MODULE 6:
THE DISCIPLINE OF LINGUISTICS
Language
 Robert A. Hall
o “The institution whereby humans
communicate and interact with
each other by means of habitually
used oral-auditory symbols.”
 4 main ideas:
o Language is strictly a human
capacity which allows us to relate
complex ideas.
o Used with little cognitive effort.
o Involves one’s mouth and ears and
is communicated through speech
and functions with the use of
linguistics signs or words that have
no direct link to the world.
o Multitude of languages – there is
no one way or sound that
communicated ideas and objects.
Linguistics
 Interdisciplinary in nature, intersecting
with humanities and social science.
 Came from the Greek word:
o Lingua
 “language”
 People, who study language during the
late 1500s, were called the linguists.
 Deals with three principles components:
sound, structure, and meaning.
o Sound
 Phonetics – studies human
speech sound.
 Phonology – studies the
principles of governing sound
systems of languages.
o Structure
 Morphology – studies
language structure from its
morphic units or root words.
 Syntax – studies sentence
structure such as grammar.
o Meaning
 Semantics – studies the logic
and meanings of words and
phrases.
 Pragmatics - studies the use of
language and its effects to
society.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LINGUISTICS
 In the 19th century, linguistics was
known as philology or the study of the
history of words.
 Philologist studied how and why words
transformed over time, and examined
which social phenomena drove
language to change.
IMPORTANT PERSONALITIES IN HISTORY
 Panini of India
o First individual to have practiced
the study of language.
o Systematically categorized Sanskrit
sounds into consonants, vowels,
nouns, and verbs.
 Sibawayh (Middle East)
o Documented the Arabic language
by distinguishing the differences in
sounds and phonemes.
 Plato (Western World)
o Early scholar of language.
o Cratylus – explored the meaning of
words by looking into their history.
 Middle Ages
o Linguistic focused on analyzing
religious texts that allowed for a
 deeper understanding and
interpretation of religious dogma.
 Ferdinand de Saussure
o “Father of Structural and Modern
Linguistic”
o Structural linguistics
 Studies language as system of
contrast and equivalents.
 Language is structural
therefore freeing it form any
social, political, cultural, or
historical association.
 Language is defined as “a static
system of interconnected
units”
o Developed structural linguistic from
his exploration of the concept of
sign:
 Signifier - the sound or
written letter of an idea
 Signified - the idea
addressed by the signifier
 Referent - the actual object
in the real world addressed
by the sign
o Convention of language – the
adherence of a speech community
to a specific connection between a
signifier and a signified.
o Langue – the system governing a
particular convention of language
by syntax and phonology.
o Parole – actual use of the language
by an individual.
o For Saussure, language can be
understood by:
 Synchrony – looking into a
particular time period.
 Diachrony – or historical
linguistics, the evolution of a
language over time.
 The Prague School
o A.k.a.Prague Linguistic Circle
composed by the Czechs and
linguists who published Travaux de
cercle linguistique de Prague.
o Main focus and interest was
phonological theory and syntax.
o Notions of:
 Theme (what the discourse is
about)
 Rheme (what is said about the
discourse)
 Given (on what the addressee
knows about the discourse)
 New (on what information was
provide to the addressee)
o Notable members of Prague School:
 Nikolai Trubetzkoy
 Vilem Mathesius
 Frantisek Danes
 Jan Firbas
o Roman Jakobson
 Theorized the functions of
language ad its corresponding
model.
 For a successful
communication these are the
factors needed:
 Addresser
 Addressee
 Context
 Contact
 Code
 Message
 The London School
o More of a tradition of linguistic
studies rather than a group.
o Harry Sweet
 Established an applied
linguistics tradition through his
 works which focused on
phonetics and language.
o Daniel Jones
 Stressed that perceiving,
transcribing, and reproducing
minute distinction of speech
sounds must be emphasized in
studying language.
o Harry Sweet & Daniel Jones
 Tradition established by them
resulted in a more meticulous
attention to phonetic details
and led “ear training: to
become a major field of study
in Britain.
o John Rupert Firth (J.R. Firth)
 Turned linguistics as a
recognized academic discipline
in Britain.
 Viewed linguistic as an
‘analysis of the meaning of the
word’
 Rejected the distinction
between langue and parole,
since language is not to be
studied as a grammatical and
mental system but as a mode
of action to be viewed as
speech events.
 Sapir and Whorf
o Edward Sapir & Benjamin Lee
THE FIELDS OF LINGUISTIC
Whorf
o Developed the principle of
linguistic relativity or the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis.
o Linguistic determinism – the idea
that language influences the way
people think and shapes the way
people perceive the world.
 Language is deeply rooted in
culture.
 Noam Chomsky
o Generative grammar – linguistic
theory which states that human
beings are capable of forming and
distinguishing well-formed
sentences and rejecting ill-formed
sentences.
o According to Chomsky, human
beings have the ability to
understand their language by:
 Imitation
 Repetition
 Abstraction
o Universal grammar – the theory
that all languages have an
underlying universal structure
within them that lends them to
being cognitively grasped.
 The brain – capable of
acquiring language.
 Language – structured to be
acquired.
o Generative linguistics – seeks to
explain:
 How and why language is
produced and understood.
 How and why language is
acquired and developed.
 Why and what processes does
language change and vary.
 Historical Linguistics
o A.k.a. diachronic linguistics
o Studies how a particular language
changed over time.
o Distinct from synchronic linguistics,
which studies a language at a given
time without addressing its
previous stages of development.
 Sociolinguistics
 o Examines how language is used in
relation to a people’s sociocultural
environment.
o Takes into consideration the:
1. The social background of the
addresser and the addressee.
2. The relationship of the
addresser and the addressee.
3. The context and manner
through which the
communication transpired.
 Developmental linguistics
o Analyzes the development of
language acquisition, language
retention, and language loss and
bilingualism.
o Heavily supports the synchronic
approach.
 Neurolinguistics
o Studies the physiological
mechanisms by which the brain
processes information in relation to
language.
KEY CONCEPTS IN LINGUISTICS
 Cohesion – refers to linguistic links such
as pronouns and adjectives which
provide a recognizable structure.
 Coherence – the logic within discourse
that takes into account our knowledge
of the world.
 Critical discourse analysis – is the study
of a text within its social context.
 Dialect – is an identifiable regional or
social variety of language.
o Regional dialect – language
communicated over an area can be
spoken differently in some form or
another in different places.
o Social dialect – language in a small
area can be spoken by different
social groups within a community.
 Discourse – is any connected piece of
speech or writing, which serves as the
chain that holds communication
together.
 Etymology – the study of the history or
origin of a particular word.
 Functionalism – an approach to
language structure that primarily
focuses on the purpose in which
language is used.
 Grammar – refers to the rules of
constructing words and sentences
within a particular language.
 Grapheme – a single character in a
recognized writing system such as
letters and punctuation marks.
 Lexicon – the total words available to a
speaker or the vocabulary of language.
RESEARCH METHODS IN LINGUISTICS
 Corpus Linguistics
 Content Analysis
CURRENT APPLICATIONS OF LINGUISTICS
 Computational Linguistics – is the study
of how language can be
computationally modeled.
 Lexicography – is a practice of
collecting words and their meaning in a
systematic manner resembling the
structure of a dictionary.