ENG1502/501/0/2020

Tutorial Letter 501/0/2020

Foundations in Applied English Language

Studies
ENG1502

Year module

Department of English Studies

This tutorial letter contains important information

about your module.

BARCODE
 CONTENTS

Page

Introduction 3

Unit 1 What is Language 6

Unit 2 One Language Many Varieties 12

Unit 3 Sounds, Sound Patterns and Symbols 25

Unit 4 Word Formation – Morphology 43

Unit 5 Sentences and Their Structure: Syntax 61

Unit 6 Semantics and Pragmatics 85

Unit 7 Introduction to Discourse Analysis 96

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INTRODUCTION
Dear Student
Welcome to ENG1502 Foundations in Applied English Language Studies!

This tutorial letter forms the core study material for the module ENG1502: Foundations in
Applied English Language Studies. The study material comes in a package comprising a
Tutorial letter 501 and Tutorial letter 101. In this introductory note, we outline the
rationale and purpose of the module as well as how to use the study material.

Rationale
The rationale for this module is taken from the module form, which is an official document
that presents the aims and outcomes for modules at UNISA. We outline this underlying
principle below:
(a) The module will equip you with the skills of applied English language studies (such as
language usage and discourse analysis). You should be able to apply your understanding
and skills to English language as it functions in various real-life contexts such as, the
media and political contexts.
(b) The module aims to introduce you to a systematic description of the English Language
and introduce the grammatical competences you need for the analysis of authentic
language data.
(c) The module will introduce meta-language terminology in the discipline of Applied
English language studies, which is essential for advanced proficiency and literacy
development.

Purpose of this module

This module is part of the first year English Language and Literature Major offered by the
English Studies Department. It forms part of the BA general degree. It is a companion to
another first year module, ENG1501: Foundations in English Literary Studies. The
purpose of the module ENG 1502: Foundations in Applied English Language Studies is
to introduce you to the study of the English Language.

To achieve this purpose, we cover the following basic aspects:

• the sounds and sound patterns of the English language (phonetics and phonology)
• the formation of words and the relationship among them (morphology and syntax)
• ways in which the language makes meaning and is used in context (semantics,
pragmatics and discourse analysis)
• the mutual relationship between language and society (sociolinguistics)
The module offers you an opportunity for a broad exploration and

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understanding of what these aspects of language are and how they relate to
each other. The main emphasis is on the application of these theoretical
concepts to the English Language and on the laying of a foundation for further
explorations in the second year.
The module layout is outlined below:

Module Layout

 There are seven units in this module. Each unit is structured in the following way:
learning objectives of the unit; introduction; discussion of the major aspects of the
topic; activities; feedback to activities and commentary; conclusion to the unit;
references; and glossary where applicable.
 The activities are intended to help you test your understanding of what you have
learned in each section of a unit. You are encouraged to complete all the activities,
either on your own, in your study groups or with your e-tutor or face-to face tutor.
 Unit 1 is an introductory unit that focuses on defining language and its functions. It
introduces the components of a language, in particular, the English language. The
unit ends with an explanation of why the English language must be studied and
which components this module will cover.
 Unit 2 introduces you to the notions of language varieties including standard and
non-standard varieties. The unit describes registers and their functional domains as
well as highlighting how the varieties interrelate with notions of gender, culture
professionalism and age.
 Unit 3 focusses on the basic units of sound production and pronunciation in the
English Language. This is an important unit for a student of English language who
must be aware of the differences between spelling and pronunciation and the
behaviour of sounds in spoken English.
 Unit 4 focuses on the next level of language structures, the word. Words have
internal structure and it is essential to understand how words are structured.
 Unit 5 takes you back to the basic components of any language, its grammar and
sentence structures. This unit explores some of the basic elements of a sentence
and sentence formation in the English language.
 Unit 6 focusses on the meaning of language above the sentence level, semantics
and pragmatics. In this unit you are introduced to some of the components in English
which create differences in meaning, such as ambiguity, denotation and connotation.
In this unit you begin to see how language is used to make meaning in larger texts.
 Unit 7 is the last, yet not least of the units. We see this unit as central to all the units.
In fact we encourage you to read this unit alongside all the other units as it poses as
the application of all the elements you have learned in the first 6 units.

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Prescribed Textbooks

There are two prescribed books which will be used in the first and second year. You are
required to buy these books. They are available at a discounted fee at all official Unisa
booksellers within South Africa. The following are the titles:

(1) Carter, R., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K. & Swift, N. (2008) Working with
Texts, London: Routledge.

(2) Mullany, L. & Stockwell, P. (2010) Introducing English Language, London: Routledge.

Recommended References

Richards, C. & Schmidt, R. (2010) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and

Applied Linguistics, (4th ed) London: Pearson Education Limited.

Yule (G. 2006) The Study of Language, (3rd ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

In addition to these prescribed books you will also receive some guidelines in your
Tutorial Letter 101 about the Electronic resources, recommended works and any other
ancillary material. Make full use of your E-Tutor who will support your study throughout
the semester.

We would like to thank the listed authors for their contribution to this module.

N. Zindela

J. Sukumane

D Mkhize

C. Ndlangamandla

E. Donaldson

F. Horne

P. Makoe

Internal Reader: D. Mokoena

External Critical Reader: Dr A. Hlatshwayo

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UNIT 1: WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of the unit, you should be able to:

 define what language is;

 describe the functions of language;

 explain the different grammatical aspects of the English language.

INTRODUCTION
This Language Module introduces you to the study of the English language. It familiarises
you with the terms and concepts that are used to describe language in a scientific and
systematic way. These terms and concepts are going to be applied in real life contexts
where the English Language is used. You will also be introduced to the different
grammatical aspects of the English Language.
First, let us explain that language as a human phenomenon is defined and understood
from different perspectives. To a large extent, this is influenced by who defines it, their
worldview as well as their educational background, among other factors. Regardless of
the differences, there is a general consensus that language is key to communication and
there are linguistic signs/systems that people use to communicate, be it in a written or
spoken form, and of late, a digital form. In order to enrich your understanding, we will
introduce you to different language components that are essential to understanding what
language is and how it is structured, with a special focus on the English language. You will
learn terminologies such as phonetics, phonology, morphology syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics.
Second, because language is an integral part of any society, we will help familiarise you
with how language is used in society, again paying special attention to the English
language. So you will be introduced to the following concepts: varieties of language,
standards, dialects and identity. Of significance is that, although these concepts will be
studied from the English language perspective, we will also relate them to the South
African contexts because South Africa is a multilingual country where there are different
forms of linguistic knowledge and understandings.
As indicated earlier, this unit seeks to orientate you to a list of concepts in Applied English
language studies that are going to be used in the rest of the Tutorial letter. These ideas
form a foundational knowledge base for the study of language in subsequent years. In the
section below, we introduce you to different definitions of language. We also help you
understand what it means to refer to language as a system that comprises different
components from the smallest unit of meaning, the phoneme to the largest unit, the
discourse.

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What is language?
Before we answer this question, let us start by asking you to answer the following
questions:

ACTIVITY 1.1

 At what age did you learn to speak your home language as a child?

 From your observation of young children, at what age do children learn to

speak?

 What role do parents, caretakers, and other children play in assisting children
to learn to speak?

 What do you think your answer to the above question suggests about what
language is in general and how it is acquired?

DEFINITIONS OF LANGUAGE
Now, we would like you to study the following definitions of language. As you do so, we
would like to encourage you to think about the answers you gave to the questions in
Activity 1.1.
ACTIVITY 1.2

Do you think any of the following definition(s) is consistent with your answer?

 Steven Pinker (1994) understands language as “the distinct piece of the biological makeup of
our brain” (p. 18). He goes on to state that, “Language is a complex, specialized skill, which
develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious effort or formal instruction, is deployed
without awareness of its logic, is qualitatively the same in every individual, and is distinct from
more general abilities to process information or to behave intelligently” (p. 18).

 Language is a set of rules, unconsciously present in the mind, which enables human beings
to represent and communicate meanings by producing audible, visible, or tactile symbols that
these rules systematically relate to those meanings, (Delahunty & Garvey 2010:31).

 We use the term language to refer to the general faculty which enables human beings to
engage in the verbal exchange of information – to ‘talk’ to each other. The exchange may take
place by means of speech, writing, signing, or Braille, (Jackson & Stockwell 2011).

 Language is sometimes referred to as a semiotic system (Halliday 1979 and Carter et. al.
1997). This means that it is thought to be a system where the individual elements – ‘signs’ –
take their overall meaning from how they are combined with other elements, (for example,
road traffic lights). Language is a system of relating forms to meanings, (Delahunty & Garvey
2010:31).

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The first two definitions define language mainly from a psychological point of view; that is,
language is understood as something that exists in the mind, something that requires little
effort from language learners. The last two definitions put emphasis on the functionality of
language: highlighting how language forms are used to make meaning. This form-function
relationship is the perspective that is adopted in this module. This means that we will learn
about forms, structures and their functions in the English language. For example, forms
such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs will be studied in relation to how they make
meaning in either written or spoken texts.
The following is an extract from Delahunty and Garvey (2010:38) which describes why we
refer to language as a system and what the elements of a system are.
Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through this activity.
Language as a system
Language rules are not distributed randomly in the mind like potatoes in a sack. Rather,
they are systematically related to one another. It is easier to envision this conception with
an analogy. A computer system has a set of components (central processing unit, monitor,
keyboard, speakers, and drives of various types) whose overall function is to process
information, so is the language system. The language components interact with one
another. In a sense, similar to a computer system, they contain smaller parts, all of which
interact in precise, though limited, ways with each other and with parts of other
components. The most commonly cited language components are phonetics/phonology,
morphology, vocabulary, orthography/spelling/writing, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and
discourse, (Delahunty & Garvey 2010:38).
The following Table 1 represents the different grammatical aspects of the language
system:
Table 1

Language Meaning
concept

Phonetics The study of speech sounds.

Phonology The study of the sound patterning system.

Lexis The study of the actual words a writer or speaker chooses to

(vocabulary) use.

Morphology The study of how words are formed.

Syntax The study of how words combine to form sentences and the
rules that govern the formations.

Orthography Writing systems

Semantics The study of meaning and how meaning is made and

understood.

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Pragmatics The study of the use of language in communication – i.e.

sentences as used in contexts and situations.

Discourse The study of how language is organized beyond the sentence,

i.e. in larger texts.

ACTIVITY 1.3
Based on your reading about language and its systems, study Picture A and explain the
meaning of the woman’s comment; the caption and what is written on the piece of paper
that the man is holding.
What conclusions can you make about the apparent break down of communication in this
context?

Picture A has been adapted by S.R. Adams from https://www.zapiro.com

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Feedback to Activity 1.3

Use the grammatical aspect listed in Table 1 in order to complete this activity.
The picture presents us with a conversation between a man and a woman (supposedly
husband and wife). The woman makes a comment based on what she sees on the table.
Her comment also suggests that it is Valentine’s Day, hence the candle light (romantic)
setting on the table. However, looking at the man’s posture and the piece of paper in his
hand, it would seem that the candles have been used because there is not electricity in
the house and not so much a Valentine’s dinner setting.
This picture and the situation that it depicts is a good example of pragmatics, which deals
with the study of the meaning of wSords in context or physical situation. Unit 5 of this
Tutorial letter discusses in detail aspects of pragmatics.
Your E-Tutor and Face to Face Tutor will take you through this activity.
WHY STUDY LANGUAGE?
Now that you have been introduced to some of the key concepts and terminologies in the
language study, we would like you to reflect on your motivations or reasons for studying
this language module. We are aware that there will be as many and diverse reasons and
motivations as many of you are from different backgrounds. Some of you may be
interested in learning about the English language as a linguistic system for the sake of
understanding the linguistic structure of the language. Others may be interested in the
communicative function of English both in its spoken and written form in order to enhance
their communicative proficiency and competence in this language as it is one of the widely
used languages across the globe. Still, others may be learning English in order to meet
academic and professional requirements as mandated by academic and professional
institutions and bodies. Whatever your reasons and motivations, we would like to
encourage you to reflect on the following points and to critically evaluate their impact on
your studying of English in this module: ENG1502 501.

 English is one of the official languages in South Africa as stipulated in the

Constitution of the country.

 English is one of the widely used languages within South Africa and across the
globe.

 English is used within the context of multilingualism and multicultural context in

South Africa; as a result, we have more than one variety.

 In some cases, English may offer access to social and economic resources and
in others; this may not be simple and straightforward.

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, we can say that language is a tool that humans use in order to exchange
meaningful messages with other fellow human beings.
In the units that follow, you will be made aware that language rules and conventions are
used in social contexts; hence, there is standard and non-standard varieties of English,

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each with distinctive features that need to be considered in order to enhance one’s
understanding of the language as well as communication. To help you do this, different
terminologies related to the use of language in society will be introduced.
Because language is a structured system of signs or symbols and meaning, you will also
be taught language structures and features of the English language. Furthermore, you will
be expected to provide an analysis of how the structures and features are used in spoken
and written texts. This will require that you to understand how the language is used
beyond its literal meaning. In other words, you will be required to dig deeper and look for
the unstated/hidden meaning. This will require you to bear in mind the social context in
addition to the textual meaning. As a result, you will be introduced to concepts such as
denotative and connotative meaning, style, tone, and register. We hope that this
introduction has given you an idea of the different language structures and features that
you will need to know in this module, and more importantly, how these may work together
to enhance effective communication, be it oral or written.
References
Delahunty, G.P. & Garvey, J.J. (2010). The English Language from Sound to Sense,
Colorado: WAC Clearinghouse.
Mullany, L. & Stockwell, P. (2010) Introducing English Language, London: Routledge.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. New York: William Morrow and Company.

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UNIT 2: ONE LANGUAGE MANY VARIETIES

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:

 explain the differences between standard and non-standard varieties;

 identify the phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactical differences in

standard and non-standard varieties;

 differentiate registers according to functional domains;

 analyse language varieties according to social relationships such as gender,

culture, professionalism and age;

 explain the differences between slang, jargon and register.

INTRODUCTION
Question: What was the intended meaning in Antoine Meillet’ statement, “…it is clear that
the causes on which linguistic facts depend must be social in nature”?
This Unit addresses how language manifests itself in a variety of social contexts. It
covers topics ranging from social dialects, regional and social registers, standard varieties
and others. You will come across a number of new terminology in the Unit, a glossary will
be provided to you in a subsequent tutorial letter.
Why varieties?
Human beings use the language(s) that they share to communicate. However, among
speakers of a single language, there is considerable variation. In that way, we distinguish
British, American, Nigerian, South African, Jamaican, and Indian English among other
varieties.
In the previous Unit, you dealt with the question, “What is language?” In advancing our
understanding of what language is, we can pose further questions. For example, we can
ask the question, ‘can we equate language with ‘nationality?’ The answer is ‘no’. To
illustrate the point, a geographical definition of ‘English’ as a language spoken in England
by the English people would mean that, American, Nigerian, South African, Jamaican or
Indian English pass as different languages considering that the speakers are different
nationalities residing in different geographical areas. However, we know that this is not the
case. Instead, these different forms of English, are merely varieties of English used in
the social contexts wherever the speakers are located. So, there are varieties of the
English language.

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The varieties of the English Language

The varieties manifest at different linguistic levels, namely, lexical (vocabulary),
phonological (distinguishing sounds or phonemes), morphological (word-building),
syntactic (sentence-construction) and semantic (meaning) levels.
Let us consider the following phonological distinctions or variations between standard and
non-standard varieties of English. Below are examples of words with similar spelling but
pronounced differently (homophones). You may not be aware of this but, second language
speakers tend not to make the distinction between the long and the short vowel.
Distinction between vowel lengths is discussed in detail in Unit 3.
Table 2

British English South African Standard South African Black English

English
(BSAE)

Lead /lԐd/ (form of Lead /lԐd/ Lead /lԐd/

metal element)
Lead /li:d/
Lead /li:d/ ( hold
hand)

Leak /li:k/ Leak /li:k/ Leak /lik/

The vowel sounds in the second example in each row are long vowels, however, many
language users of Black South African English pronounce the long /i:/ as a short vowel /i/.
Let us consider the following morphological distinctions or variations between standard
and non-standard varieties of English
Table 3

British English South African Standard South African Black English

English (BSAE)

She brought all the She brought all the equipment She brought all the
equipment she she needed for fixing the car. equipments she needed for
needed for fixing the fixing the car.
car. She brought the screwdriver
which is the only equipment She brought the screwdriver
The equipment you needed for fixing the table. which is the only equipment
need for fixing the needed for fixing the table.
table is a screwdriver.

You must put more You must put more effort into What efforts have you made to
effort into your work. your work. address the three students’
queries?

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In the example above, the words equipment and effort are used as both singular and
plural forms in Standard English (see the first example). However, second language
speakers of BSAE tend to add the plural morpheme ‘s’ to these words to form the plural.
Let us consider yet again the following syntactic distinctions or variations between
standard and non-standard varieties of English.
Table 4

British English South African Standard South African Black

English English (BSAE)

1. The man I saw was The man I saw was wearing The man who I saw him
wearing a big hat. a big hat. was wearing a big hat.

2. We did all our subjects in We did all our subjects in We did all our subject in
English. English English.

3. I find it difficult to cope I find it difficult to cope with I find it difficult to cope up
with my work. my work. with my work.

In example 1, in the third column (BSAE) we see an extensive use of the pronoun.
In example 2, in the third column (BSAE) we see a case of the noun phrase not marked
for number.
In the example 3, the third column (BSAE) we see the incorrect usage of the prepositional
verb.
Lastly, let us consider the following lexical distinctions or variations between standard and
non-standard varieties of English.
Table 5

British English South African Standard South African Black

English English (BSAE)

He told her that he loved He told her that he loved He proposed love to her.
her. her.

I haven’t seen you for a I haven’t seen you for a You are scarce.
while. while.

I must quickly drop into the I must quickly drop into the I must quickly touch the
beauty salon. beauty salon. beauty salon.

While these expressions in column three may be intelligible in spoken discourse, they are
regarded as non-standard especially in the English language and even more so in
academic writing.

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ACTIVITY 2.1
Complete the following activity.
Study the following sentences. Identify the non-standard variation. Rewrite the sentences
in the standard form.
1. My standard 9, I have enjoyed it very much.
2. She was carrying a luggage.
3. They were refusing with my book.
4. He explained about the situation.
5. Some people think they are better to other.
6. She is too beautiful.
7. In 1980 the boycott starts.
8. We stayed in our home until the boycott stops.
9. I went to secondary school for doing my standard 6.
10. He was good man.

