesion is obtained through:
- pronoun (remember
anaphora)(he, it, they,..)
- lexical connections
- connections created by terms that
share a common meaning (
money= bought, saving, penny,
fortune…)
- time: (now, nowadays,
sometimes…)
- connectors: (however, although,
but…)
- verb tenses
Ex: My father once bought a car. He did it
by saving every penny he could. That car
would be worth a fortune nowadays.
However, he sold it to help pay for my
college education. Sometimes, I think I’d
rather have the car.
The cohesive ties help us in our
judgements on whether something is well-
written or not.
 However, cohesion isn’t sufficient
to enable us to
interpret/understand what we read
Ex: My father bought a car. The car
driven by the police was red. That
colour doesn’t suit her. She consists of
three letters. However, a letter isn’t as
fast as a phone call.
 In that example, there are lots of
cohesive links between the
 sentences. But it is difficult to
interpret.
 There must be some other factors
which leads us to distinguish
connected texts
Coherence:
(Everything fitting together well)
- It exists in people (not in the
language)
- In the example…………………,
there are a lot of “gaps” between
the sentences. If you study a lot,
you can fill these gaps to have a
“coherent” interpretation.
- With “coherence”, you can create
“ meaningful connection which
isn’t expressed by words and
sentences.
Ex: We can analyze “casual
conversation”
A: That’s the telephone!
B: I’m in the bath.
A: O.K
- In this example, there is more
than “linguistic knowledge”. There
is no “cohesive ties”. But they can
successfully communicate.
- Ayşe and Fatma use the
information contained in the
sentences. They have a lot of
knowledge about “conversational
interaction”
Speech events:
- Debates, interviews, various types
of discussions, phone calls are all
speech events
- The nature of conversation varies
as to the speech events
To describe these variations, there are
some criteria:
1) roles of speaker/hearer(s)
2) their relationships ( Are they
friends/strangers/young/old?)
3) the topic of the conversation
4) in what setting and context it
takes place
24
Conversation Analysis:
- conversation is an activity where
two or more people take turns at
speaking
- If more than one participant tries
to talk at the same time, one of
them usually stops.
-
ex: A: bence bu yeni yaklaşım
tamamen…
B: öğrenciler üzerinde çok etkili
olacak
A: Aslında, tam olarak etkili bir
yaklaşım olduğunu düşünmüyorum.
- “B” should have waited the “A”s
completion-point
( a signal that indicates the
speaker has finished)
Completion point:
May be a question
May be a pause at the end of a
completed syntactic structure
-what about the listener? How can s/he
indicate that s/he wants to speak?
May make short sounds, usually
repeated
May use body shifts, facial
expressions
Turn Taking:
 strategies of participation in
conversational interactions
the source of these strategies:
- rudeness (interrupting another
speaker)
- shyness (waiting to take turn so
long)
 for both to have normal
completion points
- avoid having the two indicators of
“completion point” at the same
time
- don’t pause at the end of the
sentence
- use connectors like “and, then, so,
but…”
- put your pauses at the points
where the message is
 incomplete. (söylemek istediğim
şu ki…)
- place the pause before or after
verbs
- fill the pauses with hesitation
markers (er, em, uh,…)
THE CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE
(Grice:1975)
The participants in “conversational
exchanges” are co-operating with each
other.
The co-operative principle is stated in the
following way : ‘ 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 engaged.’
There are 4 maxims which should be
obeyed.
1) The Quantity Maxim: make your
contribution as informative as is
required but not more or less than
is required.
2) The Quality Maxim: don’t say
that which you believe to be false or for
which you lack evidence
3) The Relation Maxim: be relevant
(do not say unnecessary things)
4) The Manner Maxim: be clear,
brief and orderly
Hedges:
Hedges can be defined as words or
phrases used to indicate that we are not
really sure that what we are saying is
sufficiently correct or complete.
Ex: his hair was kind of long
The book cover is sort of yellow (rather
than it is yellow)
(these are hedges on the quality maxim)
Ex: - report what you think & feel (not
know)
- report possible & likely (not certain)
- use may & could (not must)
25
As far as I know,…
I’m not absolutely sure, but …..
Implicatures:
Eg: A: Are you coming to the party
tonight?
B: I’ve got an exam tomorrow.
Here, B’s statement is not an answer
to the A’s statement. But A
understands that B says “I won’t”
so, B is “relevant and informative”.
B’ answer is an implicature
(additional conveyed meaning).
To describe the conversational
implicature, we have to appeal to
some background knowledge that
must be shared by the conversational
participants
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
1.John was on his way to school last Friday
2.He was really worried about the math
lesson
(When you read two sentences, what do
you think about John?
We think that john is a schoolboy. Our
inferences are result from our conventional
knowledge in our culture. )
3.Last week he had been unable to control
the class
(With this sentence, we infer that John is
not a student, but a teacher.)
4.It was unfair of the math teacher to leave
him in charge.
(John revets to his schoolboy status.)
5.After all, it is not a normal part of a
janitor’s duties.