Your E- tutor discussions will cover in detail the feedback to this activity.
As we have demonstrated in the examples above (Tables 2-5), the distinguishing
characteristics of a speech variety may be phonological, morphological, syntactic or
lexical. In the following section, we discuss functional speech varieties (or registers).
2. Functional Speech Varieties (Registers)
Functional speech varieties refers to language use according to different situations /
contexts / domains. For example, the register used between a patient and a doctor is
different from the register used between a judge and the accused. Similarly, the register in
an Internet Technology class differs from the register in a Doctors’ room or in Courtroom.
The term ‘registers’ is used to refer to speech varieties that have a function in the speech
communities/situations/context/domains where they are spoken. The difference between
‘varieties according to use’ and ‘varieties according to user’ implies that, the same
speaker may use different registers for different purposes, for example a person writing a
letter to the Minister of Education may express himself or herself differently than when
they are writing to a friend. See the following examples:

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Text 1: Letter to a Minister

Example 1
Honourable Minister Chauke,
I am writing to inform you that, the Zondo Commission investigating State Capture
has not concluded its work. I request that the Police Commissioner be allowed to
attend the hearings…xxxx
Yours sincerely,
Mthembeni Masilela
Chief Operating Officer
The Presidency.

Text 2: Letter to an uncle

Example 2

Dear Uncle Joe,

I just wanted to let you know that tomorrow I am coming to your house to watch
the Cricket game. I’ll be there around 2 PM. I will come with the boys, they haven’t
seen you in ages…Don’t worry about eats, I will bring some meat to braai and
some booze.
Cheers,
Mthembeni.

ACTIVITY 2.2
Everyone has occasion to write social or business letters now and then. Why does
Mthembeni choose one register when he writes to Minister Chauke and another when he
writes to his uncle? Explain.
FEEDBACK TO ACTIVITY 2.2

Such examples show that variation is made possible by the function the speaker
has in mind for the language choice. Mthembeni’s registers vary at the social level,
first according to his job’s demands. He knows that, when he communicates with
his superior in writing, in this case his Minister, he uses formal language. Second,
he understands that, when writing to his uncle, he can use informal language
because he is writing a social, friendly note to meet certain social demands. These
varieties are referred to as registers.

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The above example shows that "Register" also refers to the level of formality of the
speech/writing. In a casual conversation with friends, you will likely use an informal
register (colloquialisms, contractions, and incomplete sentences), whereas in talking to a
judge in a court of law, you use a formal register.
As demonstrated in the section above, registers vary depending on the social context,
educational level, age, gender, ethnicity, and profession. In the section that follows we
discuss how language varies according to social relationships or social networks.
Social Relationships and Social Practices
Social networks (SNs) are important for understanding how social conditions and facts
(e.g. gender issues, age, ethnicity, culture or professionalism) explain why people use
language varieties. We discuss a few examples of social networks in the following
sections.
Language use in Gay Communities
One example of a community or social network is that of gay people. The variety that gay
communities use is known as ‘Gay Lingo’. This is the language used by members of the
male homosexual community. A few examples from Bacon, (1998:249) are given below:
Text 3: Gay Lingo examples

Butch > very masculine woman

Camp > playful appreciation of the ridiculous
Kitch > ridiculous
Come out > political act of disclosure of sexuality, meant as a strategy to fight for
rights
Closet > relating to the concealing of one’s homosexuality from public knowledge
Going public >disclosing sexuality to fight for access to public spaces
Straight > non-gay
Glom > come together
Dress stone butch > dress manlike
In act up > belonging to queer community
Passing > hiding identity and living heterosexual life-style

As illustrated in the example (Text 3) the gay language is not meant to be understood by
people outside the group (non-gays).

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ACTIVITY 2.3
Find one example of a community or social network group which, in your view have their
‘lingo’ that marks them as belonging to the group you have chosen.
Feedback to Activity 2.3
Membership in social networks implies that members share norms, behaviour and
interests. The behaviour includes the use of language, the words, the jargon, the register.
You may be asking yourselves the question: is there a difference between Jargon and
register? We have already defined register as a variety used in a specific profession e.g.
legalese, maritime language, etc. Jargon on the other hand refers to specific words/
lexicon used in a profession or community of practice. Table 6 shows the jargon use in
different professions and communities of practice such as sport, health, travel.
Table 6

Sport Health Travel The new

millennium
Athlete, camaraderie, Balanced diet, Jet-leg, business
coach, fitness, blood, digestion, class, cruise, Instagram, SMS,
involvement, referee, medication, luggage, WhatsApp, reality
sportsmanship, nutrition, exercise, reservations, TV, user-friendly,
trophy, match, lose, moderation, backpack, airport, vegan, laptop,
medal, testosterone, inoculation, taxify, ubber, network,
levels, x-treme sports, vitamins, hygiene, tourist’s attraction, technology,
hiking, biking, soccer, disease, arrival, departure, LGBTX, tattoo,
cricket, score, nourishment, holiday, itinerary, sushi, fake news,
spectators respiration, abroad, overseas, media, e-mail,
roughage, skin, restaurant, souvenir, obesity, Pizza,
mental health, tourists, traveller’s flying fish, virtual
cancer, diabetes. cheque, weight limit. reality, lottery,
medial, ozone-
friendly.

Makalela L. (2013:111-125) illustrates another scenario of how communities of practice

operate. In the following example, he demonstrates a township’s network of practice
among young men. He points out that, his study revealed several varieties in how
greetings are practised in townships. Consider the example below:
Text 4 : Township/Ekasi Greetings

Text 4 G: (Makalela , 2013)

G: Sho, sho mfana.
H: Hey.
G: Zthini daso?
H: Am at the top of the mountain, yourself?

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G: Nami ngigrand.
H: Any plans for the weekend?
G: You know with me, abantwana.
H: I thought as much, some people…!
G: Hawu uthini manje?
H: Hey did you find…?
G: Who are some people?
H: Wow is that ...
G: Don’t play smart here. Just answer the question.
H: Question ... what question?
G: Nar sharp.

In the varieties that have emerged in this social network, one can see that, greetings and
goodbyes have taken blended language forms where a variety of English has blended
with a variety of the African, informal variety, slang, and a non-standard variety of
Afrikaans used in casual conversation (or kasi-taal). The social network we are looking at
here, represents how similar groups play out their orientation or social identity using
language varieties. Note how they construct local styles in the text. For example, can you
see how this community practise greetings and farewells?
Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through these activity.
Language and Gender
Language can also vary according to gender. Coates (1986) discusses different speech
varieties that men and women use in a process called gender-exclusive differentiation.
This term refers to instances where, in most societies, a woman or a man may not
normally be allowed to speak a variety of the other gender. It is in this sense that the
varieties are gender-exclusive. A society in which this is practiced is typically one in
which the roles assigned to women and men are rigid, meaning there is no flexibility. In
societies like these, women and men use different lexical items for the same things. For
example, in the English culture, there was a time when only female speakers used words
like lovey and nice. To a certain extent there is not much of a difference to today, women
still use these terms more often than male speakers. In some social networks, male users
of such words are considered effeminate or ‘sissy-like’. There have been studies where
findings indicate that, women use a greater variety of specific colour terms than men in
North America (United States and Canada). On the contrary, men are believed to have
larger vocabulary in areas associated with traditional male activities such as sports and
some jobs. Therefore, we can say that English speakers exhibit gender-preferential
differentiation in that regard. Coates (1986) points out that other differences between

19
men’s and women’s language are seen in women’s more frequent use of politeness forms
and markers of tentativeness. See the examples below:
Text 5: Women’s vs men’s language of requests

Women (more of a request) Men (more of a command)

 Please open the window.  Open the window.

 Would you please open the  Boy, it’s stuffy in here, why you
window? don’t open the window?

 Would you mind opening the  Hell, why are the windows not
window? open?

ACTIVITY 2.4
By using a few examples, show how in your own community men use language differently
from women? See the examples below:
Other Interesting Varieties of Language
In the following section we introduce you to other interesting language varieties such as
euphemism, slang, jargon, argot and cursing and swearing. These varieties are interesting
because, they show that, when people speak, consciously or unconsciously, they reveal
their personal, social, religious or other identity, if you like, their membership of a certain
social network. Crystal (1997) maintains that, there may be reasons, minor ones perhaps,
why people choose certain language varieties. For example, when people verbally
respond in dislike of another person’s appearance, behaviour or speech, they may utter a
swear word. Such a reaction may prompt a swear word in return. Crystal thinks that
reasons for such responses may be more deep-rooted than we believe. Such reactions
also show in code-switching (mixing of language varieties or switching from one language
variety to another). When some people feel threatened or belittled, they react changing
into ethnically distinct accent. In such instances, a person may swear or curse to avoid
violent behaviour.
Swearing or Cursing
According to Crystal (1997) some varieties of speech can be considered as cursing and
swearing. These forms are taboo and are expressions of such emotions as hatred,
antagonism, frustration and surprise. The common forms consist of single words or short
phrases conveying different levels of intensity. Examples given are, /heck, bolderdash,
rubbish, bliksem, bastaard etc./ As has already been alluded to in the foregoing section,
Crystal asserts that, the functions of swearing and cursing are complex. On the surface,
these varieties are an outlet of frustration or a release of nervous energy after a sudden
shock. On a deeper level, he says, their social function serves as a marker of group
identity and solidarity. Gang-talk or tsotsi-taal is good example. Gangters are known to
use excessive swearing in communication as a way of expressing aggression without
resort to violence. In this context, swearing becomes a linguistic trait, the group signature
use of taboo language; it is how they are identified as members of some social network.
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Euphemism
Euphemism expresses an unpleasant or uncomfortable situation in a more sensitive, kind
and tactful manner. Its purpose is to soften the hard blow in speech and to protect the
feelings of the other person or to be politically correct. The practice of euphemism is to
also avoid words that may seem taboo, offensive, obscene or disturbing to listeners or
even readers. In English for example, one is taught to avoid certain words and to use
euphemism, as in the following example:

Table 7: Examples of Taboo words and related euphemisms

Taboo lexical item Euphemism

Fart Poop
Piss Break wind
toilet Pee, pass water
Convenience facility, commode, bathroom, ladies’ or
Johns’.

Slang, Jargon and Argot

According to the Oxford English Dictionary slang is a label that is frequently used to refer
to certain informal or faddish (fashionable, vogue) usages of nearly anyone in the speech
community. Slang exists alongside jargon and argot as members of a type of speech
variety of limited usage in speech communities in that they are associated with
membership in identifiable, smaller social communities where the varieties serve the
purpose of affirming members and to show solidarity. It is used within certain domains
such as sports, health, travel, professions, technology and so on. Studies have shown that
its usage is creative and socially important (Fasold, 1984). For example, high school or
university students are known to often divide themselves into groups or social networks
distinguished from others by their clothing, hair styles, the kind of music they listen to and
their jargon or slang. Here are a few examples, to which you can add your own:
Examples of slang lexicon
Homeboy ‘from same area’
Bitch ‘smart woman’ > Afro-Americ
Eddie ‘ugly man’ > British Engl
Blow-chunks “vomit > American
Antie (elderly woman < Afrikaans)
Babelas ‘hangover’ > Afrikaans

21
Bakkie ‘pick-up vehicle > Afrik
Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org accessed 2019/03/08 9:13
Jargon and argot are often used interchangeably to refer to secret language used by an
identifiable group. The term argot originated in the French language in the 17 th Century as
a speech variety used by street beggars and street vendors (Saville-Troike, 1989). Later it
was applied to the secret language of criminals (tsotsi-taal). Wikipedia state that,
Tsotsitaals are a variety of mixed languages mainly spoken in the townships. In Sesotho,
‘tsotsi’ is a word used for ‘thug’ or ‘robber’. Its structure is based on mixed languages such
African languages, Afrikaans, isiZulu, Sesotho and so on. Earlier, we discussed some
examples of tsotsi-taal and (kasi-taal). According to Wikipedia, this language variety
originates with one variety known as Flaaitaal which was popular in Sophiatown in the
1940s and 50s as a language of crime using secret codes which are now known and pass
as slang. Here are examples:
Table 8 Jargon /Argot lexicon

Ntwana ‘girlfriend’ > isiZulu

Smokwe ‘trouble’ > English
Six-nine ‘urinate’ > English
Transi ‘car’ > English ‘transport’
Vati ‘water > Afrikaans
Zol , joint ‘marijuana’
Spana ‘work’ > Afrikaans
Vaya ‘go, go away’ > Portuguese ‘vay’
Nyuku ‘money’ > origin unknown but used in isiZulu
Heita ‘hi, hello’ > origin uncertain
Camtha ‘talk’> isiZulu
Cisha ‘kill’> English ‘extinguish’
Moja ‘good’ right > English
Hola ‘hi, hello’ > Spanish
Bhari ‘stupid, dumb’ > not known
Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org accessed 2019/03/08 10:03 AM

Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through this terminology: Jargon,
slang and argot.

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ACTIVITY 2.5
From your speech community list as many slang words as there are spaces provided
below. If you choose a word in your language, remember to provide the meaning in
English and out it in brackets.

Slang words Meaning

ACTIVITY 2.6
(i) Do all the youth share the same slang words in your community?
(ii) If yes, how can you explain that the slang words they use are the same? If not,
explain why they are not the same; and describe the other variety (s).
(iii) What about your school, do all the youth use the same slang? Explain why?
These activities will be discussed by your E-tutor or face to Face tutor.

Conclusion
In this unit you have been made aware of the different varieties of English and how they
are used depending on the context/situation and domains in which communication occurs.
Examples of different lexicon used in different professions and communities of practice
are also provided.
The distinction between the uses of language in different contexts will become useful for
the analysis of different texts, discussed in detail in Unit 6 of this study guide. Some of
these aspects are covered in detail in other modules on the programme. For example, in
ENG2601 you will learn more about registers and in ENG3703 you will learn more about
the language of politeness in different speech communities.

23
References
Bacon, J. 1998. ‘Getting the story straight: coming out narratives and the possibility of a
cultural rhetoric’. World Englishes, Vol 17, No 2, pp 249-258.
Coates, J. 1986. Women, men and language. London and New York: Longman.
Cozien, C. 2014. ‘Isihlonipho sabafazi-language of respect or oppression’.
https://www.researchgate/publication accessed 2019-03-10.
Crystal, D. (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (13 th edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Eckert, P. 2000. Linguistic variation as social practice. Oxford Blackwell.
Fasold, R. 1984. The sociolinguistics of society. New York: Basil Blackwell.
Finegan, E & Besnier, N. 1989. Language, its structure and use. San Diego: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich Publishers.
Halliday, M. A. K., McIntosh, A. & Strevens, P. 1964. The linguistic sciences and language
teaching. London: Longman
Hudson, R. A. 1980. Sociolinguistics. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
Makalela, L. 2013. ‘Translanguaging in kasi-taal-rethinking old language boundaries for
new language planning.’ https://journals.co.za/content/spiplus/42/1/EJC accessed
2019/03/03.
Mullany, L & Stockwell, P. 2015. Introducing English Language (2 nd Edition). London and
New York: Routledge.
Noss, R. B., 1996. Language in schools. Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines
Monograph No 41:97.
Saville-Troike, M. 1989. The ethnography of communication: an introduction (2 nd edition).
Oxford: Blackwell.

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 ENG1502/501

UNIT 3: SOUNDS, SOUND PATTERNS AND SYMBOLS

‘The playwright on my right thinks that the conventional rite should symbolise the right of
everyman to write as he pleases’
“The sons raise meat’ and The sun’s rays meet”

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of the unit you should be able to:

 distinguish between the spelling of words and their pronunciation in the English
language;
 define some of the key terminology used to discuss the sound system of the
English language;
 describe the sounds and sound patterns of the English language;
 explain how sound and spelling relate in English;
 distinguish between the different sound articulation patterns of the English
language;
 describe the dictionary entries on sound and pronunciation.

INTRODUCTION
This unit presents a discussion of the sound system of the English Language. The aim is
to equip you with enough tools to assist you to speak English intelligibly. Put simply, this
unit is about the art of pronunciation and not writing.
This Unit must be read alongside Chapter 12 of your prescribed textbook ‘How to Analyse
Texts’ by Carter and Goddard and Sections A1, B1, and C1 of Mullany and Stockwell’s
Introducing English language”.
Given that the sound system is very wide, and we have limited space in this tutorial letter,
we will be selective about what we include in this unit. We will be using a number of
examples from different texts and speech events to illustrate how sound patterning assists
with effective language use.
You will find the Birmingham website very useful for understanding some concepts
in this unit.
The discrepancy between spelling and sound
To get you thinking more about spelling and sound in the English language, read the
opening quotations. The words ‘rite’, ‘write’, ‘right’ and ‘wright’ are all spelt differently and
convey different meanings, yet their pronunciation is similar. In English grammar such

25
words are called homophones. (See Unit 5 for a detailed description of homophones.)
This kind of wordplay is used a lot in poetry to create rhythm, rhyme, echo and humour. It
makes a nice candidate for the game of tongue twisting. I know a book by Thompson titled
‘The Rite to Write about Wright’ a title that can ‘twist’ your tongue.
Some unknown author has created this verse to illustrate the discrepancy between
spelling and pronunciation. Read the verse below which further illustrate the discrepancy
between spelling and pronunciation.
I take it you already know of tough and bough and cough and dough? Some may
stumble, but not you, on hiccough, thorough, slough, and through? So now you are
ready, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps? Beware of heard, a dreadful word, that
looks like beard, but sounds like bird. And dead, it’s said like bed, not bead; for
goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed! Watch out for meat and great and threat. (They rhyme
with suite and straight and debt.) A moth is not a moth in mother, nor both in bother,
broth in brother. And here is not a match for there, nor dear and fear, for bear and
pear. And then there’s dose and rose and lose – just look them up–and goose and
choose. And cork and work and card and ward and font and front and word and
sword. And do and go, then thwart and cart, come, come! I’ve hardly made a start. A
dreadful language? Why man alive! I’ve learned to talk it when I was five. And yet to write
it, the more I tried, I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five.
– Author Unknown

ACTIVITY 3.1
a) Complete the following table by writing a word which is spelled differently but sound the
same. Two spaces have been completed for you as examples.

Ate cereal dear sore mist made rain vain horse idle
eight reign

b) What can you say about the bolded words in the following pairs of sentences?

(a) The silver coin bears the armour of the King.

(b) The wild-life at that park is dominated by bears.

(a) Get to the store as soon as possible, it looks like there is a fire!
(b) If we store all the grain in the barn, it will be protected from the rain

(a) I have contracted the flu and must see a doctor soon
(b) We have contracted Omnifoto to cover the event on Wednesday.

(a) Your behaviour blew all our chances of winning.

(b) A blue dress would match your hat better than a red one.

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Feedback on ACTIVITY 3.1

Some of the words in the sentences provided are either spelled differently and sound the
same or vice versa. This happens a lot in the English language, because, unlike other
languages such as Esperanto, and some Slavic languages, English spelling does not
always reflect how the word is pronounced.

It is from this behaviour of the spelling and sound relationship in the English language that
we have words classified as follows:

homophones: two words are homophones if they are pronounced the same way but differ
in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear; cereal/serial; heard/herd).
homographs: two words are homographs if spelled the same way but differ in meaning
and pronunciation (e.g. tear (water from the eyes) tear (rip - apart)).
homonyms: two words are homonyms if they are pronounced or spelled the same way or
differently but have different meanings. (e.g. bank (embankment) and bank (place where
money is kept)).
heteronyms: two words are heteronyms if they are spelled the same way but differ in
pronunciation (e.g. row (a series of objects arranged in a line), pronounced (r), and row (a
fight), pronounced (rou)).

ACTIVITY 3.2
This activity aims at getting you to think about words, their sounds and meaning. It’s no
use being embarrassed hearing someone say ‘Hey, I am off to the bank across the street’
and you, desperate for money respond and say ‘please get me R200, I’m so broke’ and
the person says ‘No I meant the river bank across the street.’
a) Look again at the descriptions of the classifications of words and then do the
following:
(1) Find 3 sets of words which are homonyms in the English language.
(2) Find 3 sets of words which are homophones in the English language.
(3) Find 3 sets of words which are heteronyms in the English language.
(4) Find a set of words which are homographs in the English language.
b) Use the set of words you have identified in sentences of your own in order to show the
differences in meaning.

Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through the activities in this Unit.

27
Pronunciation
In this section of the unit we focus on pronunciation. We want you to understand the
‘science’ behind the production of sounds; where they are produced and how they are
produced?
You may be asking, why is it important to learn about where and how sounds are
produced? Well, some of you will be or are already teachers of some language – for our
purposes, the language is English, you need to know how you can help your pupils to
pronounce words properly. Some of you may be interested in sign language, learning a
sign language and using sign language requires a very good understanding of where
sounds are produced. Signers depend on watching the movement of articulators, as such
sound articulation is very important to them. Believe it or not, the articulation of sounds is
a gainful skill even for musicians.
The study of sound production is referred to as phonetics and phonology. At the level of
phonetics, we study the speech sounds, how they are articulated, (articulatory phonetics),
how they are transmitted (acoustic phonetics) and how they are received (auditory
phonetics). At the level of phonology, we study the ways in which the sounds are
combined, and patterned.
In this unit we focus on articulatory phonetics that is, how sounds are produced and
phonology how sounds are patterned. However, you can read more on acoustic and
auditory phonetics on your own, or if later in life you happen to study speech therapy,
linguistics, or music, you will get to know more about other branches of phonetics.

Articulatory phonetics
Articulatory phonetics refers to the study of how sounds are produced using the human
vocal apparatus. The human vocal apparatus is shown in FIGURE 1.

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FIGURE 1 above shows all the organs involved in speech production. The same diagram
can be found on page 60 of your prescribed textbook ‘How to Analyse Texts’.
Figure 1 is a sketch of the head showing all the articulators. You will need to refer to this
closely so as to understand how sounds are produced. It will be useful to have a mirror
and a well-lit place so that you can look inside of your mouth as you practice placing your
sounds.
Let’s look at some practical examples.

ACTIVITY 3.3
Practice pronunciation of the following sounds. Explain how the sounds are produced. In
your explanation state which articulators (parts of the head) you have used to produce
these sounds.
/b/ and /p/
/f/ and /v/
/t/ and /d/
/s/ and /z/
/k/ and /g/

29
Feedback to Activity 3.3
In producing the first pair of sounds /b/ and /m/, you must have used both lips, the lower
and upper lip. The lower lip moved to touch the upper lip. What you need to understand is
that when a sound is produced, two articulators are involved: one is the active articulator
(the one that moves) and the other the passive articulator (the one that the other moves
toward). In the production of /p/ and /b/ the lower lip is the active articular and the upper
lip, the passive articulator. In phonemic terminology the lips are referred to as bilabials.
Because there are two lips involved in the production of these sounds, we therefore called
the sound bilabial bi- (a prefix which means two) and labia (Latin name for lip).
The last and important aspect to note is that during sound production, the air (breath) also
moves. In the production of the /b/ and /m/ sounds for example the air moves in an
attempts to escape through the lips. The air is blocked at the lips and then explodes. The
sounds /b/ and /m/ are called bilabial stops or plosives. They are produced at the mouth
and the air is stopped at the lips before exploding out of the mouth.
Table 9 below is a list of all the articulators we use to pronounce sounds in the English
language. The first column shows the place of articulation and the second column shows
the articulators involved in the production of the sounds.
ACTIVITY 3.4
Complete the description of the other pairs of sounds in Activity 3.4 using the information
in Table 9 and pages 60 -63 of your prescribed textbook: ‘How to Analyse Texts’
Table 9

Place of Articulation Articulators Example of sounds

Bilabial Articulated by the lower lip /m/ /b/ /p/ /w/

and upper lip

Labio-dental Articulated by the lower lip /f/ /v/

and upper teeth

Inter-dental Articulated by the tongue tip /θ/ /ð/

between teeth

Alveolar Articulated by the tongue tip /t/ /d/ /s/ /z/ /ʧ/ /ʤ/ /n/ /l/ /t̬ /
and gum ridge

Palatal Articulated by the tongue /∫/ /ʒ/ /r/ /j/

and hard palate

Velar Articulated by the tongue /k/ /g/ /η/ (/w/)

and soft palate (velum)

Glottal Articulated by the glottis /h/ /ʔ/

The table above describes the Place of Articulation of the sounds.

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Place of articulation refers to the point at which the sound is made. Bilabials for example
are made at the point of the two lips coming together. The next section describes the
manner of articulation, how the sounds are produced.
Manners of Articulation
This refers to the degree and kind of obstruction of airflow in the vocal tract. The
articulators may close off the oral tract for a brief or relatively longer period; they narrow
the space or modify the shape of the tract. If we take the example of /t/ and /s/, both
sounds are articulated by the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, that’s why they are called
alveolar sounds, but the degree of constriction is different. With /s/ the air is not stopped,
but flows through, yet with /t/ the air is blocked briefly before it is released. For that reason
/s/ is called a fricative because the air is allowed to flow with audible friction. The /t/ is
called a stop or plosive because the airflow is first stopped before it is released.
In line with the behaviour of the airflow, there are several manners of articulation. Stops,
as noted, are sounds whose production requires that air be stopped before release;
fricatives involve a slight opening between the articulators to allow the air to escape with
frication; affricates involve a stop, followed by very gradual release resulting in friction.
Affricates start like stops and end like fricatives. Approximants are released by means of
a greater opening in the vocal tract, therefore unlike fricatives, there is no friction created.
As their name suggests they approximate closure. In this group are the glides and
liquids. Nasals are produced with the airflow stopped at the oral cavity and released
through the nose. Other manners are trills and taps. For examples of each of these see
the following table.
Below is a list of the sounds of the English language showing manner of articulation.
Activity 3.5
Read again the first sentence in the paragraph by Author anonymous ‘I take it you
already know of tough and bough and cough and dough? Pay particular attention to the
bolded words.
What is common in all four words? They all have the sound pattern -ough, and differ in
the first sound.
Now say the words aloud to yourself or a friend. What differences do you notice? The
ough sound cluster is not pronounced the same. In tough it sounds like a /f/ and in bough
and dough it sounds like a /wo/, it sounds like a vowel o and u put together.

Look up the word in your dictionary. You will find the following entries under pronunciation
/dəʊ/ or /doʊ/.
Look up the word tough in your dictionary. You will find the following entries under
pronunciation /tʌf/.
The four letters – o/u/g/h/ in normal orthography are known as

o = vowel u = vowel g = consonant h = consonant

But in the pronunciation alphabet the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) the same
letters are refer to as sounds and not letters; each is a single sound. For example, in the

31
word ‘tough’, the letter /gh/ are pronounced as a single sound /f/ which is called a
labiodental fricative. However, in the word ‘dough’ and bough’ the /gh/ is pronounced as
/oʊ/ which is a combination of two vowel sounds known as a diphthong. The way that the
sounds are represented is contained in the IPA in FIGURE 1 and on Page 59 of your
prescribed textbook ‘How to Analyse Texts’. Refer also to the other prescribed text on
page 60 to 64 for a detailed discussion of this topic.
Voicing
A sound can either be voiced or voiceless. The sound is said to be voiced if the vocal folds
vibrate during its production. By contrast, a sound is voiceless if vocal folds are apart and
not vibrating during its production. Voiced sounds are all the sounds on the right in the
chart above where a square shares two sounds. They are /b, v, ð, d, z, ʒ, dʒ, g/. The
sounds on the left are voiceless. Only stops, fricatives and affricates show alternation
between voiced and voiceless sounds, whereas the other manners of articulation –
approximants and nasals – are always voiced. In describing a sound, we refer to e.g.
voiceless bilabial stop /p/; voiced bilabial stop /b/; voiced alveolar nasal /n/ and voiced
alveolar fricative /z/.
The charts show vowel sounds as represented in the IPA. The chart on the right is of long
vowel sounds and the chart on the left is of short vowel sounds.
The charts below show the vowels with examples:

The chart below show diphthongs.

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The special characters used for representing consonant sounds are shown in the following
chart.

N.B. There is no burning need for you to memorise all these strange symbols. However, if
you get into the habit of using them and paying attention to the entries in the dictionary,
you will find them very helpful for pronunciation.
The dictionary is a very good basic resource for you if you want to see information about
words. Take a quick look at any word in your dictionary, after every word entry, you will
find the phonemic transcription inside slashes, or a phonetic transcription inside brackets,
which illustrates the way the word is pronounced.
Here are some examples of the words ‘bias’ and ‘feat’ ‘graduate’ and ‘strike’ as
represented in the dictionary.

feat /fi:t/ n. a remarkable, skilful, or daring action; exploit; achievement: feats of strength ...
(example taken from the Collins English Dictionary)

33
The entries in the dictionary provide you with very useful information. As you can see in
the examples above, the information touches on pronunciation, meaning, on word usage,
on accent/stress patterns, and on word morphology. The examples also illustrate that
different dictionaries use different methods to enter words. So choosing a dictionary also
requires understanding what information you are looking for in the entry. If you get stuck
on a word, go to the dictionary. Part of the aim of this unit is to help you understand how to
read the dictionary entries on sound and pronunciation.
From now on remember to enclose /t/ in between slashes, if you are referring to ‘t’ as a
sound. This will make more sense to you if you look at the way ‘th’ in the words ‘thin’ and
‘this’ are pronounced. You will realise that the manner of voicing is different, in ‘thin’ it is
voiceless and in ‘this’ it is voiced. Therefore, to represent these sounds you cannot use
the same symbol for ‘th’, these are letters of the alphabet and as sounds they are
represented as follows:
/θ / = as in thin
/ð/ = as in this

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Don’t be confused by the terminology. You will come across the two phrases ‘phonemic
symbols’ and ‘phonetic symbols’ used a lot in the literature on phonetics and
phonology, they are not interchangeable. A phonemic symbol shows fewer features than a
phonetic symbol and unlike the phoneme sound, the phonetic symbol will be enclosed in
square brackets, e.g. [a]. Phonetic representation is more precise and much more
complex than phonemic representation. For our purposes we will use phonemic systems
to refer to sounds and will therefore stick to the slashes.
To illustrate the differences, let’s look at the sound /p/ in ‘peat’ and /t/ in ‘take’. The sounds
have aspiration, that is, when you pronounce them, you push air out, almost like you have
put an ‘h’ sound [ph] and [th]. Phonetically you would represent the word ‘peat’ as [phiˈt]
and phonemically as /pit/. In the former, the aspiration is shown using the aspirant and the
diacritic mark on the vowel sound.

ACTIVITY 3. 6
(1) Give the appropriate three-term description for each of the following sounds (e.g. [k]:
voiceless velar stop): [f] [b] [θ] [ʃ] [t] [j]
(2) Give the appropriate phonetic symbol for each of the following sounds:
(a) a voiced palato-alveolar fricative
(b) a voiced alveolar stop
(c) a voiced velar stop
(d) a voiced dental fricative
(e) a voiced labio-dental fricative
(3) What phonetic property distinguishes each of the following pairs of sounds (e.g. [p]
and [b]: voicing; [s] and [ʃ]: place of articulation; [t] and [s]: manner of articulation)?
(a) [k] and [g] (b) [b] and [d] (c) [d] and [z] (d) [z] and [ʒ] (e) [ʃ] and [ʒ] (f) [d] and [g]
(4) Which of the following English words begin with a fricative?
ship, psychology, veer, round, plot, philosophy, think, late, xylophone
(5) Which of the following English words end with a fricative?
stack, whale, swim, epitaph, half, halve, hash, haze, phase, use, path, cuts, pleads

(6) Which of the following English words begin with a stop?

Philanderer, plasterer, parsimonious, ptarmigan, psyche, charismatic, cereal, carping,
kinky ghoulish, grueling, guardian, thick, tickle, bin, dreary
(7) Describe the position and action of the articulators during the production of the
following sounds (e.g. [d]: the blade of the tongue forms a constriction of complete closure
with the alveolar ridge; the vocal cords are vibrating): [b] [k] [ð] [v]

35
Adapted from ‘English Phonetics and Phonology’ by Phillip Carr.
Some of you will be news readers. It is very important to articulate sounds properly, know
where to place the articulators as this affects the clarity of your words to the listeners.
Variation in pronunciation
We spoke about language variation in Unit 2. Variation can also be observed in
pronunciation.
On the MyUnisa site for ENG1502 we will post a recording of a passage read by speakers
whose first languages are different. They will introduce their language and read.
At the end of the recording do and think about the following:
(1) Write down what your first impression was of the way each of the readers read the
text.
(2) Did you pick any variations? If so which ones? (In case you are not sure – feel free to
replay the track).
(3) Which of the readers was more intelligible on a scale of 1 = less to 5 = very
intelligible. Remember this is not a scale to rate good or bad but what made intelligible
reading to you. Be ready to defend your choice, when this is discussed either in your
discussion forum of myUnisa or in the tutorial letter.
Attitudes and accents
Variation in pronunciation is influenced by one’s attitude and one’s accent. It is very
difficult to make judgements on what is good and bad pronunciation. I went onto one blog
and picked the following comments about South African accents.
Re: South African Pronunciation!!
« Reply #60 on: June 03, 2011, 07:36:30 am »
I am a South African/American and I think the whole accent thing is silly. I try hard to
retain my South African accent. There are plenty of countries that have thick accents –
have they spoken to a Phillipines teacher or someone from India lately? How about
Scotland or Ireland – and as someone posted earlier there are different accents inside the
US, ex. a Southerner vs a Minnesotan. They will get used to it – its helpful to expand their
horizons. Don’t change your accent!
Re: South African Pronunciation!!
« Reply #61 on: June 03, 2011, 07:57:16 am »
I am from America and to be quite honest some (but not all) South African accents are
hard for me to understand. They were quite of few South Africans at the EPIK Orientation
and some of there english were bad.
I imagine that “there english were” better than this.
As for the original topic, being from England I’ve been told by some co-teachers that I can
be hard to understand at times but I’ve noted that these are the ones who I struggle to
understand too. The teachers who have a higher level of English never have any trouble. I
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think that often it is an excuse to save face. I agree with a previous poster that even in
American there are lots of different accents so saying that they can only understand an
“American” accent is just their excuse to make themselves not look bad in front of the
other teachers and you.
Re: South African Pronunciation!!
« Reply #62 on: June 03, 2011, 08:54:09 am »
I’m still young but I think it’s a recent thing that South Africans are starting to notice their
different regional accents. I was born in Durban, well the Kloof area which is different to
the regular “hey bru” though I can speak it having gone to school in Durban. Since I lived
in Cape Town for 4 years I’m now told Cape Town can be heard in my pronunciation
where as I’m continually asked to say things like “Nine” and “Fish” when in Cape Town.
Anyhow my point is it’s a contextual thing and if it requires some tweaking on your part to
be heard and understood that should not be an issue however you need not feel that you
have to abandon your identity. Anyhow being South African is more than the way you
speak or what you eat etc.

ACTIVITY 3.7
What is your opinion regarding the South African pronunciations or any other
pronunciation maybe in your own country if you are not South African?

More about varieties including varieties in accents is covered in Unit 5 of this module.
SOUND PATTERNING/ PHONOLOGY
Phonology
In the previous sections, we considered the phonetic features of the individual sounds.
What the section has done is give you the ammunition, the tools and the terminology for
dealing with speech production. However, sounds don’t exist in isolation, they occur in the
company of other sounds. Phonology describes sound behaviour and patterns in the
context of more than one sound appearing together. For our purposes we will look at
syllables, stress, and intonation. We have chosen these because they have been
identified as another problematic area for language users.
The Syllable
Let’s look at and read the poem below entitled ‘The moon was but a chin of gold’ by
Emily Dickison.
The MOON was BUT a CHIN of GOLD
A NIGHT or TWO aGO,
And NOW she TURNS her PERfect FACE

37
UPON the WORLD beLOW.
The poem has been written in such a way as to show where stress is put on parts of a
word. For instance in the word PERfect the stress is the first syllable and the one syllable
words that are stressed are also written in capital fonts.
Look at the poem again. You will notice that the first line has four stressed syllables, the
second line has three stressed syllables, the third line has four stressed syllables and the
fourth has three stressed syllables. So the pattern is 4-3- 4-3. Each line starts with an
unstressed syllable. When you study poetry you will be told that the pattern that Emily has
used is an ‘iambic meter’.