We build interpretation of what we read by
using a lot more imformation than is
actually in the words.
We create what the text is about, based on
our expectations of what normally
happens.
In attempting to describe the
phenomenon, the researchers use the term
“schema” or “script”
Schemas and Scripts:
Schema: is a general term for conventional
knowledge structure which exists in
memory. If you hear someone describes
one day in the supermarket, you don’t have
to be told what is normally found in a
supermarket.
Script: is essentially a dynamic schema,
in which a series of conventional actions
takes place. On the basis of a “restaurant”
script; Suzzy opens the door to get into the
restaurant, there are tables, she eats the
sandwich, she pays for it & so on.
We all have the script of “going to cinema,
going to dentist, eating a restaurant...
UNIT 10
LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN
It deals with the ability to use language is in
the brain.
Neurolinguistics: is the study of the
relationship between language and brain.
Language ability is not located at the front
of the brain
Language Areas In The Brain
LEFT HEMISPHERE
26
1) Broca’s area: anterior speech
cortex
It is involved in the production of
speech.
Paul Broca (1860) said that damage to
this part of the brain was related to
difficulty in producing speech.
But, the damage to the same area on
the right hemisphere had no such
effect. Language ability must be
related in the left hemisphere.
2) Wernicke’s area: posterior
speech cortex
It is involved in the understanding
of speech.
Carl Wernicke (1870) said that
damage to this part of the brain was
related to comprehension difficulties.
3) Motor cortex: controls movement
of the muscles (moving
arms,hands…)
- It controls the articulatory muscles
of face,jaw,tongue,larynx…
- It is involved in the actual physical
articulation of speech
4) The arcuate fasculus: there is a
number of nerve fibers tied
together.
- forms a very important connection
between Wernicke’s area and
Broca’s area.
The Localization View:
The specific aspects of language
ability can be placed in specific
locations in the brain.
It has been proposed that the brain
activity involved in hearing a word,
understanding it,then saying it, would
follow a definite pattern.
The word is heard and comprehended
via Wernicke’s area.
This signal is then transferred via the
arcuate fasculus to the Broca’s area
where preparations are made to
produce it
A signal then sends to motor cortex to
physically articulate the word.
TONGUE TIPS & SLIPS
As language users, we all experience
difficulty in getting the brain and
speech production to work together.
Tip-of-the-tongue-phenomenon:
you know the word, you know the
phonological outline of the word, you
can get the initial sound correct and
you even know the number as
syllables in the word, but it just won’t
come to surface you can’t produce
it correctly
There are often strong phonological
similarities between the target word
and the mistake.
Error Target
Emanate emulate
Musician magician
Single signal
these types of mistakes are called
“MALAPROPISMS”
Slip-of-the-tongue-phenomenon:
producing “tangled” expressions
Long shory stort (for “long short story”)
“shu flots” (for flu shots)
“beel fetter” (for feel better)
“loop before you leak” (look before you
leap)
these types of mistakes are called
“SPOONERISM”
Reversing the words:
“use the door to open the key” (use
the key to open the door)
“a fifty-pound dog of bag food” (a fifty-
pound bag of dog food)
“he sliced the knife with the salam (he
sliced the salam with the knife)
27
Find the matter “you have hissed all
my mystery lectures”??
carrying a sound from one word to the
next:
Black boxes (black bloxes)
Roman numerals (noman numerals)
Cup of tea (tup of tea)
Paid player (played payer)
 the slips are not random. People
never produce a phonologically
unacceptable sequence. This
shows “ the different stages” in
the articulation of linguistic
expressions.
 Slips are considered “the errors of
articulation”, but it has been
suggested that may result from
“slips of the brain”.
Slips-of –the- ear- phenomenon:
Grey tape (you hear “great ape”)
Gladly the cross I’d bear (a child
misunderstands it as (there is a cross-
eyed bear called gladly)
There are the humorous examples of
slips which are not much serious.
Some problems with language
production & comprehension are much
more serious disorders in the brain
function.
APHASIA:
impairment (weakness) of language
function due to localized celebral
damage which causes difficulty in
understanding / producing linguistic
function.
Classification of types of aphasia is
based on the symptoms
1) Broca’s aphasia (motor
aphasia)
-ungrammatical production of
language
- reduced amount of speech
-problems with sounds
- deleting function words
 -language pauses between words
-effortful and slow speech
-being able to use lexical morphemes
(verbs,nouns..)
-comprehension is better than
production
-syntactical problems
Ex: I eggs and eat and drink coffee
breakfast
A stail….you know what I
mean….tal…stail….
2) Wernicke’s aphasia:
- production of fluent speech
- grammatical but meaningless
sentences
- comprehension problems
- difficulty in finding the correct
words (anomia)
- semantic problems
Ex: the thing to put cigarettes in (for
“ashtray”)
DICHOTIC LISTENING:
Any signal coming in the right ear will
go to the left hemisphere and a signal
coming in the left ear will go to the
right hemisphere. (basic assumption)
 right ear advantage
a language signal received through the
left ear is first sent to the right
hemisphere. Then, the signal again is
sent to the left hemisphere (language
centre) for processing ( a language
process)
a language signal received through the
right ear goes directly to the left
hemisphere. So, it goes more quickly than
the other.
In dichotic test: non-verbal sounds (music,
birds singing, noises…) are recognized
more often via the left ear.
Verbal sounds are recognized via the right
ear.
28
Left brain: analytic processing (analytical
problem solution, puzzles…)
Right brain: holistic processing (social,
communicative, seeing the things as hole)
THE CRITICAL PERIOD:
 left brain’s specialization is
described as “lateralization” (one-
sidedness)
 lateralization process begins in
early childhood
 Critical period : during childhood
(until puberty), human brain is
most ready to receive and learn a
particular language. After that
period, the child has difficulty in
learning language.
UNIT 11
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
There is some innate predisposition in the
human infant to acquire language. .
However, this inborn language capacity by
itself is not enough.
Acquisition:
 Basic requirements
 A child growing up in the first 2 or 3
years requires interaction with other
language-users
 A child physically able to send and
receive (hear) signals in a language. All
infants make “cooing” and “babbling”
noises during a few months but deaf
infants stop “babbling” after six months.
 A child who doesn’t hear or isn’t
allowed to use, language will learn no
language.
 Cultural transmission is required in
a particular language-using environment. In
order to speak a language, a child must be
able to hear that language being used.
 The crucial requirement appears to
be the opportunity to interact with others
via language.
 Input
Under normal circumstances, human
infants are certainly helped in their
language acquisition by the typical
behavior of older children and adults in the
home environment who provide language
samples, or inputs for the child.
Caretaker Speech: (especially in the
home environment; addressee is a
child)
 simplified language (motherese)
 no adult to adult conversation
 associates with baby-talk, in early
stages
 simplified words are used
 alternative forms are preferred
 simple sentences and repetition
 it assign an interactive role to the
child/infant as a speaking
participant
The characteristically simplified
speech style adopted by someone who
spends a lot of time with a young child is
called caretaker speech. Frequent
questions often using exaggerated
intonation, simple sentence structures and
a lot of repetition are used because the
child’s vocabulary is not enough to
understand complex sentences.
 The Acquisition Schedule
All normal children develop language at
approximately the same time.
Language acquisition schedule has the
same basis as the biologically determined
development of motor skills. This
biologically schedule is tied to the
maturation of the infant’s brain and the
lateralization process. This biological
program is dependent on an interplay with
many social factors in the child’s
environment. Acquisition requires constant
input from which the basis of the
regularities in the particular language can
be worked out.
29
Biological schedule ↔ motor skills
Lateralization process ↔ maturation of
infants brain Social factors ↔
constant input
they are all interrelated to eachother
they form the “acquisition capacity”.
A child actively works out the regularities in
what is heard, then apply those regularities
in what s/he says.
 Pre-language stages:
- cooing, babbling
- from 3 months to 10 monhts
1. stage (3 months old): “cooing”
(agulama) First recognizable
sounds are described as Cooing
with velar consonants such as [k]
and [g] as well as high vowels
such as [I] and [u] .
2. stage (6-8 months old):
“babbling” (uttering nonsence
things/syllable-type sounds )
producing different vowels &
consonants (fricative,nasals)
(ba ba ba, ga ga , ma ma ma,..)
Now, remember the “Physiological
adaptation”
- children begin to stand up through
the 10th and 11th months. So,
they are capable of using their
“vocalization” to express emotions
and emphasis.
- Parents also react to that
babbling, which gives a social role
to the child (child’s contribution to
social interaction)
- All these development stages at
which some features of linguistic
development occur, may vary
among children
 One-word or holophrastic
stage:
 Between 12-18 months, children begin
to produce single unit utterances (for
everyday objects= buu (water), mama)
(breakfast,lunch., milk, cup,…)
- single unit /form is more suitable
than “one word” because they are
not ready to put the forms
together to produce a more
complex phrase.
Ex: babage (it is not one word, in fact it
is “babam geldi”)
It is a single form functioning as a
sentence/phrase (holophrastic)
- the child uses some forms for
naming objects, but some forms
are produced to extend their use
ex: “bed” refers to “sister” (who sleeps
on that bed) but, the child cannot put
the two forms together to produce a
complex phrase.
 Two-word stage:
- Around 18-20 months.
- The child’s vocabulary moves
beyond fifty words
- By the time, the child is 2 years
old, s/he will have produced a
variety of combinations (anne
mama,baba top, ayı uff…)
- The adult interpretation of such
combination tied to the context of
their utterance.
- Adults reply to these utterances
 child receives feedback
- By the age of two, the child will
understand five times as many
(having conversation with him/her
will be entertaining)
 Telegraphic speech:
- Between 2 and 3 years old, the
child begins producing a large
number of utterances which could
be classified as multiple-word
utterances.
30
- Word-form variations begin to
appear.
- Putting lexical morphemes
together
- Ordering the forms correctly
Ex: teyze ayı öp
Kedi mam ver
Bab işe gitti
- While “telegram-format speech” is
being produced, grammatical
inflections and simple prepositions
begin to appear.
- By the age of two and a half, the
child’s vocabulary is expanding
rapidly.
- By three, pronunciation becomes
closer to the form of adult
language, hundreds of words.
 The Acquisition process
No one provides any instruction on
how to speak the language, the child is
not being taught the language.
Children actively construct, from
what’s said to them, possible ways of
using the language and test whether
they work or not.
The child listens  s/he tries out the
constructions  s/he tests whether
they work or not
Does a child only imitate what s/he
hears?
Of course, the child can imitate/repeat
(like parrot fashion) some versions of
adult language. But still, they create
their own language. Adult
CORRECTION may not seem to be a
very effective determiner of how the
child speaks.
Children may produce the forms that
cannot be uttered by an adult. They
build up their own language system 
neither imitation nor accepting the
“correction”.
 Morphology
By the age of two and a half , the child
starts to use inflectional morphemes.
1) “-ing” (cat sitting, mummy reading
book…)
2) “-s” plural marker (cats,dogs…)
But the child may utter
“mans,childs,foots
OVERGENERALIZATION
of the rule
The child may utter “boyses,
footses…”
(creating his/her own system)
Then, some children begin to use
irregular plurals such as
“men” for a while
Ex: mens, two feets, two feetses…”
3) the use of possessive inflection “-
‘s” (father’s car…)
4) past tense morpheme “-ed”
The child gets “walked ,
played,listened…” and she
begins to use them. Then, when
irregular verbs appear, s/he
begins to use
OVERGENERALIZED versions
such as “goed,comed…”
After 4 years old , the child
works out which forms are
regular which are not.
5) 3rd person singular morpheme “-s”
mansmensmenses/mensmen
 Syntax
In the formation of questions and the
use of negatives, there appear to be 3
identifiable stages. Stage 1 occurs
between
18-26 months, stage 2 between 22-30
months and stage 3 between 24-40
months.
Two features are developed in syntax :
questions and negatives
Questions
Stage 1 : Simply add a WH- form to the
beginning or utter the expression with a
rising intonation.
Where kitty?
Sit chair ?
Stage 2 : More complex expressions can
be formed but raising intonation strategy
continues to be used.
Why you smiling ?
You want eat ?
See my doggie?
Stage 3 : subject & verb aggrement
appears.
How that open?
Will you help me ?
Why it can’t stand up?