So what is a Syllable?
The syllable is a phonological unit consisting of segments around a central vowel. The
total number of syllables equals the number of vowels. Syllables are not only useful to
know to understand rhythm in poetry; they are also useful in music. If you listen to a rap,
its movement is measured using syllable based rhythm.
The syllable is also the environment for marking stress in words. So if you want to change
the meaning of a word or indicate its category, you use stress.
Let’s take this example using the word ‘record’ (2 syllable word)
(a) Can you give a REcord of your work.
– record is a noun, the first syllable is stressed.
(b) Can you please reCORD your work.
– record is a verb, and the second syllable is stressed.

The beats mark the number of syllables in this word, as such the pitch rises on the
stressed syllable. Words such as the ‘record’ above are called heteronyms, spelled the
same but different in meaning. The difference in meaning is signalled by the stress
placement.
Rewrite the following words to show the placement of stress to bring out the meaning of
the word. Two have been done for you.

Table 10

Word No of syllables Stress place

pencil
photography
physiology
poLItical 4 Second syllable
POlitics 3 First syllable
subject(v)

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 ENG1502/501

produce(v)
produce (n)

ACTIVITY 3.8
We can do a quick overview of the syllable count on the following words. Please complete
by filling in the blank spaces for the number of syllables for each word.
Use the following basic rules. Count the number of vowels, each vowel sound carries one
syllable, subtract any silent vowels at the end of each word, and subtract one vowel from a
diphthong vowel. Remember that we are using the 24 vowel sounds set shown in the
vowel chart and not the 5 vowels you did in Grade one.

Table 11

Word No. of syllables Word No. of syllables

inform = In / form 2 syllables mortal = mor/ tal 2 syllables

information Immortality

in/for / ma/tive 4 syllables Immortal

possibility in/te/lli/gent 4 syllables

possibility Intelligentsia

drama Intelligently

dramatic po/ssi/ble 3 syllables

dramatically Possibility

ACTIVITY 3.9
How many syllables does each of the following words have?
comment, discuss, confiscate, fairy, ferry, reading, idea, deal, appreciate, interesting,
develop, development.
What this tells us is that learning about syllables is useful for literary appreciation; for
music creation and for understanding meaning of words that share certain spelling
features.

39
How do we know when and when not to stress a syllable? The word ‘COMment’ has 2
syllables and the first syllable is stressed. A lot of second language users stress the
second syllable and when they do, the word sounds like ‘comMENT’ which is the stress
pattern for the word ‘comMEND’ . Unless someone was listening carefully to the context in
which the word has been used, they may be confused by the meaning.
You have to be aware of this difference, especially if your first language is not English or
unlike English which is a stress-timed language, yours is a syllable-timed language. In
many African languages every syllable carries a similar weight, in English the weight
varies from one syllable to another. As such, in English there are stressed and unstressed
syllables.
The big question is: Where should I put the stress for words? The principles noted below
uses words which will make sense to you if you read them in conjunction with Unit 3 of
morphology and syntax.
Here are some guidelines on how to determine stress in English. These are not rules, but
guidelines as there may be exceptions.
(1) A word is normally stressed on the first syllable, unless there is a reason to put
the stress somewhere else.
(2) The “reasons” are either suffixes (like -ity or -ion) or prefixes (like con-, dis-, ex- or
in-).
(3) If the suffix (ending) starts with the letters i or u this will affect the position of stress in
a word.
Sample suffixes: -ion, -ual, -ial, -ient, -ious, -ior, -ic, -ity, etc. The stress comes on the
syllable before the suffix.
Examples: Atlantic, comic, sufficient, explanation, residual.
There are only a very few exceptions to this rule.
(4) Other suffixes do not affect the stress of a word.
Sample suffixes: -al, -ous, -ly, -er, -ed , -ist, -ing, -ment
Examples: PERmanent, pERmanently, deVElop, deVElopment
(5) Prefixes are not normally stressed in two-syllable words, except in some nouns
or adjectives.
► Prefixes are usually stressed in three-syllable nouns and adjectives, but not always
stressed in verbs.
Examples: ‘Continent, ‘incident, ‘exercise;
to con’sider, to en’visage but to ‘indicate
(All three syllable verbs ending in -ate are stressed on the first syllable).
http://ling uapress.com/grammar/word-stress.htm
You will learn more about prefixes and suffixes in the next unit.
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Stress and intonation

Another very important phonological feature for someone learning to speak another
language is stress and intonation. We have talked about stress in the preceding section
on the syllable and you now know that the syllable is the environment for stress in English.
So the syllable, stress and intonation are interrelated.
Intonation is a very important skill in social circles. Intonation refers to the rise and fall of
one’s voice pitch during speech. Questions, command statements usually mark intonation.
Other emotional reactions such as anger, hesitancy, and anxiety can affect the tone of
one’s voice. In speech the voice pitches or drops, in writing tone is demonstrated in words,
punctuation marks such as question, exclamation and ellipses. One of the issues noted in
Unit six is that language is used to create tone and attitude which goes a long way to
communicate meaning in your statement. So to become a good listener and
communicator, you need to understand how intonation works.
One basic principle of stress is that content words are stressed, but it is up to the speaker
to choose which words to stress.

ACTIVITY 3.10
Do the following: say ‘Hello’ to:
(1) a friend you meet regularly
(2) a friend you haven’t seen for a long time
(3) a neighbour you don’t like
(4) a 6 month old baby
(5) someone doing what they shouldn’t be doing
(6) to know if someone is listening
How did you show the differences to convey an attitude or emotion? State which attitude
you conveyed.

Intonation helps us achieve some of the discourse functions mentioned in UNIT 7. Here
are some examples:
• show attitude = express emotions, confidence interest, doubt, pain, irony etc.
• accentuate certain functions = where to place stress
• grammatical functions = indicate grammar and syntax structures i.e. when to pause
between phrases and clauses and sentences
• discourse functions = signals ‘new’ and ‘given’ information; when a speaker is indicating
contrast; what kind of response is expected of the listener

41
At the sentence level we can hear a lot of stress and intonation. Depending on which word
is stressed, the meaning changes.
Look at this sentence and try to read it with the stress on the bolded words.
‘You want to talk to me? I am not interested.’ (the speaker doesn’t want to talk to the
listener)
‘You want to talk to me? I am not interested?’ (the speaker is surprised the hearer thinks
he/she is not interested to talk to them).

CONCLUSION
In this unit we have introduced several basic concepts of the sound system. We hope that
you now have a working idea of the basic tools of pronunciation, the place and the manner
where sounds are produced. You should also be aware now that there is no one to one
correspondence between sound and spelling. Sound production must be learned with
special attention given to the variations that come with place, manner, and voicing; as well
as stress and intonation.
References
Fromkin, R. et. al. (2005) An Introduction to Language, London. Thomson and
Wadsworth. Ladefoged, P. (2001) Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sound
of Language, UK. Blackwell Publishing.
Ladefoged, P. (2000) A course in Phonetics, London. Thomson and Wadsworth.
Roach, P. (2000) English Phonetics and Phonology, London. Cambridge University Press.

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UNIT 4: WORD FORMATION - MORPHOLOGY

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of the unit, you should be able to:

 distinguish between inflectional morphology and lexical morphology;

 describe derivational, inflectional, free and bound morphemes;

 identify morphemes and allomorphs;

 describe how the morphological processes of derivation, compounding,

clipping, back formation and blending are used to create new words;

 explain the differences between noun and verb inflections.

INTRODUCTION
This Unit must be read alongside the following sections of Mullany and Stockwell (2010)
A2, B2, and C2
Human beings have the capacity to understand and use words in their languages, even
words they have never encountered before. For example, a speaker of South African
indigenous languages, would know enough morphemes in their languages to recognise
that /Tsotsoping/ or /Gxabeshana/ the first word is probably a word in Sesotho, Setswana
or Sepedi, but not a word in isiZulu, Siswati or isiXhosa; the second one is probably a
word in isiXhosa or isiZulu but not a word in Sesotho or Siswati. You also understand the
meaning of the words. For example, you can say that, the first word is probably a place
name somewhere where one of the Sesotho languages is spoken, and the second word is
most probably someone’s name or surname in isiZulu or isiXhosa. How is that possible? It
is possible because, you have that unconscious knowledge of your language. This is
the central question of morphology, the part of grammar that deals with the internal
structure of words and their meanings.
If you grew up in Wales, you would speak the language of Wales, Welsh. In Wales, there
is a town called /Llanfairpwllgwynllgogerrychwyhndrbowillantysilliogogogoch/. Yes, this is
the name of a town in the Welsh language. To you, because you do not speak Welsh, it is
gibberish, which is to say, it does not make sense. As you try to read the word, you do not
know if it is one word or if it is many words put together, or if it is a sentence. In other
words, you do not understand the internal structure of this word. Yet, you understand
/Gauteng, Tivhumbeni, Qumbu, Babanango, Ventersdorp, eSwatini, or KwaZulu-Natal/
because you are Southern African. Although these are names of places presented in
different South African languages, you are familiar with them. For example, if you speak
these South African languages, you know that /Venters-dorp/, /Baba-nango/, /Gaut-eng/,
/Kwa-Zulu-Natal/,/e-Swat-ini,/ /Tivhumb-eni// are real words and their internal structure is
made up of more than just one element. Each of these words is formed by stringing
together the different elements to make up one word.

43
How can you be sure? Try to translate the words into English. For example, the translation
of [Gaut-eng] or [e-Goli] is ‘the place of gold’. As soon as you do this, you get to
understand that, ‘place of gold’ cannot be rendered by one element, in [Gaut-eng] or [e-
Goli] there are two elements, one element is [Gaut-] or [-Goli] which means ‘gold’, and the
other is [-eng] or [e-] which means ‘place of’. This is the internal structure or the
morphology of the word /Gauteng/ or /eGoli/. In contrast, in the Welsh word
/Llanfairpwllgwynllgogerrychwyhndrbowillantysilliogogogoch/, you do not know what the
morphology of the word is because, you do not speak the language. To the Welsh
however, it is easy, they can break the word down into meaningful elements or parts. With
this background in mind, in the following paragraphs, we attempt to answer the question,
“What is morphology?”
What is morphology?
According to Mullany and Stockwell (2015), morphology is the study of elementary units
called morphemes and their combination rules in the formation of words and their
meanings. In simple terms, morphology deals with how words are formed and the way that
formation or structure determines their meaning. To explain further, the morphology of a
language such as Welsh, Sepedi, isiZulu or isiNdebele and any other language is a set of
rules that do two things. First, these rules are responsible for word formation, the
formation of new words. Second, the rules represent the speaker’s unconscious
knowledge of the structure of the already existing words of their language.
Morphemes (word-formation units or elements)
In this section we explain what morphemes are so that it becomes easy to understand
morphology. Finegan and Besnier (1989) state that, morphemes are the smallest units of
language that can be associated with meaning. In the examples we gave earlier such as,
/Kwa-Zulu-Natal/ and /Gaut-eng/ we showed that these words are made up of word
building units or elements like /Kwa-/, /Gaut-/ /-eng/ which are examples of the ‘smallest
units’ in a whole word. Small as they are, they are associated with meaning. We know
that, the meaning of /Kwa-/ is ‘the place of…’ in isiZulu. We also know that, the meaning of
/-eng/ is ‘the place of…’ in Sesotho. This means that, the word /Gauteng/ can be broken
down or divided into its smallest units or morphemes, /Gaut-/ ‘gold’ + /-eng/ ‘place of’.
These smallest units or elements of language need not be words, although sometimes
they are. There are words that cannot be broken down further into meaningful smallest
units, like the word /Qumbu/. This word is both the smallest unit, a morpheme and a word
at the same time. For example, /Qu-/ and /-mbu/ have no meaning on their own in the
same way that /kwa-/ and /-eng/ have.
English speakers know that words such as cat, girl, tall, ask, father, school, orange, tie/
cannot be divided into smaller meaningful units. /Orange/ for example is not made up of
/O+range/ or /Ora + nge/; nor is /father/ made up of /fath+er/. However, many words in the
English language have more than one meaningful element, unit or part.

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Look at the following words:

/cats/ , /girls/, /taller/, /asked;/, /fatherly/, /schooled/, /oranges/, /ties/

All of them are made up of two elements:

/cat+s/ , /girl+s/, /tall+er/, /ask+ed;/, /father+ly/, /school+ed/, /orange+s/,

/tie+s/

Other words have even more elements or units. Consider the following examples:

truer untrue truthfully

truest truth untruthfully
truly truthful untruthfulness

These examples show that a set of words can be built up by adding certain meaningful
elements to a core element, the root. In the example above, the core element or root is
/true/ to which all possible meaningful elements are added. We have already alluded to
the fact that, the meaningful elements of a word are called morphemes. In these
examples, /true/ is a morpheme, the root; the added meaningful elements are also
morphemes: /-er; -est; -ly; un-; -th; -ful; -fully; -ness/. Sometimes there are two or more
morphemes in a word. For example, in /un1-truth2-ful3-ness4/ ‘untruthfulness’, there are
four morphemes.
Free and Bound morphemes
Some morphemes such as /true, mother, uncle, father, orange, apple/ can stand alone;
they cannot be broken down or be divided into smaller meaningful units or elements.
Morphemes that can stand alone and could not be broken down further are called free
morphemes. Morphemes such as /-er; -est; -ly; un-; -th; -ful; -fully; -ness/ cannot stand
alone, they function only as parts of words. These are called bound morphemes.

ACTIVITY 4.1
Identify free morphemes in the short paragraph below:
“Her eyes light up as he smiles and it’s easy to see why Gaby, wife of Blue Bulls and
Springbok prop Trevor Nyakane, is such a firm favourite among the wives and girlfriends of
the capital’s much-loved rugby players. Gaby and Trevor met in Tzaneen, Limpopo and
started dating when Gaby was in her first year of university.

The couple got married in August last year in a lavish ceremony in front of family and
friends, but not before having to reschedule their big day because of rugby commitments.
They would have gotten married in June.

Adapted from Pretoria GET IT Magazine, ‘It’s all about family’, April ,2019:18.

45
Feedback to Activity 4.1
Refer to the section on Free and Bound morphemes in order to answer this question. For
example ‘her’, ‘Blue’ are a free morphemes because they cannot be broken down any
further into meaningful units.
Derivational morphemes
Certain bound morphemes work to change the parts of speech of the words they are
affixed or attached to. For example, /truth/ is a NOUN and if we affix /-full/ it becomes
/truthful/ an ADJECTIVE. If we further affix another morpheme /-ly/ it becomes /truthfully/
an ADVERB. In English, such morphemes tend to be added or affixed at the end of words.
Table 12

Part of speech Derivational Result

morphemes

Noun /doubt/ + -ful Adjective /doubtful/

Adjective /beautiful/ + -ly Adverb /beautifully/

Verb /establish/ + -ment Noun /establishment/

Verb /teach/ + er Noun /teacher/

Adjective /bright/ + en Verb /brighten/

Noun /fright/ +en Verb /frighten/

ACTIVITY 4. 2
Change the following words into different word forms by attaching a suffix. Have the suffix
you have added changed the part of speech of the word? If so, what was the original part
of speech and what is the new one?

expect----------------------------------------------------
interfere--------------------------------------------------
school----------------------------------------------------
take------------------------------------------------------
quality---------------------------------------------------

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Inflectional morphemes
Other bound morphemes work, not to change the parts of speech of the words they are
affixed to, but they change the form of a word without changing the part of speech to
which it belongs. For example, if a word is a verb, it stays a verb except its form or
structure changes.
These bound morphemes are called inflectional morphemes. They work to create
variant forms of words. Below are examples:
Table 13

Part of Class or Inflectional Examples

Speech category morphemes

Noun plural /-s/ cars, churches, apples

possessive /-s/ father’s tie, mother’s shoes

Verb 3rd person /-s/ she cooks, he refuses,

past tense /-ed/ he cooked, he refused

present participle /-ing/ she is cooking, he is refusing

past participle /-ed/ she had cooked; he had

refused

Adjective comparative /-er/ He is taller; she is prettier

superlative /-est/ He is the tallest guy ; she is the

prettiest girl

Now that you understand what morphology is and what it does in language through
derivational and inflectional morphemes, let us explain what is meant by inflectional and
lexical morphology.
Inflectional morphology
In the discussion above, we saw an example of inflectional morphology. We can say that,
inflectional morphology deals with the differences between the structures or forms of the
words or lexemes when inflectional morphemes have been attached to them without
changing the word class. Nouns remain nouns, and verbs remain verbs. For example:

47
Table 14

Lexeme New form

car, church, apple cars, churches, apples (plural nouns)

(singular nouns)

Father, mother, Father’s; mother’s, (nouns marked for the possessive)

Cook, refuse (verbs) Cooked; refused (verbs in the past tense)

Cook, refuse Cooking, refusing ( verbs in the present participle)

Cook, refuse Had been cooking; had been refusing (verbs in the
past participle)

Tall, pretty (adjectives) Taller, tallest; prettier, prettiest ( adjectives in the

comparative, superlative forms)

In summary, inflectional morphology serves to mark number like singular or plural on

nouns. On verbs, it marks tense, like present, past or present participle. On adjectives, it
marks the degrees of comparison (comparative and superlatives).
Lexical morphology
Earlier, we also saw an example of lexical morphology when we discussed derivational
morphemes and how they change the word class of a lexeme when they are attached to
it. Consider the following examples again:
Table 15

Part of speech Derivational New part of speech

morphemes

Noun /doubt/ + -ful Adjective /doubtful/

Adjective /beautiful/ + -ly Adverb /beautifully/

Verb /establish/ + -ment Noun /establishment/

Verb /teach/ + er Noun /teacher/

Adjective /bright/ + en Verb /brighten/

Noun /fright/ + en Verb /frighten/

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To recap, we can say lexical morphology uses derivational morphemes to create new
lexemes or words from existing lexical bases. For example, from the lexical base /doubt/
(verb)], lexical morphology can produce other lexemes or words thus /doubtful (adjective),
doubtless (adjective), doubtfully (adverb), undoubtedly (adverb), doubter (noun)/.
ACTIVITY 4.3
Construct sentences of your own using the different inflections provided in the left hand
column.

Inflections Sentences

The plural form of ‘watch’.

The possessive of the word
‘Doctor’.
The Past tense /-ed.
The /-ing/ form of the verb.
Past participle form of a verb your
choice.
The /-er/ comparison form of the
adjective.
The /est/ comparison form of the
adjective.