Firstly with verbs Negatives

“comes,looks,wants…”
Then use with the auxilaries
“does,has,is…”
All these steps involve
“variability”. Children may
sometimes produce “good”
forms, sometimes “odd” forms.
Ex:
ateeatedatedate
Stage 1 : “No” or “Not” should be at the
beginning of any expression.
Not a teddy bear
No sit there
Stage 2 : “Don’t” and “ can’t” appear but
“no” and “not” are used in front of the verb
not the beginning
He no bite you.

31
I don’t know. Antonomy: It is learned after the age of
You can’t dance. five.
Adult: which tree has more apples? Which
Stage 3 : “Didn’t” and “ won’t” appear. tree has less?
Acquisition of the form “isn’t” is the latest. Child : shows the larger tree without
I didn’t caught it. looking at the amount of the apples.
She won’t let go.
He not taking it. The expressions like “after-before, buy-sell”
are acquired later.
 Semantics
* By the age of 5, the child has
During holophrastic stage, many children completed the greater part of basic
use their limited vocabulary to refer to a language acquisition process.
large number of unrelated objects. According to some linguists, the child
is then in a good position to start
Ex: firstly, the child uses “bow-wow” to learning a second language.
refer to the dog. But then, s/he overextends
its meaning referring to some other animals
on the basis of similarities of shape, sound, UNIT 12
size, movement. SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION /
LEARNING
Child adult
Bow-wow dog Many young children whose parents speak
Bow-wow cat different languages can acquire a second
Bow-wow cow language in circumstances similar to those
of first language acquisition. Second
Ex: “dede” for all old men who have white language acquisition can be later. Also,
hair/beard second language(L2) learners become
“top/bop” for all rounded objects such as proficient as they are in their first
“ay, portakal , elma..” language(L1).

OVEREXTENSION: is that the child A more significant distinction is made

overextends the meaning of the word on
the basis of similarities of shape, sound
and size and to a lesser extent of
movement and texture. Overextension is in
children’s speech production, not in speech
comprehension.
Lexical relation:
Hyponymy: the child uses the middle
level term. The child learn the general
terms later
Animal  dogpoddle
Plants  flowerrose
between acquisition and learning.
Acquisition barriers
1- Most people attempt to learn
another language during their
teenage or adult years.
2- learning time is restricted in a few
hours each week of school time.
3- They are related with a lot of other
occupations.
4- They are already known language
available for most of their daily
communicative requirements.
5- Adults’ tongues get stiff from
pronouncing one type of long and
just can not cope with the new
sounds of another language. (

32
 There is no physical evidance to
support it. )
Acquisition and learning
Acquisition refers to the gradual
development of ability in a language by
using it naturally in communicative
situations.
Learning refers to conscious process of
accumulating knowledge of the vocabulary
and grammar of a language (math is
learned not acquired)
 Even in ideal acquisition
situations, very few adults seem
to reach native-like proficiency in
using a second language.
 There one individuals who can
achieve great expertise in writing,
but not in speaking. This might
suggest that some features (
vocabulary, grammar ) of a
second language are easier to
acquire than others ( phonology ) .
 After the Critical Period ( around
puberty ) , it becomes very difficult
to acquire another language fully.
Because language faculty being
strongly taken over by the
features of the L1 loses its
flexibility or openness to receive
the features of another language.
 For the second language, the
optimum age may be during the
years from ten to sixteen when
the flexibility of the language
acquisition faculty hasn’t been
completely last and the maturation
of cognitive skills allows a more
effective “ working out “ of the
regular features of the L2
encountered.
The affective filter
Teenagers are typically much more self-
conscious than young children. This self-
consciousness can be combined with a
33
lack of empathy with the foreign culture.
This type of emotional reaction (affect) may
even be occasioned be dull textbooks,
unpleasant classroom surroundings or an
exhausting schedule.
Affect is a type of emotional reaction.
Affective filter is a kind of barrier to
acquisition that results from negative
feelings or experiences. If you are
stressed, uncomfortable, self-conscious or
unmotivated, you are unlikely to learn
anything.
Children seem to be less constrained by
the effective filter.
Focus on Method
A variety of educational approaches and
methods which are aimed at fostering L2
learning has been led.
GRAMMAR-TRANSLATION METHOD:
long lists of words and a set of grammatical
rules have to be memorized and the written
language rather than spoken language is
emphasized. This method takes its roots
from Latin .
AUDIOLINGUAL METHOD: this involved a
systematic presentation of the structures of
the L2, moving from the simple to the more
complex and emphasizing spoken
language, often in the form of drills which
the student had to repeat.
The fluent use of a language was a set of
habits which could be developed with a lot
of practice, repeating oral drills.
Its critics point out that drilling language
patterns bears no resemblance to the
interactional nature of actual language use.
Repetitions can be boring
COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES: most
recent revision of L2 is communicative
approach.
It is a reaction against the artificiality of
pattern-practice.

They are all based on a view that the
function of language (i.e. what’s used for)
should be emphasized the forms of a
language (i.e. correct grammatical or
phonological structure)
Lessons are organized around the
concepts such as “asking for things” in
different social context, rather than the
forms of past tense.
Focus on learners
The change has been a shift from concern
with the teacher, the textbook and the
method to an interest in the learner and the
acquisition process
An error is not something which hinders a
student’s progress, but is a clue to the
active learning process being made by a
student as he or she tries out ways of
communicating in the new language.
Children acquire L1 produce certain
ungrammatical forms in acquisition
process, but L2 learners produce
“overgeneralization” at certain stages. The
example of womens might be seen as a
type of creative construction used by
learner in accordance with the most
general way of making plural forms in
English.
Some errors may be due to the transfer of
expressions or structures from the L1 to
L2.
Transferring L1 to L2
- positive transfer: learners may be
able to benefit from it
eg: yarın gidiyoruz (progressive tense
making future)
we are going tomorrow (progressive
tense making future)
- negative transfer: learners
transfer a L1 feature that is really
different from L2 ones. Not
34
effective and “ınterference” in
early stages.
Eg: seni seviyorum (in Turkish),
*I am loving you
11.05 *ıt is eleven past five
* it is eleven five past
Interlanguage
L1 L2
 variable system with rules of its
own L1
 + learner’s own system + L2
 learner’s own system
- If the learners develop features which
do not match the L2 and they do not
progress any more, their interlangauge
is said to be fossilized. This process is
“fossilization”
- However, interlanguage is something
designed to progress/develop, not
“fossilized”
eg: an advanced learner uses “I am
agree with you”
Motivation
Which one is correct?
a) motivation inspires learning
b) learning/success inspires
motivation
In fact, both of them are correct. They
are in a circular movement. But
motivation is as much as a result of
success as a cause
The learner who is willing to guess,
risks making mistakes and tries to
communicate in the L2 will tend, given the
opportunity to be more successful.
Many learners have an instrumental
motivation. That is, they want to learn the
L2 in order to achieve some other goal,
such as completing a school graduation