Word structure and lexical morphology

The examples of inflectional and lexical morphology we have been discussing have
prepared you for the next topic that we discuss, word structure. We would like to focus on
word structure in English and to demonstrate the work of lexical morphology in the
language. In English, the root or lexical base of a word is an already existing word.
Therefore, English morphology is word-based. This means that, words are built on words
as we saw in the examples above.
Look at the following word denationalisation, with the background knowledge you now
have of morphology, you can understand that, each affix you see in the word, has been
added to the English word/root: nation.
However, there are many English words whose internal structure is not made up of
existing roots in the English language. These are the stand-alone lexemes. They should
remind you of the lexeme, /Qumbu/. For example, in the word grateful/ one cannot claim
that /grate-/ is the root and -ful/ is an affix attached to grate because there is no such word
as ‘grate’ in English. There are many such words in English which are an exception to the
rule. For example, /cranberry/, /delay/, outrage/, /inaugural, advance/ are root words
themselves; their internal structure is not a result of cran+berry, de+lay, out+rage/ and so
on.

49
Similarly, words such as receive, deceive, conceive, perceive or remit, submit, permit,
commit do not follow the same inflection process. What looks like affixes in these words
does not do the work of affixes when they are attached to free morphemes or lexemes like
/fill > re-fill/, /do > re-do/. The reason they cannot do a similar work is because, they
have no meaning. For example, there is no meaning in per- when attached to -mit; permit
cannot be broken down further, it exists as a free morpheme, a word in English whose
internal structure consists of the lexeme itself.
Word formation (lexical morphology) in English
All languages, including African languages have the ability to create new words using
morphological rules. Earlier we saw /Tsotsoping/, a word which does not exist. We learned
that, speakers of Sesotho, Sepedi or Setswana would know how to pronounce it, they
would guess that, it is the name of a place somewhere. Why? Because, we said, they
have unconscious knowledge of their languages. This means that, they have unconscious
knowledge of the morphology of their languages as well as the morphological rules the
languages use to create words. In this module, we discuss English as a language.
So how does the English language use lexical morphology to create words? English uses
two types of processes to create words: derivation and compounding.
Derivation
Derivation creates new words, using derivational morphemes by changing the category or
class of the word and its meaning. For example, the derivational affix /-er/ combines with a
verb to create a noun with the meaning ‘one who does something’ as shown in the
examples below:
Table 16

Verb Derivational Derived noun

morpheme

helpv /-er/ helpvern

walkv walkvern
talkv talkvern
teachv teachvern
writev writvern
gardenv gardnvern
drivev drivvern
speakv speakvern
cleanv cleanvern

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Below is a list of English derivational affixes:

Table 17
Some English derivational affixes (morphemes)

Affix Change Semantic effect Examples

Suffixes

-able V-Adj doable, reversible

-ation V-N vexation, collaboration

-er V-N teacher, gardener

-ing V-N she likes sleeping, they pay for

babysitting

-ion V-N protection, deletion

-ive V-A assertive, combative

-ment V-N employment, enjoyment

-al N-A national, regional

-ian N-A Ghanaian, Rhodesian, Canadian

-ic N-A organic, choleric, xenophobic

-ise N-V problematise, organise, africanise

-less N-A penniless, moneyless, toothless

-ous N-A joyous, poisonous, pretentious

-ity Adj-N priority, stupidity

-an N-Adj Angolan, republican, Mozambican

-ly ADJ-ADV ridiculously, hurriedly, quietly

-ness Adj-N Sadness, happiness, faithfulness

Prefixes

ex- N-N former … ex-wife, ex-president

in- Adj-Adj not … in-conceivable, in-secure

V-V reverse… undo, uncover, uncork

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re- x…again re-do, re-think, re-send

Adapted from www.ruf.edu/~Kemmer/Words/affixes.html

Derivational Rules
Each of the examples given in Table 17 illustrate a ‘word formation rule’ that can predict
what words can be created in English. Thus, if there is a rule that says, {prefix /un-/ to an
adjective to get another adjective}, then applying the rule should yield a result such as
this word: {unprefix + ceremoniousadj = unceremonious adj}. If the rule says, {prefix /un-/ to
an adjective to get and adverb}, then applying the rule should yield the following word:
{unprefix + ceremoniousadj = unceremoniouslyadv}.
These rules have another function or work that they do in English. So far, we have been
discussing one of their functions, that is, to form words. The other function, is that the
rules can be used to analyse words. For example, if you come across a word like
/unpalatable/, which means ‘something unpleasant to eat or accept’. You can analyse the
word using a derivational rule if you know and understand lexical morphology. Analysing
the word means, you will break it down to its smallest meaningful units. Thus: /unprefix-
palatnoun-ablesuffix/ where /un-/ means ‘something cannot be done’; /palat-/ refers to ‘palate’
which is the roof of your mouth; you use it sometimes to taste food with the help of your
tongue; /-able/ is an affix which means something ‘can be done’. The resulting word is
/unpalatable/.
Multiple Derivations
The words that as we have been discussing, such as unpalatable, uncooperative,
denationalisation are illustrations of multiple derivations. In their internal structure, they are
complex. You can see the multiple levels of complexity when you begin to analyse them:

unpalatable /unprefix-palatnoun-ablesuffix/

uncooperative /unprefix-cooperatverb-ivesuffix/

denationalisation /deprefix-nationnoun-alinfix-isesuffix.

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Compounding
Compounding is another example of a derivational word formation rule of English. The
rule takes existing words and puts them together to create new words. Here are
examples:
Table 18

Combining parts of Examples Resulting words

speech

noun + noun eye+witness, rain + coat eyewitness, raincoat

adjective + noun quick+sand, slow+cooker quicksand, slowcooker
pronoun + noun she+goat shegoat, shewolf
verb + adverb look+out, watch+out lookout, watchout
verb +noun tell + tale telltale,
gerund+ noun looking+glass lookinglass
noun + adjective air+tight, suger+free airtight, sugarfree
adjective + adjective red+hot, red+handed redhot, redhanded
noun + verb brow+beat; hog+wash browbeat, hogwash
adjective + verb white+wash, whitewash,
adverb + verb up+set, with+stand upset, withstand
adverb + adjective left+handed lefthanded
adjective +noun blue+lie, super+market bluelie, supermarket

ACTIVITY 4.4
Read the following paragraph extracted from the editor’s article entitled ‘They are Dishing
UP’ on a restaurant called Forti Grill and Bar in Pretoria, paying particular attention to the
italicised words. The article appeared in the April issue of Pretoria Get It Magazine, p. 36.
In this paragraph, the italicised words can be broken down into different morphemes.
Analyse the words and identify the free and bound morphemes found in each word. Use
the following example to do this activity:

Free morphemes (base morphemes) Bound morphemes

/dish/ /-ing/ > dishing
/luck/ /-y/ > lucky

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When it comes to good food, one never has to look further than Chef Fortunato
Mazzone, also known as Forti. He is known far and wide across the city and even
beyond its borders. At Forti Grill and Bar, you’ll get some seriously good food. Situated in
the prestigious Time Square Casino, booking is essential when planning dinner at Forti
Grill and Bar. Yes, it’s that popular. As previously mentioned, Chef Forti is no stranger to
local foodies. Just ask anyone who has dined at his previous restaurant, Ritrovo. The
man is a legend. But he doesn’t only cook, he can sing as well – opera to be precise and
it’s beautiful.

Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through this activity.
Clipping
Applying this rule to a word results in a shortened or abbreviated form of words. The
process seems to be popular among students. Sometimes applying the rule results in
acronyms. Acronyms are words formed by taking the initial letters of some, or all of the
words in a phrase or title and pronouncing them as a word, for example, AIDS, UNESCO,
WITS, JO’BURG, UNISA, TAXI and so on. Here are a few more examples of acronyms:
Table 19

Noun Clipping

Professor prof
advertisement advert
preparation prep
doctor doc
laboratory lab
supplementary supp
motorbike bike
combination combo
Catherine Cathy/ Kathy
Elizabeth Liz
operation Op

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Backformation
This is an interesting lexical rule. It is a word-formation rule which takes a word which was
derived using derivational morphemes by affixing them to an existing lexeme (root, base)
and de-affixes the derivational morphemes; it works to reverse the initial process, as it
were. Here are a few examples:
Table 20

Original lexeme (word) Backformation

Enthusiasm Enthuse
donation donate
orientation orient/ orientate
editor edit
liaison liaise
self-destruction self-destruct
hairdresser hairdress
burglar burgle
typewriter typewrite
computer compute
babysitter babysit

Blending
Blending is a process in which two already existing lexemes/ words are created/ combined
to form a new word. For example:
Table 21

Lexemes New word ( Blend)

breakfast + lunch brunch

motor + hotel motel
telephone + marathon telethon
dance + exercise dancercise
electronic + mail email
worldwideweb+seminar webinar

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ACTIVITY 4.5
Using your first language as an example, explain how you would use derivational, clipping,
blending and compounding and backformation to coin new words. Remember to show the
English language equivalents.
Identifying morphemes and allomorphs
At this point, we are confident that, you understand what morphemes are. Let us explain
what allomorphs are. Sometimes a morpheme has only one phonological form, only one
way to pronounce it. However, oftentimes, that morpheme has a number of variations in
pronunciation: it is pronounced differently in different contexts. Those different
pronunciations of the one morpheme are called allomorphs. For example, the inflectional
morpheme /-’s/ which is a possessive marker in words like mom’s car, dog’s fur, the
possessive inflectional morpheme /-’s / is pronounced differently where the noun ends in a
voiced sound like /m, d/: the pronunciation sounds like [mom’z car, dog’z fur]. Therefore,
in this example, -’s is the morpheme and -’z is the allomorph. In the following
paragraphs, we will discuss allomorphs in detail.
Now, before leaving the subject of morphology, let us examine the matter of pronunciation
of some of the inflectional affixes (in this case, suffixes) of English in detail. This will
enable us to identify what morphemes are as opposed to allomorphs. To be clear, we will
examine three contexts where the difference between morphemes and allomorphs is
experienced. These are the plural, the possessive and the third person singular.

Let us examine the plural affixes and see how words are pronounced in the contexts
where each allomorph occurs:
Plural allomorphs
Table 22

[-ɪz] [-z]

bush >bushes[-ɪz] dog >dogs[-z]

judge > judges[-ɪz] friend>friends[-z]
peach > peaches[-ɪz] pen > pens[-z]
bus > buses[-ɪz] seed > seeds[-z]
fuse > fuses[-ɪz] car > cars[-z]

These examples indicate the pattern of distribution for the plural allomorphs of English:
1. [-ɪz] shows up where nouns end in /sh, dg, s, z, ch/ (sounds that are fricative or
sibilant)
2. [-z] shows up where nouns end in /g, d, n, r/ (sounds that are voiced)
3. [-s]. shows up where nouns end in /t, p, k, th, / (sounds that are voiceless)

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Note that, possessives and third person singular will behave in a similar way:

Bess’s [-ɪz] coat

John’s [-z] car
Phillip’s [-s] fiancé

1. [-ɪz] shows up where nouns end in / s, / (fricative or sibilant sound)

2. [-z] shows up where nouns end in / n, / voiced sound)
3. [-s]. shows up where nouns end in /p/ (voiceless stop)
Again, the third person singular morpheme /’s/, will behave similarly when it comes after
certain sounds:

She kisses [-ɪz] her mother every day before she bedtime.
The boy digs [-z] holes all day long.
She stops [-s] at the supermarket to buy groceries.

1. [-ɪz] shows up where nouns end in / s / (fricative or sibilant sound)

2. [-z] shows up where nouns end in / g / voiced sound)
3. [-s]. shows up where nouns end in /p/ (voiceless stop)
Next, let us examine the English past tense morpheme. The inflectional morphemes that
mark the past tense of regular verbs in English has three allomorphs:
Past tense allomorphs
Table 23

[t] [d] [ǝd]

Wish >wish-ed [-t] wave > wave-ed [-d] want > want-ed[ǝd]
Kiss >kiss-ed [-t] bathe >bathe-ed[-d] wait > wait-ed[ǝd]
Talk > talk-ed [-t] play > play-ed [-d] hoot >hoot-ed[ǝd]
Preach > preach-ed [-t] ruin > ruin-ed[-d] plant > plant-ed[ǝd]

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 Torch > torched-ed [-t] tease > car-ed[-d] seed > seed-ed[ǝd]

These examples indicate the pattern of distribution for the plural allomorphs of English:
1. [-t] shows up where verbs end in /sh, s, k, ch/ (sounds that are voiceless)
2. [-d] shows up where nouns end in /v, th, y, n, r/ (sounds that are voiced)
3. [-ǝd] shows up where nouns end in /t, d/ (stop sounds)

ACTIVITY 4.6
The following words provide the possible forms of the regular past tense morpheme of
English.
(i) list the morphemes as well as the allomorphs
(ii) Identify and name the type of morpheme each word illustrates
(iii) Explain how a give morpheme comes to have an allomorph

Example:

Morpheme Allomorph Type of morpheme Explanation

/Walked / [walk-t] /-t/ Past tense /-ed/ [-t] occurs where

the final sound of
/sowed/ [sow-d] /-d/ a word is
voiceless

[-d] occurs where

the final sound of
a word is voiced

Fined
Butted
Stomachs
Coaches

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Cats
Dogs
Pleases her
Takes it
Allison’s coat
Cat’s food

Noun and verb inflection

Before we discuss noun and verb inflection in English, let us first explain the term
‘inflection’. Inflection refers to the morphological process that changes the form of a word
in order to mark what part of grammatical aspect it belongs to. We have already discussed
inflection and gave examples of it in the foregoing paragraphs. An example is the
inflectional morpheme of the plural /-’s/. When we affix this morpheme to a singular
noun, the result becomes a plural noun. For example, /shoe > shoes/.
All languages, to the best of our knowledge, indicates difference in words with respect to
/singular and plural/ as well as between /present and past tense/. Therefore, noun and
verb inflection refer to the morphological processes that nouns and verbs undergo and
become changed in form when they are inflected for the plural or tense respectively. In the
case of English nouns, for example, inflection marks the plural subclass as show below. In
the case of verbs, on the other hand, inflection marks a difference between past, present
future or whatever the case may be. See the examples below:
Noun inflection
Table 24

Singular Plural

Apple apples
boy boys
tree trees
cloud clouds
computer computers
dog dogs
mother mothers
orange oranges
banana bananas

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Verb inflection
Table 25

Present Tense Past Tense

talk talked
cook cooked
carve carved
construct constructed
quarrel quarreled
picture pictured
curl curled
book booked
express expressed
maintain maintained

ACTIVITY 4.7
Explain why /-ing/ is an inflectional suffix in (1) but a lexical one in (2)
(1) They are giving birth to more babies than the locals.
(2) It is often said that giving is more blessed than receiving.

References
A List of English Affixes. Source: www.ruf.rice.edu/~Kemmer/Words/affixes.html
Finegan, E. and Besnier, N. 1989. San Diego: Harcourt Bruce Jovanivich Inc.
Mullany, L. and Stockwell, P.2015. Introducing English language: a resource book for
students (2nd ed). New Yok: Routledge.
Pretoria GET IT Magazine, 2019. Foodie Alert. April 2019.

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UNIT 5: SENTENCES AND THEIR STRUCTURE: SYNTAX

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
By the end of this unit you should be able to:

 explain what a complete sentence is;

 explain the differences between a dependent clause and an independent clause;
 distinguish between simple, compound, complex, and compound complex
sentences;
 analyse different sentence types;
 correct sentence fragments and run-on sentences;
 recognize correct and incorrect word order in sentences;
 use the different types of sentences effectively in longer texts.

Introduction
In the previous unit we studied morphology, the internal structure of words to prepare you
for this unit. In this unit we study the internal structure of sentences.
This Unit must be read alongside A4, B4 and C4 of your prescribed text, Mullany and
Stockwell (2010).
The unit introduces you the study of how sentences are formed in English. It examines the
smaller parts of a sentence, phrases and clauses and how these relate in the various
kinds of sentences. Putting together the words into meaningful and grammatically correct
clusters or patterns or sentences is what constitutes syntax.
What is ‘syntax’? A simple definition of ‘syntax’ is given by Aitchison (1993:8). She states
that, “syntax…refers to both the arrangement and the form of words. It is that part of
language which links together the sound patterns and the meaning.” In previous units, you
studied sound patterns, but at that point, you did not link that information to syntax or
sentence structure and meaning.
The Sentence
The largest unit of word combination is the sentence. We have all written many
sentences, some correct and others incorrect. This Unit attempts to show you what tools
you need in order to see what words do when they are in the company of others, how
they relate to each other to create meaning.

Units in a sentence

The units that make up a sentence start with the word. In your high school years you will
recall the major parts of speech you learned. As a way to remind you of what these are,
and in particular how they function in real language, we will highlight the parts of
speech, sometimes referred to as word categories. Most of you will have studied word
categories at High school or matric.

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The verbs (words of action-wash, eat, give, etc), the nouns (words referring to person,
thing, place or idea), the adjectives (words denoting quality, or describe nouns), the
adverbs (words that modify a verb, adjectives, other adverbs and sentences), and the
minor parts of speech: the prepositions (denote several notions such as time, location
e – to, along, with, into tc), pronouns (words can be used instead of or to refer to nouns),
articles (the definite ‘the’, and indefinite articles ‘a’ and ‘an’), conjunctions (coordinating
and subordinating – see list on page 52), auxiliary verbs (verbs used to support the main
verb – be, have, do, will can, could, shall, should, must, might etc).

Activity 5.1
Identify the parts of speech of each of the words in this short excerpt.

Historical Perspective

Later came the first of the Nguni people who arrived with herds of cattle, and mined red
ochre in the hills south of Malelane. Early smelters, which pre-date the main Nguni
influx, have been excavated, indicating that the use of iron and copper was well
advanced during these years. Similarly, early pottery fragments and sculptural artifacts
unearthed in the hills on the Long Tom Pass, notably the “Lydenburg heads” have been
described as a major art find .

Did you find?