requirement or being able to read scientific
publications, but not really for any social
purposes.
In contrast, those learners with an
integrative motivation want to learn the
L2 for social purposes, in order to take part
in the social life of a community using that
language and to become an accepted
member of that community.
Input and output
Input: the language that the learner is
exposed to
An input should be comprehensible. It can
be made comprehensible by being simplier
in structure and vocabulary (foreigner talk)
A: how are you getting on in your studies?
B: ……..
A: english class, you like it? (Foreigner
talk)
- for more interaction (while
interlanguage develops), there is
a need for “negotiated input” in
conversation. It can be provided
through requests for clarification
and active attention.
Output: producing comprehensible
language in interaction & a response
How can a teacher develop the student’s
L2 abilities in a classroom environment?
- through “task-based learning”
Although there is a risk that students will
learn each other’s mistakes, task-based
learning provides better L2 use by learners.
They will develop communicative
competence (Eg; preparing newspaper
reports through interviews)
Communicative competence:
1) grammatical competence:
“accurate/correct” use of words
and structure in L2
2) sociolinguistic competence: “
appropriate” use of L2 (polite
request, formal/informal structure)
35
3) strategic competence: flexibility
- organizing messages effectively
via strategies for any difficulties
- ıf a something don’t stop talking
when s/he can’t remember an
expression and if s/he finds
another way to say it, we can say
that s/he has developed
“communication strategy
UNIT 13
LANGUAGE HISTORY AND
CHANGE
FAMİLY TREE
Philology: historical study of languages
 These studies incorporated the
notion that this was the original
form (proto) of a language which
was the source of modern
languages in the Indian-sub-
continent (Indo) and in Europe
(European).
 Pro-Indo-European was
established as the great-
grandmother of many modern
languages.
(German,Italian,English).
 There are about 30 such
language families which have
produced the more than 4000
languages in the world. In terms
of numbers of speakers, Chinese
( 1 billion ), English ( 350 million ),
Spanish ( 300 million ), Hindi (
200 million ) and Arabic &
Russian ( 150 million ) are used in
the world.
  But English is more widely used
one of all.
Proto-Indo European family:
FAMILY CONNECTIONS
 Language groups in a language familya are
related. So Indo-European languages are
related to each other.
 One way to see the relationships more clearly is
by looking at records of an older generation from
which the modern languages developed.
 The fact that close similarities occur ( especially
in the pronounciation of the forms ) is good
evidance for proposing a family connection.
COGNATES
 Within groups of related languages, we
often find close similarities in particular
sets of terms.
 A cognate of a word in one language is
a word in another language which has
a similar form and is used with a similar
meaning.
Eg: “mother” (English) is cognate of “mutter”
(German)
“Father”(English) is cognate of
“vater” (German)
36
“Friend” (English) is cognate of
“freund” (german
COMPERATIVE RECONSTRUCTION
 The aim of this procedure is to
reconstruct what must have been the
“original” or “proto” form in the common
ancestral language. It’s a bit like to find
out great grandmother on the basis of
the common properties on the
granddaughters.
 Two methods are used to find out these
“proto” words
1)The majority principle is very
straightforward. If in a cognate set, 3
forms begin with a [p] sound and one
form begins with a [b] sound, our best
guess is that the majority have retained
the original sound.
2)The most natural development
principle is based on the fact that
certain types of sound-change are very
common, whereas other is unlikely.
Here are some sound-change types;
 Final vowels often disappear
 Voiceless sounds become voiced
between vowels
 Stops become fricatives
 Consonants become voiceless at the
end of words
HISTORY OF ENGLISH
Written forms from an older period of a language
may not bear any resemblance to the written
English to the written English to be found in our
daily newspaper. Languages undergo some
substantial changes through time. Historical
development of English is usually divided into
three periods :
Old English ( 7th-11th century ) :
 The primary sources for English languages were Acsian → ask, bridd → bird
the Germanic languages spoken by a group of
tribes from northern Europe who invaded the Frist → first , hros → horse , waeps →
British Isles in the 5th century AD. wasp …etc
 These tribes were Angles, Saxons and Jutes from
the 6th to 8th century, there was a period in which
these Anglo-Saxons were converted to
Christianity and a number of terms from the
language of religion, Latin, came into English at
that time.  The reversal of position in
 From the 8th century through the 10th century, metathesis may actually occur
Vikings and their language, old Norse, came to between non-adjoining sounds
setle in, parts of the coastal regions of Britain. Latin Spanish
Ex:
Parabola → palabra
 some forms of Old Norse were derived such as (‘word’)
give, law, leg, sky, they.
Miraculum → milagro
(“miracle”)
Middle English ( 12th-16th century ) :

 This period starts with the arrival of the Norman

French in English in 1066. Epenthesis : is the addition of a sound to
 These French-speaking invaded proceeded to the middle of a word
take over the whole of England.
 They became the ruling class, so that the aemtig → empty, spinel → spindle, timr →
language of nobility, the government, the law and timber
civilized behaviour in England for the next 2
hundred years was French.
 Some words like “army,
court,defence,faith,prison,tax are resulted from
French nobility.
 In the late 14th century, it has changed Prothesis: is the addition of a sound to the
substantially from Old English but several beginning of a word. It is very common
changes were yet to take place before the
from Latin to Spanish
language took on its modern form.
Ex:

 The peasants worked on the land and reared

schola → escuela (‘school’)
sheep, cows and swine (words from Old English),
while the French-speaking upper classes talked
about mutton, beef and park (words of French
spiritus → espiritu (‘spirit’)
origin).
LEXICAL CHANGE
 Borrowed words, external changes and internal
changes can be noted in the development of
English.
 Modern English differs lexically
 SOUND CHANGES
from Old English in the number of
borrowed words, particularly from
Metathesis involves a reversal in position
Latin and Grek.
of 2 adjoining sounds;

37
  Some words are no longer in
general use in Modern English
since we no longer need those
things.
 Broadening: is kind of lexical
change in which a word which
carries a specific meaning is used
as a general term.
 eg: standart American English, Standart British
 Eg: Holy day was used religious
day – and today Holiday
 Narrowing: a word which is
used as a general term become
restricted to only some specific
things.
 Eg: meat - any food meat - a
specific food
 Wife – any woman – only
married woman
Diachronic and synchronic
variation
Diachronically: from the historical perspective of
change through the time.
Synchronically: the differences within one
language in different places and among different
groups at the same time.
UNIT 14
LANGUAGE AND REGIONAL VARIATION
- Every language will have more than one variety,
especially in the way in which it is spoken.
- Variation in speech is an important and well-
recognized aspect of our-daily lives as language-
users in different ad social communities
The standard language
- printed in newspapers&books
- used in mass media
- taught in school
- the language taught as a second language (L2)
- associated with education and broadcasting in
public context
- written language (vocabulary,spelling,grammar…)
English, Standart Turkish (based on İstanbul dialect
of Anatolian)
Accent and Dialect
- some English language user speaks with an accent
and some not
accent: aspect of pronounciation which identify
where an individual speaker is from , regionally or
socially
dialect: describes the features of grammar &
vocabulary as well as aspects of pronounciation
- vocabulary is easily recognized
- grammatical constructions are less frequently
documented
- there is a general impression of mutual intelligibility
among many speakers of different dialects, or
varieities of English
- no variety is better than another.
They are simply different
- a standart language is also a
dialect (a prestigious dialect,
reason for political and cultural
center)
eg: Istanbul for standart Turkish
Regional dialect
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- people use different dialects in different
geographical regions.
Eg: American and British English
Eg: Turkish has several dialects,too. Turkish is
spoken in Turkey and abroad by many native
speakers.
So, there are regional dialects such as
Rumeli,Edirne,the Black sea,Urfa… etc.
- It is important to find out typical representatives
of a regional dialect, the informants in such
surveys are NORMS :
Non-mobile, Older,Rural,Male Speaker
Isoglosses and Dialect Boundries:
Isogloss: a line representing a
boundry between the areas with
regard to one particular linguistic term
Eg: the vast majority of the informants
in one area say “paper-bag” , the
majority in another part used “paper-
sack” there is a line to show these
language differences.
Dialect boundry: when a number of
isoglosses come together, it becomes
a dialect boundry ( a more solid line)
- Individual bilingualism: not the result of political
The dialect continuum
- sometimes, it is not easy to draw very sharp
and clear isoglosses because in a particular
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region two different word/variation can be
used. We cannot cut the land into pieces in
a sharp manner.
Eg: as you travel from Holland into
Germany, you will hear both language
dialects near the boarder, as you travel into
germany, you will realize the distinctly
German speakers.
- bidialectal: a speaker who speaks two
dialects. Most of us are bidialectal. We
speak one dialect “ in the street/at home/in
friend circle” one dialect “in school/ in formal
environments”
Bilingualism
In many countries, regional variation is not
simply a matter of two dialects of a single
language, but a matter of two quite distinct and
different languages.
Canada is an officially bilingual country.
A member of a minority group grows up in one
linguistic community, primarily speaking one language,
but then learns another language in order to take part
in the larger,dominant community
eg: In Canada, French speakers consist the
minority group. And they have to learn English to take
part in the larger community. So, French speakers are
bilingual
dominance by a group of using a different language.
Having two parents who speak different languages.
The child will learn both of them . (still one of them will
be dominant)
 - A pidgin is a variety of a language which developed for
some practical purpose, such as trading, among groups
of people who had a lot of contact, but who didn’t know
each other’s languages.
Diaglossia:
- Inflectional suffixes such as –s (plural) and –‘s
- two language varieities exist side by side in a
(possessive) on nouns in Standard English are rare in
community and each is used for different purposes. pidgins. Instead of changing the form of you to your,
- High variety is used in English based pidgins use a form like belong.
formal,government,media,education,religious - When a pidgin develops beyond its role
service language… as a trade language and becomes the
- Low variety is used in non-prestige, first language of a social community, it is
family,friends,shopping… described as a Creole.
- Also, you can use high variety at school but change
it to “low variety” at home.
Pidgin Creole

1) nobody’s native language 1) spoken as native

language
Language planning 2) very simple variety 2) more sophisticated version
of a pidgin
3) limited vocabulary 3) richer
lexicon
- Language planning means the governmental and legal 4) no use of inflections 4) use of inflectional
decisions about which language should be used in morphology
education and should be the official language of the 5) no use of functional categories
country such as tense,aspec,etc.

- Language planning is usually observed in bilingual or

multilingual countries
Post-Creole Continuum
- In language planning the language of the majority group
is selected as the official language

- A country such as USA and Britain appears to be

monolingual country because all television broadcasts
and newspaper are in Standart English

- There are stages of language planning: UNIT 15

LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL VARIATION

1) Selection (choosing an official language),
2) codification in which basic grammars, dictionaries and
written are used to establish the Standard variety,
3) elaboration; the Standard variety being developed for use
Two people growing up in the same geographical
in all aspects social life and the appearance of a body of
literary work written in the standard. area, at the same time, may speak differently because
4) Implementation is largely a matter of government of a number of social factors.
attempts to encourage use of the Standard.
5) Acceptance is the final stage when a substantial majority
of the population has come to use the Standard.
Social community: a group of people who share a set
of norms, rules and expectations , regarding the use of
Pidgin and Creole language

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 Sociolinguistics Idiolect

- individual dialect
- May change in time (place, occasion…)
- deals with the interrelationship between language and - Includes physical features (voice quality, pitch, speech
society. and rhythm…)
- based on social factors; social class, education, age- - You are what you say
gender, ethnic background ,culture
- It has strong connections to anthropology, social
psychology.