Later (adverb) came (v) the (article) Nguni (n) people (n) who (pronoun) arrived (v) with
(preposition) herds (n) of (preposition) cattle (n), and (conjunction) mined (veb) red
(adjective) ochre (n) in (preposition) the (article) hills south of Malelane. Early (adverb)
smelters (n), which (pronoun) pre-date (v) the (article) main Nguni (n) influx (n), have
been excavated, indicating that the use of iron and copper was well advanced (v) during
these years. Similarly, early pottery fragments and sculptural artifacts (n) unearthed in
the hills on the Long Tom Pass, notably the “Lydenburg heads” have been described as
a major art find.

Did you find?

Later (adverb) came (v) the (article) Nguni (n) people (n) who (pronoun) arrived (v) with
(preposition) herds (n) of (preposition) cattle (n), and (conjunction) mined (veb) red
(adjective) ochre (n) in (preposition) the (article) hills south of Malelane. Early (adverb)
smelters (n), which (pronoun) pre-date (v) the (article) main Nguni (n) influx (n), have been
excavated, indicating that the use of iron and copper was well advanced (v) during these
years. Similarly, early pottery fragments and sculptural artifacts (n) unearthed in the hills
on the Long Tom Pass, notably the “Lydenburg heads” have been described as a major
art find.
This basic identification process is easier to do. It names these elements as isolated units
and does not take into account their relationship with the other words in whose company
they appear. What syntax does is to examine these in context as both single elements and
elements within a group.

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THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE

The known structure of the English language sentence is in two parts; the subject and the
predicate. The predicate constitutes of the verb and sometimes the verb and the
compliment. Below are some examples of simple sentences showing the different
patterns.
As described in ‘The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers’ a predicate is the
completer of a sentence. The subject names the “do-er” or “be-er” of the sentence; the
predicate does the rest of the work. A simple predicate consists of only a verb, verb
string, or compound verb:
• The water evaporated.
• The water has been evaporating.
• The water evaporated, disappeared into the air, and never seen again.
A compound predicate consists of two (or more) such predicates connected:
• The water began to flow into the river and eventually filled the pond below the stream. A
complete predicate consists of the verb and all accompanying modifiers and other words
that receive the action of a transitive verb or complete its meaning.
My car (subject) has been stolen. (predicate) John (subject) drove my car (predicate).
The president (subject) gave all the Cabinet ministers a car. (predicate). Tatiana is
attentive. (predicate).
The dog died. (predicate).
The subject is always in a noun phrase or nominal form and the predicate in a verb phrase
or verbal form. Given that the noun can be substituted with a pronoun, the noun phrase
could be as in ‘He is coming’. Of course, a noun phrase can appear inside the predicate
as well, as the object, as in ‘The priest is a corrupt fellow’, where ‘corrupt fellow’ is the
noun phrase.
Here are some examples taken from Silva (1995) which show the structural composition
of the simple sentence.
Table 26

Subject Predicate
Noun phrase Verb phrase Noun phrase
She (pronoun) was humming an old church song
(auxiliary + verb) (determiner+ adjective phrase
(adjective +
noun) + noun
My car has been stolen

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John was driving my car

The table above shows the full constituent structure of the sentence from the part of
speech to phrase level. It also shows you the functional aspects, for example the
pronoun/nouns ‘she’, ‘my car’ and ‘John’ function as the subjects of the sentences and
‘was humming’, ‘has been stolen’ and ‘was driving’ as the verb phases and ‘an old church
song’ and ‘my car’ as noun phrases in the predicate position. The following is another
example showing more details on each of the phrases.

Subject Predicate
Noun Phrase Verb phrase Prepositional phrase (preposition
+ Noun phrase (determiner +
adjective+ noun)
Tears (noun) were gleaming on my mother’s face
(auxiliary + verb)

Let’s start with:

Nouns phrases or nominals
In a sentence or text, nouns are sometimes referred to as content words as opposed to
function words such as prepositions and articles. The noun is the quintessential part of a
sentence. Even in a sentence such as ‘stop’, the noun may not be in the surface structure,
but is implied as in ‘You stop’. There are different kinds of nouns, common nouns (man,
friend, apple, stick), proper nouns (names of particular things and people (August, The
Catcher and the Rye’, the Union Building, Johannesburg), collective nouns which refer to
a collection or group of people, animals, etc, (herd, government, com- mittee), abstract
nouns such as (belief socialism, intelligence, etc).
Let’s look again at the passage and see if we can identify the noun types. Nguni (n):
proper
people (n) : common herds (n): common cattle (n): common
ochre (n), hills (n), Malelane (n), smelters (n), Nguni (n), influx (n), copper (n), pottery (n),
fragments (n), artifacts (n), hills (n), Long Tom Pass (n),
Other single nouns include plural form nouns (children, men, mangoes) and pronouns
(she, he, they etc).
Noun phrases refer to the combination of words in which the noun appears as the main
word around which the other word categories congregate. A noun phrase is either a noun
or any group of words that can be replaced by a pronoun.

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In the sentences illustrating the basic structure of the sentence, you saw that the noun
phrase can be in the subject position, as a subject and in the predicate position, as an
object.

The Noun Phrase and its structure

A noun phrase is a unit comprised of a noun (which becomes the head of the unit) plus
other additional elements which modify the noun. The elements which generally modify
the noun are determiners and adjectives. A noun phrase can be infinite in length. The
bolded sections in the following sentences are noun phrases in different forms

Water is important for survival. (Single words)

Mr. Jones spoke to Dr. James. (Proper names)
The boy ate an apple. (Nouns and articles)
My friend works with her father. (Nouns and possessives) The young girl wore a long,
white dress. (Nouns and adjectives) Some of the kids ate all of the cake. (Nouns
and quantifiers) The man with the gun frightened the people in the bank. (Nouns and
prep. phrases)
The woman who lives there is my aunt. (Nouns and relative clauses) The dogs
sleeping on the deck should be left alone. (Nouns and phrases) Whoever wrote this
is in trouble. (Noun clauses)
http://www.eslgold.com/grammar/noun_verb_phrases.
This table shows you almost all the groups of noun phrases. One very useful way of
determining a noun phase is to take the string of words and substitute them with a
pronoun. So the sentences in the table above would look like this:

It is important for it. (Single words) He spoke to him.

(Single words) He ate it. (Single words) She works with him.
(Single words) She wore it. (Single words) They ate it.
(Single words) He frightened them. (Single words) She is my aunt.
(Single words) It should be left alone. (Single words) He/she is in trouble.
(Single words)

We don’t speak like this, but looking at these sentences you may begin to appreciate the
statement we made earlier that nouns and noun phrases provide the content and
information to make a sentence mean something.

The structure of the noun phrase potentially contains three sections:

Pre-modification; head noun and post-modification. Any given noun phrase will use one or
two or all these parts.

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Let’s look at some examples:
Table 27

Pre-modifier Head noun Post-modifier

The young Girl
The dogs sleeping on the deck
The very tall psychology professor with a north American
The man partner
who is wearing the hat
HIV positive children
The place to stay for the holidays
The doctor’s high salaries

This should give you an idea of the possible patterns that a noun phrase can possible
have.

ACTIVITY 5.2
This activity will give you good practice on the noun phrase. Study the following passage.
Underline the noun phrases. Replace the noun phrase with a pronoun. In the same
passage identify the pronouns. Try to find an appropriate noun or noun phrase to replace
the pronoun.

The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian
Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new
research shows.
The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of
meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.
The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible
by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest
caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of
ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the
discrepancy.
Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the re- search
team, said: “The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain
Asia, which is not significantly different from zero.” (The Guardian, Febraury, 2012)

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We can now move on to other phrase types which are as important as the noun phrase.
The verb and verb phrase
When we talk of a sentence or a clause, its core element is the verb. Verb phrases are
groups of words which take the function of a verb. Verbs and therefore verb phrases form
the head of the predicate of the sentence. They could be single words or accompanied by
other words. There are different forms of the verb in English:
Forms of the verb to be: is, am, are, was, were, be been
Forms of do: do does, did
Forms of have: have had
Other forms: can could, should, shall, will etc
ACTIVITY 5.3
Find all verbs and remove them from the passage. See how the passage will read like.

‘The region abounded with all types of game, plants, birds and insects. The rivers ran full,
providing for the needs of these early inhabitants. Later came the first of the Nguni people
who arrived with herds of cattle, and mined red ochre in the hills south of Malelane. Early
smelters, which pre-date the main Nguni influx, have been excavated, indicating that the
use of iron and copper was well advanced during these years. Similarly, early pottery
fragments and sculptural artifacts unearthed in the hills on the Long Tom Pass, notably
the “Lydenburg heads” have been described as a major art find.

Here is an example with the first sentence without the verbs:

The region with all types of game, plants, birds and insects. The rivers full, providing for
the needs of these early inhabitants. Later the first of the Nguni people who with herds of
cattle, and red ochre in the hills south of Malelane.

At the end of reading this you could say “okay, so what did all the mentioned people,
places, things do?” You are asking for the VERB.
Verbs can be used to convey meaning or perform a grammatical function. In the
sentences:
They drink every weekend.
I believe everything you say. I will taste all the dishes.
The underlined verbs in sentences a-c state an event, a state of being and an action
respectively. They are conveying meaning.
Yet in the sentences: I have been crying
He had won the election.

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The verbs express grammatical functions, ‘have been, and had’ are called auxiliary verbs.
Auxiliary verbs do not carry any lexical meaning, but assist the main verb, to show mainly
tense and aspect.
Verbs, as we saw with nouns, also come in singles and groups. The group is called the
verb phrase.
The Verb phrase can be used in five different ways:
as a predicate
I am studying Linguistics.
The glass was broken by the dog
as a noun phrase modifier
The woman reading the book just yelled at me. My dog is the puppy chewing on the
rawhide.
The most recent news reported by the anchor made me sad.
as an adjective phrase complement You should be excited to study syntax. My mother
is upset to see me leave.
Your professor is curious to know why you dropped her class. The teachers are happy to
learn about teaching methods.
as a subject.
Swimming is good exercise.
Reading books is educational.
Your eating health food impresses me.
To err is human.
To never visit the library disappoints librarians.

as a subject complement
My favourite pastime is reading.
His hobbies are writing and editing articles. My job is to repair damaged books.

Subject-Verb agreement and other sentence structural issues

We mentioned earlier that the verb has to agree in number and tense with the subject. It is
common to find the verb inappropriately used, especially when there are too many words
or phrases coming between the subject and the verb. Always make sure you know if the
subject is singular therefore to take a singular verb or plural to take a plural verb.

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Here is an exercise to illustrate the possible confusion:

The following paragraph contains six errors in subject-verb agreement. Find and correct
each of the six verb errors. Remember to stay in the present tense.
Santa
According to legend, Santa Claus is a fat old man who visits every house on our planet in
about eight hours on one of the coldest nights of the year. Santa, as everybody knows,
stop for a glass of milk and a cookie at each house along the route. He prefer to work
unnoticed, so he wears luminous red suit and travels with a pack of bell-jangling reindeer.
For reasons that most people does not understand, this jolly old man enters each house
not by the front door but through the chimney (whether you has a chimney or not). He
customarily gives generously to children in wealthy families, and he usually remind poorer
children that it’s the thought that counts. Santa Claus is one of the earliest beliefs that
parents try to instil in their children. After this absurdity, it’s a wonder that any child ever
believe in anything again.
Did you do the following?
(1) Change “stop for a glass” to “stops for a glass”; (2) change “prefer to work” to “prefers
to work”; (3) change “people does not understand” to “people do not understand”; (4)
change “you has a chimney” to “you have a chimney”; (5) change “remind poorer children”
to “reminds poorer children”; (6) change “child ever believe” to “child ever believes.”
http://grammar.about.com/od/correctingerrors/a/SVAexercises_2.htm
The most common confusion with subject-verb agreement arises when we use quantifiers
and group nouns such as: some of, neither, nor, either or, a lot of, some, team staff,
audience etc. One way of avoiding this particular era is making sure you have identified
the subject of the sentences.
For example in the following sentences
The list of items is/are on the desk.
The subject is the list not the items. It is the list that is on the desk; what list? of items
which will then take the singular subject ‘is’
So: My aunt or my uncle is arriving by train today.

Who is arriving by train? It’s my aunt or uncle, one of them, not both. So the two
singular verbs connected by ‘or’ require a singular verb.
Similarly, if you have two singular subjects connected by either/or or neither/nor they
require a singular verb.
Examples:
Neither Nora nor Chazile is available.
Either Khulana or Siviwe is helping today with stage decorations.

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But when I is one of the two subjects connected by either/or or neither/nor, put it second
and follow it with the singular verb am.
Example: Neither she nor I am going to the wedding.
When a singular subject is connected by or or nor to a plural subject, put the plural subject
last and use a plural verb.
Example: The serving bowl or the plates go on that shelf.
Likewise, when a singular and plural subject are connected by either/or or neither/nor, put
the plural subject last and use a plural verb.
Example: Neither Felix nor the others are available.
The other obvious pattern is that you use a plural verb with two or more subjects when
they are connected by and.
Example: A car and a bike are my means of transportation.
Sometimes the subject is separated from the verb by words such as along with, as well
as, besides, or not. Ignore these expressions when determining whether to use a singular
or plural verb.
Examples: The politician, along with the newsmen, is expected shortly.

Excitement, as well as nervousness, is the cause of her shaking.

The pronouns each, everyone, every one, everybody, anyone, anybody, someone, and
somebody are singular and require singular verbs. Do not be misled by what follows after
of.
Examples:
Each of the girls sings well. Every one of the cakes is gone.

TAKE NOTE
Everyone is one word when it means everybody. Every one are two words when the
meaning is each one.
With words that indicate portions – percent, fraction, part, majority, some, all, none,
remainder, and so forth – look at the noun in your of phrase (object of the preposition) to
determine whether to use a singular or plural verb. If the object of the preposition is
singular, use a singular verb. If the object of the preposition is plural, use a plural verb.
Examples:
Fifty percent of the pie has disappeared.
Pie is the object of the preposition of.
Fifty percent of the pies have disappeared.
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Pies is the object of the preposition.

One-third of the city is unemployed.
One-third of the people are unemployed.
The expression the number is followed by a singular verb while the expression a number
is followed by a plural verb.
Examples:
The number of people we need to hire is thirteen.
A number of people have written in about this subject.
When either and neither are subjects, they always take singular verbs.

Examples:
Neither of them is available to speak right now. Either of us is capable of doing the job.
The words here and there have generally been labelled as adverbs even though they
indicate place. In sentences beginning with here or there, the subject follows the verb.

Examples:
There are four hurdles to jump. There is a high hurdle to jump.
Use a singular verb with sums of money or periods of time.
Examples:
Ten rands is a high price to pay.
Five years is the maximum sentence for that offense.
Sometimes the pronoun who, that, or which is the subject of a verb in the middle of the
sentence. The pronouns who, that, and which become singular or plural according to the
noun directly in front of them. So, if that noun is singular, use a singular verb. If it is plural,
use a plural verb.
Examples:
Salma is the scientist who writes/write the reports.
The word in front of who is scientist, which is singular. Therefore, use the singular verb
writes.
He is one of the men who does/do the work.
The word in front of who is men, which is plural. Therefore, use the plural verb do.
Collective nouns such as team and staff may be either singular or plural depending on
their use in the sentence.

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Examples:
The staff is in a meeting.
Staff is acting as a unit here.
The staff are in disagreement about the findings.
The staff are acting as separate individuals in this example.
The sentence would read even better as:
The staff members are in disagreement about the findings.

Auxiliary Verbs
Another syntactic structure which calls for attention is when we deal with the verb phrase
are the auxiliary verbs. These are the verbs which accompany the main verb to modify it
for tense, aspect, mood. They normally precede the main verb,
For Example:
I shall go now.
He had won the election.
They did write that novel together. I am going now.
He was winning the election.
They have been writing that novel for a long time.
You may be asking yourself, what is the difference between a verb as we know it, i.e. the
lexical verb (word) and an auxiliary?
Lexical verbs or the words called verbs are the ones that can be marked for tense and
person. In English, these include the past and the present tenses. Lexical verbs – have
meaning – and normally use do-support for questions, negatives and emphasis.

Auxiliary verbs are characteristically used as markers of tense, person, aspect, mood,
and voice.
With lexical verbs, these are expressed by verb inflections; however, with auxiliary verbs,
these are expressed with separate words.
Let’s look at these examples to see the difference:
I had a dog (possessed) vs I had wanted a dog. (‘had’ lexical in the first and
auxiliary in the second example-telling the tense when the dog was wanted)
English, like all languages, is full of problems for the foreign learner. (is is lexical)
Some points are easily explained, such as the difference between for and since, while
others are more tricky. (are is the auxiliary).
Try this out and see if you can make the difference:

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Underline the auxiliary and double underline the lexical verb as shown in the first example
(1) Language is constantly changing and being adapted to speaker’s needs
(2) Grammar descriptions written in the earlier part of the nineteen hundreds are still
being taught by some instructors.
(3) Grammar descriptions written in the earlier part of the nineteen hundreds are still
being taught by some instructors.
(4) Modern linguistic descriptions have rejected many errors of the older tradition and
have supported departures from traditional grammar with reasoned argument.

Modal Auxiliaries
This is another type of helping verb. We will not get into details about them, but we will
give you some basic information on them. They are sensitive as they don’t like being done
certain things to them, for example, modal auxiliaries don’t:
• like being used with other auxiliary verbs such as do, does, did etc.
• like being followed by to, with the exception of ought to.
• change form, like add an “-s” or “-ed”, for example.
• have infinitives (to may, to shall etc.) or participles (maying, shalling, shalled etc.).
You cannot say to shall, to must or to may.
• allow you to sound the ‘l’ in pronunciation
The verbs can, could, will, would, should, may, might, must, ought and shall are verbs
which ‘help’ other verbs to express a meaning and are called modal verbs. These modal
verbs have no meaning by themselves. A modal verb such as would has several varying
functions; it can be used, for example, to help verbs express ideas about the past, the
present and the future. It is therefore wrong to simply believe that “would is the past of
will”: it is many other things.
ACTIVITY 5.4
Attempt the following task on modals:
(1) You seem to be having trouble there. _________ I help you?
will would shall
(2) I don’t have enough money to buy lunch. __________ you lend me a couple of
dollars?
may could shall
(3) That ice is dangerously thin now. You ________ go ice-skating today.