- a person who speaks a long time at college/university will

Social dialects tend to have spoken language features very well (like
written language)  “talks like a book”

- the variaties of language used by groups defined - there are pronunciations differences because of
according to class, education, age, sex and a number occupation and socio-economic status.
of other social parameters. Eg:

In America, the higher the socio-economic status, the

more [r] sounds

The lower the socio-economic status, the fewer [r]

sounds were produced.

In England, the lower the socio-economic status, the

The two main groups are generally identified as “middle
more [r] sounds
class,” those who have more years of education and
“working class” those who have fewer years of education

In England, the lower the social class/less educated class

use [n] rather than [] at the end of words like
So, when we refer to “working-class speech,” we are
talking about a social dialect. “thing”,”going”

The terms “upper” and “lower” are used to further [h] sound is dropped  “ouse” for house, “ello” for hello
subdivide the groups, mainly on an economic basis,  lower class, less educate
making “upper-middle-class speech” another type of
social dialect or sociolect.

Speech Style and Sytle-shifting

The most basic distinction in speech style is between

formal uses and informal uses.
Social Variable / Linguistic Variable

- Formal style is when we pay more careful attention to

how we’re speaking

Education and Occupation -Informal style is when we pay less attention.

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They are sometimes described as “careful style” and It is the ability to modify our speech style toward or away
“casual style.” from the perceived style of the person(s) we’re talking
to.

A change from one to the other by an individual is called

style-shifting. We can adopt a speech style that attempts to reduce
social distance, described as convergence,
Prestige

In contrast, when a speech style is used to emphasize

A form as a way of explaining the direction in which social distance between speakers, the process is called
certain individuals change their speech. divergence.

These changes are defined according to class, Ex:

education, age, sex and a number of other social
parameters. 1. C’mon Tony, gizzalook, gizzalook!
2. Excuse me. Could I have a look at your photos too,
Mrs. Hall?

overt prestige: generally recognized “better” or

positively valued ways of speaking in social
communities (to have higher social status)
Register and Jargon

covert prestige: “hidden” type of positive value is often

attached to non-standart forms and expressions by - addressee affects the way you say (familiarity,social
status,age)
certain sub-groups.

Non-standard form  “social solidarity” register: the speech variety used by a particular group
of people.

- a conventional way of using language that is

Ex: Among younger speakers in the middle class, there
appropriate in a specific context, which may be identified
is often covert prestige attached to many features of
as situational (e.g. in church), occupational
pronunciation and grammar
(e.g. among lawyers) or topical (e.g. talking about
(I ain’t doin’ nuttin’) rather than (I’m not doing anything)
language).
that are more often associated with the speech of lower-
status groups. Ex:

the religious register (Ye shall be blessed by Him in

times of tribulation),

Speech Accomodation

the legal register (The plaintiff is ready to take

the witness stand)
The variation in speech style, we can see that it is not
only a function of speakers’ social class and attention to
speech, but it is also influenced by their perception of
their listeners. This type of variation is sometimes the linguistics register (In the morphology of
described in terms of “audience design,” but is more this dialect there are fewer inflectional suffixes).
generally known as speech accommodation,

42

jargon: the technical language used in particular
register. It can be defined as technical vocabulary
associated with a special activity or group.
(e.g. plaintiff, suffix)
Slung
Slang is more typically used among those who are outside
established higher-status groups. Slang, or “colloquial
speech,” describes words or phrases that are used instead
of more everyday terms among younger speakers and
other groups with special interests.
Ex: “bucks” (for dollars or money)
“ benjamins” (from Benjamin Franklin, on $100 bills)
“a bummer” or “That sucks!” (the pits (really bad)),.
Taboo terms are words and phrases that people avoid
for reasons related to religion, politeness and prohibited
behavior. They are often swear words, typically “bleeped”
in public broadcasting
(What the bleep are you doing, you little bleep!) or “starred”
in print (You stupid f***ing a** hole!).
African American English:
One of the social varieties according to the historical origins
of the speakers allows us to put it in contrast with another
major variety called African American English (AAE).
Vernacular Language:
African American Vernacular
- considered as bad speech
- spoken by a lower-status group, which is treated as “non-
standard” because of marked differences from the
“standard” language
* tendency to reduce final consonant clusters
* double negative construction
* don’t include the auxiliary verb
Linguistic Determinism
- the way your language is organized will determine how
you perceive the world being organized.
- You are able to perceive the world around you only in the
categories given by your language
- “language determinism thought”  you can think in the
only categories which your language allows you to think
in
Eg: “snow” for English speakers and for Eskimos
Do they describe the word in the same way?
Gender
Female speakers tend to use more prestigious
forms than male speakers with the same general
social background.
There are some differences as well,such as:
 pronounciation: more use of [r],[] sounds by
females (in Turkish)
 vocabulary: different sexes use different
languages
 conversation: women generally discuss their
personal feelings more than men
men prefer non-personal topics such as
sports,news…
men generally give advice on solutions
women are likely to mention personal experiences
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 use of tentatives: women use “hedges” (sort
of,kind of), and “tags” (isn’t it)

eg: hava bulutlu gibi değil mi?

bu sanki biraz bol değil mi?

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