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 mustn’t might not should not
(4) It’s way past my bedtime and I’m really tired. I ________ go to bed.
should ought could
(5) He ______________ have committed this crime. He wasn’t even in the city that
night.
might shouldn’t couldn’t
(6) John is over two hours late already. He ___________ missed the bus again. should
have must have will have
(7) I’m really quite lost. _______________ showing me how to get out of here?
would you mind would you be must you be
(8) That bus is usually on time. It _________ to be here any time now. might
has ought
(9) I read about your plane’s near disaster. You ____________ terrified!
must have been might have been shall have been
(10) It’s the law. They ____________ have a blood test before they get married. might
could have to
Adapted from http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/auxiliary.htm
Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through this activity.

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The Adjective and the Adjective Phrase

They modify and intensify nouns directly or indirectly. We have already seen this in the
examples under the noun descriptions the kinds of adjectives that can modify the noun.
This again underscores the importance of the nouns as the main glue in the sentence.
Look at the following two paragraphs (1 and 2) what is the frequency of adjective phrases
and why do you think one paragraph has more adjectives than the other?
(1) Xai Xai (pronounced’ Shai Shai’) is a large town in the south of Mozambique, situated
on the Limpopo River, 220 kilometres north of the capital, Maputo. Xai Xai is the capital of
the Gaza Province. English is spoken in Mozambique, but the official language in
Mozambique is Portuguese. Portuguese and Shangaan are the languages spoken in the
Gaza Province.
Xai Xai is a bustling town with markets, shops, petrol stations, banks and internet cafes.
(2) The beach town known as Praia de Xai Xai has been a popular tourist attraction since
Mozambican tourism was first developed. It is not difficult to see why Praia de Xai Xai –
with all its natural beauty and exquisite beaches – is the preferred destination for many
holidaymakers. Praia de Xai Xai is situated 12 kilometres from the main town of Xai Xai.
The road is tarred, but care must be taken to avoid pedestrians and vehicles that stop
without warning to drop off or pick up passengers.
The Adverb and Adverb Phrase
We saw that an adjectives modifies a noun, an adverb modifies a verb. Adverbs modify all
other parts of speech except for the noun. So an adverb can:
• Modify an adjective: ‘awfully expensive’
• Modify an adverb: ‘she eats quite frequently’
• Modify prepositions: ‘right outside the door’
Adverbs say more about time (now, then, today, never, till); place (there, here, below,
above, outside; manner (slowly, eagerly, badly, well); degree ( very, reasonably, quite,
too); number (once, twice, finally again); certainty ( certainly, surely, perhaps, not)
interrogative (how, why, what, when).
(1) Adverb modifying a verb
‘She walks beautifully’
(2) Adverb modifying an adjective:
‘That is a very good book’
(3) Adverb modifying another adverb
‘She walks very slowly’
Try and find other examples of adverbs in sentences.
Adverb phrases are group of words which function in exactly the same way as adverbs.

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• We expect our grandparents to arrive in about an hour.
• My cousin watches television almost as much as you do.
• The weatherman says it will rain all day.
• Your brother plays soccer better than my brother does.
Look at the following sentences. Decide whether the bolded sections are adverbs or
adverb phrases. Note that some of the group of words are neither phrases nor clauses.
• We served drinks to our friends when they arrived.
• In the morning, we played cards.
• We will all leave immediately.
• We moved to Cornwall because we wanted to live in the countryside. In winter, we
decided to move to the south west.
• I finished work early.
I left work early so that I could catch the 4.30 train.
• Take a packed lunch with you, in case you get hungry.
The Prepositional Phrase
As the name suggests, the head of the prepositional phrase is the preposition. The
structure of a prepositional phrase is comprised of a preposition + noun phrase. Its main
function in a sentence is to signal a relationship between the object of the preposition and
some other elements in the sentence – in terms of time, space, location and association.
For example
The mat on the floor is swollen from the floor moisture (which mat?) Before leaving, Sam
gave us his address (when did he give his address?)
Prepositional phrases can be tricky. If placed at the wrong point in the sentence they can
create confusion. The principle is that you place them as close as possible to the element
they refer so as to avoid confusions as:
‘The boy (past) saw a man with a telescope’.
The ambiguity created by the modifying phrase can be problematic. Was the boy carrying
the telescope or did the boy use the telescope to see the man? This ambiguity is created
by the prepositional phrase, as it’s not clear as to which noun (boy or man) is being
modifying.
Sentences according to structure
We look first at the three structures.
Simple sentences: consist of one independent/main clause (IC)
e.g. [Mobile phones have taken over people’s lives.]

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[Mobile phones are becoming an essential gadget for making a teenager’s life mobile,
flexible and easy.]
Compound sentences: consist of two or more independent/main clauses (IC) joined
together using a coordination conjunction or a conjunctive adverb.
e.g. [Although Senzo was supposed to collect the documents and complete the report on
Friday (DC)] but [the documents were unavailable until Thursday (IC)].
[The use of mobile phones is important for networking;] however, [it can distract a lot of
drivers on the road.]
Complex sentences: consist of one independent clause (IC) and at least one
dependent clause (DC). The subordinate/dependent clause is introduced or linked to the
main clause by means of a subordinating conjunction. Each type of clause is identified in
the following complex sentences:
e.g. [Although Senzo was supposed to collect the documents and complete the report on
Friday (DC)], [the documents were unavailable until Thursday (IC)].
Compound-complex sentences: consist of a combination of the complex and the com-
pound sentences.
e.g. [Even though the documents were unavailable until Thursday, (DC)] [Senzo collected
what he had, (IC)] and [he submitted the report on Friday. (IC)]
N.B. The brackets [ ] are used to indicate the clauses

Clauses (independent (main) and dependant (subordinate))

[ Web developers should develop their proficiency with visual language (IC)] [because
Web pages involve as much visual communication as verbal (DC)].
If you look again at the sentences, you will realize that all the clauses have been
bracketed.
Inside the Clause
Clauses make up the biggest unit within a sentence. They, in turn, are made up of
phrases. So the clause ‘Web developers (NP) should develop (VP) their proficiency (NP)
with visual language’ (PP) – made up of four phrases. Phrases: refer to a combination of
words which function as a unit within a clause. You can have several phrases within a
clause. The English language uses several phrase types namely: Noun Phrase (NP), Verb
Phrase (VP), Adjective phrase (AP), Prepositional phrase (PP), and adverb phrase
(AdvP).
e.g. [(Mobile phones) NP (are becoming) VP (an essential gadgets) NP (for making) PP (a
teenager’s life) NP, (flexible) AP and (extremely exciting) AdvP].
It is these units or structures, the clauses and phrases that we move around when we
write. If we confuse the way the units should be structured and positioned in relation to
each other in a text, then we run the risk of making errors, miscommunicating, distorting
messages or making no sense at all.

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Look at the following sentence:
(A) The boy, he is at home. (the boy and ‘he’ refers to one thing – so one of them must
go). This is a typical direct translation error caused by first language interference. In Zulu,
for example the sentence would read:
U (the) mfana (boy) u (he) se(at) khaya (home).
To appreciate the type of error, it takes one to understand that a noun phrase and its
corresponding pronoun cannot be used together to refer to the subject of the sentence.
The same clauses and phrases are used by text creators, poets, news writers, and
politicians etc. to create the desired effect. As was noted in Unit one, some of these
structures can be inverted for different effect. Some can be expanded, modified again to
create an effect.
There are two ways in which we will be looking at the sentence: The structural and the
functional points of view. What do we mean by this and why is it so important?
Look at the following sentences:
• The waitress served the meal.
• The waitress, who was employed yesterday, served the meal.
• The waitress was employed yesterday and served the meal on the same day.
What is the difference between these two sentences?
• 2 and 3 are longer than 1 (obvious).
• 2 has more punctuation marks than 1 and 3 (commas).
• 2 tells us more about the waiter than 1 does (which waiter/employed previous day).
• 3 tells more about what the waitress did and when she did it.
• 2 and 3 has two verb forms and 1 has one verb (see underlined).
Looking at the differences we have listed, structurally, these sentences are indeed
different.
In terms of the structural labelling and naming of sentences, sentence 1 is a simple
sentence, 2 is a complex sentence and 3 is a compound sentence. Let’s explore in detail
what the structures are.
Every piece of text will use one or all these types. Depending on the domain in question,
texts may use many sentence types, but these three are basic.
These labels may not be new to many of you. We will briefly explain them more to remind
you than to teach you what they are.

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ACTIVITY 5.5
Below is a text on how to tender a garden, taken from the ‘Home’ magazine (July, 2008).
Design Decisions by Michelle Terblanche
(1) “Divide your garden into sections and remember that everything doesn’t have to be
done in a day. (2) For example, an area can be covered in gravel or bark now to be
planted later. (3) Fine gravel is fairly cheap and will keep the place neat and tidy until your
finances are balanced. (4) You can use pine needles, peach pips, or nut- shells. (5) The
water feature or braai can wait a while too. (6) In the meantime, you can work wonders
with the bench and three pretty pots.
(7) Your small garden can cost you the price of a new car, but it can also cost you as little
as a week’s groceries and both can be equally beautiful. (8) The difference lies in the type
of garden you’re planning, your expertise and energy, and your design decisions.”
Do the following analysis of this extract for sentences. Don’t look at the feedback before
completing the task.
There are number of sentences.
Sentence 1 is a simple, compound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 2 is a
simple, compound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 3 is a simple,
compound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 4 is a simple, compound,
complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 5 is a simple, compound, complex
sentence (underline the type) Sentence 6 is a simple, compound, complex sentence
(underline the type) Sentence 7 is a simple, compound, complex sentence (underline the
type) Sentence 8 is a simple, compound, complex sentence (underline the type)
Feedback
Now you can check your answers 1 = compound; 2 = compound; 3 = compound;
4 = simple; 5 = compound; 6 = compound; 7 = compound; 8 = compound.
Even though we haven’t printed the rest of Miss Terblanche’s article, we did establish that
the dominant sentence structure she uses is the compound sentence, some simple
sentences and very few complex sentences. It’s difficult to say whether she avoided the
complex sentence, or she doesn’t know how to construct one, or maybe she didn’t even
think about variety in sentence use. Whatever the reason, we wouldn’t like to believe that
she left them out of ignorance. It is for this reason that you must learn about the various
sentence type, so that you can choose which one to use and more importantly
‘spice’ your text with a variety of sentences. Look again at this sentence:
(a) Benjamin avoids hard work and this bothers me. (b) Benjamin’s avoidance of
hard work bothers me (c) It bothers me.
In these sentences we clearly are playing around with the words and phrases, moving
them around. A main clause has been changed into a noun phrase. We can do this
process (called nominalization) whereby a statement is changed into a noun phrase, only

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if we understand how noun phrases are formed and what their functions are.
Nominalization occurs more frequently in academic texts and other technical texts.
Sentences, clauses, phrases and text creation
Now that we have given you background information on the terminology used in the
discussion of sentences and introduced you to the sentence names and classification, we
will move on to look in more detail at the sentence kinds and how they can be effectively
used. Remember, the success of any piece of writing, be it academic or non-academic,
depends on how well your sentences have been crafted. Moreover, at University level you
are supposed to develop the skill to choose the appropriate sentences to use for the kind
of writing you are doing.
We have stated that there are four main kinds of sentences that matter, these vary
depending on the number and types of clauses they have. The compound and the
complex sentences are formed by coordinating several phrase and clauses and this is
done by using conjunctions.

THE CONJUNCTION IN A SENTENCE

A conjunction is a function word that serves as a connector or a linking word to join words,
phrases, or clauses. Coordinating conjunctions are used for compound sentences and
subordinating conjunctions are used to form complex sentences. One way to make sure
you master the use of conjunctions is to see how accomplish writers use them in real
texts. Cohesion and coherence in texts, that is, if someone says ‘this writing flows well’,
it’s because the conjunctions have been used appropriately and effectively.

There is a long list of conjunctions that can be used to create complexity in sentences.
Below is a list of the conjunctions, grouped according to the function they perform in a
sentence. Most of these will be familiar to you, but the important thing is that you
familiarize yourself with their function.
Time: after, after, which, and, as along as, as soon as, at which, before, once, since, the
moment, then, till, until, when, whenever, whereupon, while
Result: and, and so, else, or else, otherwise, so, so that
Contrast, Concession, Alternatives: although, apart from, but, despite, even if, even
though, except that, in spite of, or, much as, nor, nor that, though, whereas, while, whilst,
yet.
Reason: as, as a result of, because, because of, considering, due to, for, given that, in
case, in view of the fact that, that, just in case, on account of, seeing that/that, since.
Purpose: in case, in order that, in order to, so, so as to, so that, to
Conditional: as long as, even if, if, on condition that, provided (that), providing (that), so
long as, unless, whether… or
Manner: as, as if, as though, in a way, just as, like, much as, the way. Addition: and, as
well as, besides, besides which, in addition to. Giving examples: for instance, for
example, in particular.

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SENTENCES IN TEXTS
The usage of these conjunctions will not be illustrated to you through created sentences,
but we will invite you to study each of the texts and extract the conjunction, stating the
function of each.

ACTIVITY 5.6
Passage 2

Historical Perspective

In the mountains above Barberton scientists have found traces of “Stromatolites”, the
remnants of blue-green algae formed 3 500 million years ago when oxygen was added to
the earth’s atmosphere in significant quantities to create the first evolutionary step towards
life forms.
Throughout the Mpumalanga hills and mountains exist hundreds of examples of San
(bushman) art. This art serves as a window looking into the lives of the San hunters and
gatherers who inhabited the area centuries before the arrival of the Nguni people from the
north.
The region abounded with all types of game, plants, birds and insects. The rivers ran full,
providing for the needs of these early inhabitants. Later came the first of the Nguni people
who arrived with herds of cattle, and mined red ochre in the hills south of Malelane. Early
smelters, which pre-date the main Nguni influx, have been excavated, indicating that the
use of iron and copper was well advanced during these years. Similarly, early pottery
fragments and sculptural artifacts unearthed in the hills on the Long Tom Pass, notably
the “Lydenburg heads” have been described as a major art find. \
Passage 3
My hometown and my college town have several things in common. First, both are small
rural communities. For example, my hometown, Gridlock, has a population of only about
10,000 people. Similarly, my college town, Subnormal, consists of about 11,000 local
residents. This population swells to 15,000 people when the college students are
attending classes. A second way in which these two towns are similar is that they are
both located in rural areas. Gridlock is surrounded by many acres of farmland which is
devoted mainly to growing corn and soybeans. In the same way, Subnormal lies in the
centre of farmland which is used to raise hogs and cattle. Thirdly, these towns are similar
in that they contain college campuses. Gridlock, for example, is home to Neutron College,
which is famous for its Agricultural Economics program as well as for its annual Corn-
Watching Festival. Likewise, the town of Subnormal boasts the beautiful campus of
Quark College, which is well known for its Agricultural Engineering department and also
for its yearly Hog-Calling Contest.
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/compcont.html

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REFLECTION

What can you say about the flow of each of these passages based on the way the
conjunctions have been used?

CONCLUSION
This unit has given you enough working tools to handle words, and group of words as they
appear in texts. The next unit will show further how meaning is made using these tools
and how meaning can shift depending on the context of a situation. So whilst we
acknowledge that words are formed in particular ways and so are sentences, the
productivity of the English language makes it possible to generate many meanings from
the standard meanings that we know. The ability to recognise sentence types, use a
variety of them, can improve our written product.
In the second year of this course we will do more advanced work on composition where
your knowledge of the structures we have covered here will be useful.

Additional practice on complex sentences. Try this exercise on complex sentences.

Complete each of the following sentences with the most appropriate option from the ones
provided.
Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through these activities.
(1) She had blonde hair when she was a child, but ______ she got older and older, her
hair went darker and darker.
(a) when (b) after (c) while (d) as
(2) Will you go to the history museum tomorrow? Sure I will, ____________ it doesn’t
rain heavily.
(a) even if (b) in case (c) as soon as (d) as long as

(3) When the Internet was created in 1969, only a few people knew about it. That’s
______it came into existence as a secret US government project.
(a) why (b) that (c) because (d) when
(4) ______ is known to us all is that the old scientist, for ______ life was hard in the
past, still works very hard in his eighties.
(a) As; whose (b) What; whom (c) It; whose (d) As; whom
(5) Miss Green took up the story at the point ______ the thief had just made off with
the jewels.
(a) when (b) which (c) in which (d) where
(6) It was not until dark ______ he found ______ he thought was the correct way to
solve the problem.

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(a) that; what (b) when; what (c) then; that (d) what; that

(7) Native Americans from the south-eastern part of ______is now the United States
believed that the universe in which they lived was made up of three worlds.

(a) where (b) what (c) that d) which

(8) ______ life pace continues to speed up, we are quickly losing the art of
enjoyment.
(a) With (b) As (c) When (d) While
(9) I had not believed in falling in love with somebody at first sight ______ I met
David on Valentine’s Day three years ago.
(a) where (b) after (c) when (d) before
(10) I really don’t know ______ I had my money stolen.
(a) where it was that (b) it was where (c) that it was when (d) when was it that
Syntax Glossary
Looking at the way the terminology has been used. Refer to your linguistic dictionary
resources, find the meaning of each of the words in the list below.
Lexical Subject Predicate Complement Modifier Determiner Nominal Verbal
Embedded Auxiliary verb Inflection Tense
Person Mood Voice Domain Text

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 References
Bauer, L. (1988) Introducing Linguistic Morpholog y, Edinbugh University Press. Great
Britain
Ronald, C., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K. & Swift, N. (1997) Working with Texts: A
Core Introduction to Language Analysis, London & New York: Routledge.
Delahnty, G.P. & Garvey, J.J. (1994) Language, Grammar and Communication. A course
for teachers of English. International editions, Mr Graw-Hill, Inc.
Frank, M. (1993) Modern English. A Practical Reference Guide, Prentice Hall
Horne, F. & Heinemann, G. (2006) English in Perspective, Cape Town: Oxford University,
Press.
Huddleston, R. (1984) Introduction to the Grammar of English, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Payne, T.E. (2006) Exploring Language Structure: A Student’s Guide, Cambridge
University Press. United Kingdom.
Swan, M. (2009) Practical English Usage, (4th ed.) Oxford University Press. Print. (353-4)
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1972) A Grammar of Contemporary
English, London: Longman.
Thomson, A.J. & Martinet, A.V. (1986) A Practical English Grammar, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Yule, G. (2004) The Study of language, (2nd ed.) Cambridge University Press. United

Kingdom.

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UNIT 6: SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

• define semantics and pragmatics
• differentiate between linguistic meaning and speakers meaning
• distinguish between denotation and connotation
• recognise different types of meaning
• combine words, sentences, phrases and clauses to form meaning
• define how and what meanings are expressed
• discuss the importance of context, as well as how it shapes and affects meaning
• analyse the relevance of words in speech, reading, writing, texts, and the world.

INTRODUCTION
In this unit we introduce the concepts of semantics and pragmatics, as well as their
importance in everyday communication. We are going to look at the meaning of individual
words in a language; that is, how words convey meaning, what kinds of meaning are
expressed by certain words, what the role of words in sentence construction is. And how
words combine to create meaningful communication. In addition, we explore what
knowledge we need in order to interpret words in context. Words are important building
blocks of any language because through their use we gradually acquire knowledge of
language and learn what particular words actually mean. That said, communicating is a
dynamic process, with an intended purpose. When we communicate we often use things
other than verbal language to convey meaning. Thus, this unit will also explore the
relationship between non-verbal signs, symbols, physical objects and meaning and how all
these factors contribute to, shape and affect meaning.
In this unit, we shall start by defining the terms semantics and pragmatics, then turn to the
relationship between words, time, space, symbols, sings and meaning; and finally look at
the different kinds of meaning including denotation, connotation, literal and metaphoric
meaning.

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WHAT IS MEANING?
Semantics and pragmatics are closely related concepts. Semantics is the study of how
meaning is expressed by elements of any language, whereas pragmatics refers to the
study of language or meaning in specific communicative contexts. These elements include
meaning of words, phrases, sentences, or texts. The study of semantics is important
because it enables us to understand how language users construct meaning, how they
acquire a sense of meaning as speakers, listeners, readers and writers. In addition, how
the meaning of certain words or phrases change over time? In other words, an analysis of
meaning involves investigating the relationship between language and everything we use
language to talk about in everyday interactions. An understanding of how we use
language to talk about the world, how we use language in different social situations, how
language changes, how varieties of English influence and affect meaning are fundamental
to appreciating how communication works. The study of semantics; therefore, broadly
refers to how meaning is constructed, interpreted, illustrated, symbolised, imagined,
concealed or disguised. However, semantics is not limited to meaning in written or
oral/verbal language only but includes things like facial expressions, body language,
gestures as well as cultural signs, symbols and objects – all of which contribute to our
understanding of the meaning of particular situations, events and social behaviour.

Word order and meaning

Now let us look at the following examples that illustrate how words combine into
meaningful sentences, and what meaning is being communicated.
• Dog bites man
• Man bites dog
Here we notice that the same words – man, dog, bites – have been used in these
sentences, but the meaning conveyed is not the same. This shows us that the manner in
which a sentence is structured or how words are put together lead to a different meaning
of a whole sentence. In both sentences, the word order indicates how man and dog are
related to the verb bites. The subject in first sentence is the dog and the object is the man,
whereas in the second sentence the order is changed with the man becoming the subject
and the dog as object. This clearly illustrates that how words are sequenced in a sentence
affect and influence meaning. Hence form (word order in this case) and meaning in
language are interrelated.
For a detailed discussion about how words are made up and how words are combined
form larger units such as sentences and phrases refer to the previous Unit 3 on Words
and Sentences.
ACTIVITY 6.1
Study the pairs of sentences below, and answer these questions: What do these
sentences mean? What is the difference between these sentences? How does the word
order change the meaning within each sentence?
• This is my daughter’s picture.
My daughter’s picture this is.

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• My father painted.
Painted my father.
• The boy kicked the ball.
The ball kicked the boy.
• The film was based on the novel.
The novel was based on the film.
• The school bell rings at midday.
At midday the school bell rings.

Your E-Tutor and Face to face Tutor will take you through these activities.
Time, space and meaning
As you will learn in Unit 5 on Language Varieties, language changes depending on the
circumstances in which it is being used; when it is used, as well as the purpose for its use.
The meaning of some words, sentences and phrases may have changed and evolved
over time to such an extent that it has become acceptable to use these to express certain
ideas, views, meaning. Note that the concept of time, as it is used in this context, refers to
historical changes that have taken place in language, and their degree of influence. Think
of the difference between old/traditional English and modern English, for example.
Consider the word ‘meat’ in the following sentences. What does the word mean in
each sentences?
• Upon what meat doth this our Caeser feed? (anything nourishing that we eat or drink to
sustain life, provide energy and promote growth)
• It is unhealthy to eat red meat every day. (animal flesh)
The two sentences show how the meaning of the word ‘meat’ has changed over time. In
Shakespeare’s time the word meat referred to food in general; and in recent times the
same word is used specifically to mean animal flesh. What is important here is that the
word ‘meat’ which was wide-ranging to include food substances such as bread, drinks and
fish in the past, is now used to mean animal flesh. This demonstrates to us that time is a
crucial factor affecting the meaning required in communication.
Like time, geographical space also contributes to how the meaning of certain words
becomes understood. The relationship between the actual space in which words are used,
the purposes for which they are used, and the meaning associated with these words is an
important one. Put differently, space influences meaning and in turn, meaning is shaped
by space. Consider the use of the word ‘cool’ in this exchange below for example.
• Speaker A: How are you?
Speaker B: I am cool.
• Speaker C: I’m gonna go down to the beach. You wanna come.

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In order to realise that speaker B uses the word ‘cool’ to mean that they are ‘fine’ or ‘well’;
and that speaker C means that ‘I am going to go down to the beach. Do you want to
come?’ you will need to know something about the space. Such background knowledge
will enable you to arrive at an understanding of what the speakers mean, how they relate
to one another, and whether the conversation interaction is formal or informal. Other
examples include the word ‘robot’ which is used in the South African context to refer to a
set of traffic lights; or ‘braai’ which in the American and British context are called
‘barbeque’. As you will read in Unit 5, language varieties, geographical space and
meaning are interrelated. The manner in which we express ourselves, the choices of
words we use often make us recognisable to other speakers of English from other parts of
the world.

ACTIVITY 6.2
(1) Consider the way in which meaning is conveyed in these sentences: What is the
difference between these sentences? How do you think time, and space, has affected the
meaning in each sentence?
• See you shortly.
See you in a bit.
• Pass me that salt.
Give me that salt.
• They are watching news on the television.
They are watching news on the telly.
• How are you?
Howzit?
• She said she was okay.
She said she was OK.
(2) Write down 5 English words, from any other parts of the world, and describe their
meaning in their particular geographical contexts.
Non-Verbal Language (or Paralinguistic Tools) and Meaning
Like individual words, non-verbal language (also referred to as paralinguistic signs), play
an important role in communication. When we speak we often use non-verbal signs such
as body language, facial expressions and gestures in order to express our intended
message. The use of non-verbal signs enables us to build a picture in our mind of what is
being communicated and to understand the meaning of a particular thing, situation, or
concept. For example, after spending a Sunday afternoon with your colleagues, you may
wish to wave goodbye to them as a sign to show that it is time to leave.
ACTIVITY 6.3
Read the conversation and comment on the use of non-verbal communication.
Mother: Sipho did you write your homework? Sipho: Not yet mother.

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Mother: Switch off that television! Now!

(Sipho leaves the room and bangs the door hard).
Why did Sipho bang the door? How and what is the meaning implied in the last sentence
by the mother?
Signs/Symbols and Meaning
The relationship between signs/symbols and meaning is an important one. We come
across different kinds of signs or symbols everyday and they all refer to different things. A
sign or symbol is something which is used to represent another thing – it might be a
picture, a letter, or an object. For example, when we see traffic signs – no entry and stop
signs; a toilet and no smoking signs, we immediately know what is required of us,
understand how we should behave in certain circumstances; and in some cases these
signs help us to locate specific places or things. Signs/symbols in themselves could be
rendered meaningless, but it is when these are used in context and for a particular
purpose that we are able to decode what it is that they represent, denote, or
communicate.
Signs and Symbols

Stop No entry

Toilet No Smoking

South African Flag Coat of Arms of South Africa

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ACTIVITY 6.4
Look at the following signs/symbols and write down what each of these mean.

WORDS IN CONTEXT

As mentioned earlier, the studies in semantics and pragmatics are so interwoven that
drawing clear and distinct separation between the two is difficult because of the blurring of
the boundaries. Put differently, in order to understand the speaker’s meaning, you will
need to know something about the context or to have input of contextual information, and
vice versa. The study of ‘meaning in use’, ‘meaning in interaction’ (Mullany and Stockwell,
2010) or ‘meaning in the world’ – known as pragmatics – suggests that treating words,
sentences and phrases in isolation from their context of use may render meaning
complex, ambiguous and vague. In summary, meaning and its surrounding context are
firmly linked; thus through pragmatics we are able to arrive at an understanding of what a
speaker means by uttering certain words and expressions.

For example, suppose you wish to understand the following sentence “The boy I
mentioned before is dangerous” you will need to know something already to figure out
what the speaker is trying to convey to you. First, you need prior knowledge of who the
boy is (pragmatics). Second, understand the linguistic meaning of this sentence. Finally,
with all this background information, you will be in a position to realise that perhaps the
speaker is advising you to be careful of this boy (semantics).

In addition, let us consider the word ‘goal’ in the sentences below and reflect on the
extent which the context helps us work out the meaning.
• My goal this year is to complete my degree programme.
• Scoring a goal in soccer is not as simple as it looks.

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In the first sentence, the word ‘goal’ occurs in a context relating to personal ambition,
desire and aspiration (it is used figuratively or metaphorically) whereas in the second
sentence it has to do with performance in sports, in particular soccer (it is used more
literally). In the sentences above, it is clear that the meaning of the word ‘goal’ takes on a
different meaning depending on context. This demonstrates that words can never be
explained in isolation because the context forms an essential part of understanding how
we read, interpret, and make sense of language in our daily interactions.
Ambiguity
This section builds on the previous one where we looked at meaning and context. This
section discusses the complex relationship between words and meaning. As we have
illustrated earlier, the same word can change its meaning depending on how and for what
purposes it is used (i.e. context). All of this can influence meaning and lead to ambiguity.
What is ambiguity?
Ambiguity refers to a situation where a word, phrase, sentence is open to more than one
possible interpretation. In this way, the meaning becomes unclear and vague. However,
context may play an important role where ambiguity exists in that it helps us to form
specific and intended interpretation. In other words, the same expression, statement or
use of language may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in another. It is
important to realise that there are many kinds of ambiguity which includes interpretations
of individual words (i.e. lexical ambiguity); sentences, phrases, newspaper headlines, or
idiomatic expressions (i.e. semantic ambiguity). Lexical ambiguity is when the use of small
language unit like a specific word can be interpreted differently, and semantic ambiguity is
when it is not possible to decide on the intended meaning of a sentence, phrase etc.
For example, the following sentences are ambiguous:
• The department of education has advertised positions for teachers of English, isiZulu
and Afrikaans.
Ambiguity: Has the department advertised positions for teachers who can each teach
one of these languages or all three languages?
• Peter gave her cat food.

Ambiguity: Did Peter give her cat some food or did Peter give cat food to her?
• The man hit the old lady with an umbrella.
Ambiguity: Did the man use an umbrella to hit the old lady or did the man hit the
old lady who is carrying an umbrella?
In all the instances above, the context does not clearly indicate the intended meaning
hence these sentences remain ambiguous. In addition, ambiguity can be used
intentionally to create meaning and produce a certain effect. This is often the case in texts
such as newspaper articles where a writer can deliberately use ambiguous language,
phrases or headlines in order to produce a certain effect from the readers, which in most
cases is used to lure them into buying and reading the paper.

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Let us look at this phrase as a possible newspaper headline ‘Tourism is getting out of
control’. Notice how this headline can have different interpretations. It could be
suggesting that the increase in the number of tourists has had a negative impact on the
environment and as such it is not good; or that there is a necessity for a set of rules and
regulations about the behaviour expected of tourists; or that restrictions could put be in
place to manage the number of tourists allowed to visit. Because this headline lends itself
to more than one interpretation; its meaning is ambiguous and imprecise.
The above examples looked at semantic ambiguity. The following section is concerned
with lexical ambiguity. The word ‘produce’ on its own potentially has different meanings,
unless it is used in a context which will help us to identify which meaning is intended. It
could mean crops and food, or to manufacture something. ‘Assemble’ can mean to fit
together pieces of a puzzle, to build and create a structure, or to come together at a
meeting. ‘Erection’ could be referring to a building or sexual arousal. It is clear that all
these words on their own have at least two or three potential meanings hence they are
ambiguous. Such words are called homographs. (see 2.1 of Unit 3)
Homophones
Homophones are words that have the same sound (pronunciation) but different meaning
and usually spelling. For example, the nouns ‘hour’ and ‘our’ are pronounced the same
but the meaning and spelling are different. If we look at the noun ‘rose’ (flower) and verb
‘rose’ (past tense of ‘rise’) we notice that although they have the same sound and
spelling, the meaning is different. Another example is the noun ‘bear’ (the animal),
‘bear’ (to tolerate), ‘bare’ (naked) all of which are pronounced the same but differ in
meaning, and in spelling as in the case of the word ‘bare’.
Synonyms
If different words have similar meaning, they are called synonyms. Different words can be
used alternatively to mean the same thing or refer to the same idea. For example, instead
of using the word ‘certain’ we can use the word ‘definite’, ‘determined’, ‘obvious’,
‘clear’. In addition, instead of the word ‘questionable’ you can use the synonyms
‘dubious’, ‘arguable’, ‘debatable’, ‘ambivalent’ all of which can be used to mean
exactly the same thing.

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ACTIVITY 6.5
(1) Analyze the exchange between the two speakers in terms of what you have read in
this section of the unit. Do you understand what the conversation is all about? What kind
of knowledge do you need in order to understand this conversation?

Speaker A: I think we could visit her tomorrow. Do you agree?

Speaker B: Um … I’m not sure. Speaker A: Isn’t she brave?
Speaker B: What a good business woman! She has a lot of wisdom and is brave indeed.
(2) Read the sentences below and describe the difference in meaning of the highlighted
words in bold. In addition, explain how the context changes the meaning in each of the
following pairs of sentences.
• The machine is not in action now.
It is urgent that you take action in that matter.
• John was awarded his degree in communication at the University of South
Africa.
Quality is perceived as a degree of excellence.
• John made a conscious decision to smoke.
He remained conscious until the ambulance arrived.
KINDS OF MEANING
Denotation
Denotative meaning is the core or central meaning of a word or lexeme. It is therefore
understood as the dictionary definition of a word; sometimes known as the cognitive or
referential meaning. Hence denotative meaning of words is considered objective, neutral
or without any emotional associations. For example, the word ‘chair’ in English is used to
refer to a particular piece of furniture in the real world; and the word ‘computer’ would be
understood to describe a specific type of electronic device. However, denotation is related
to connotation, which leads to semantic change. This means that some words have more
than just their denotative or dictionary meaning. Depending on how and for what purposes
these words are used, these words could be described as connotative. Consider the
dictionary meaning of the word ‘pig’ which is ‘an omnivorous hoofed bristly mammal’.
Although this definition here is fairly neutral and simply refers to nothing other than a type
of an animal, the connotation of the same word becomes different. The connotative
meaning of ‘pig’ has negative implications and is associated with greed, dirt, or an
annoying person, for example. For a further discussion on this topic of denotative meaning
refer to Unit 6 on Language in Action.

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Connotation
Unlike denotation discussed previously, connotation is connected to the state of mind and
culture, thus is can be described as overtones, personal or emotional associations
aroused by words. In other words, connotative meaning refers to the associations or feel
which a word has rather than what it explicitly denotes (i.e. denotative meaning). Hence
two words with the same definition may actually have different connotations. For example,
the word ‘blue’ could be interpreted to mean a colour or an emotion, as in blue or sad
music – ‘My mother bought a blue car’ and ‘He plays blues music’. With time, some of
these associations become widespread and common usage. Consider the word
‘virtual’, (which in the past denotatively meant certainty, absolute, definite; for example,
‘I am virtually part of the family’ ) has changed over the years and is now commonly used
to imply ‘artificial, changeable, fluctuating , flexible’ particularly in the realm of cyberspace,
as in
‘Virtual classrooms at the university of South Africa are designed to help students with
their learning’.
ACTIVITY 6.6
Describe the denotative and connotative meaning of the words in this table. What are the
similarities and differences of the words?

Word Denotative Connotative

Home
Dog
Dark
Rough
Witch
Fresh
Cold

Literal meaning
This is when the speaker says a sentence, uses words, or phrases to mean exactly and
literally what he says. Like all types of meaning, literal meaning is related to, and often
shaped by the context in which an utterance, a word, sentence, or phrase is used. In other
words, the context enables the audience to gain a better understanding of the intended
meaning of an idea, activity, event etc.
Example: In an air-conditioned seminar room the visiting professor commented: “It is cold
in here”.
Considering the circumstances under which the statement was uttered, the speaker’s
intention is to comment about the temperature in the room and to convey that the room is
cold due to the air-conditioning.

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Metaphoric meaning
Study this short statement. After the visiting professor’s exciting lecture on Shakespeare’s
play on Romeo and Juliet, and a series of unanswered questions he had posed to the
students, she remarked: “It is cold in here”.
Unlike the previous example, the meaning of ‘cold’ here does not refer to temperature.
The professor’s uses this word to allude to the students’ lack of participation, lack of
interest or passivity with regard to the subject matter.
CONCLUSION
In this unit we have looked at the relationship between words and meaning, and the extent
to which context helps us to form an opinion about something, to interpret a situation and
to understand the intended meaning. We have also discussed the difference between
lexical and semantic meaning, as well as different kinds of meaning such an ambiguity,
synonyms, homophones to illustrate that the manner in which words, phrases and
sentences are used affects and influences the meaning. In the next unit, we shall look at
English language varieties as well as factors that have contributed to the development as
an international language.
Glossary
Here is a list of some important terms used in this unit. Using your own words, define and
describe these terms.
Semantics Pragmatics Lexeme Denotation
Connotation Referential Language Varieties Homophone Synonym
Lexical Ambiguity
Semantic Ambiguity
References
Mullany, L. & Stockwell, P. (2010) Introducing English Language, A Resource Book for
Students. London and New York: Routledge.

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UNIT 7: INTRODUCTION TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this Unit, you should be able to:

 define the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘text’;

 identify features of language in a text or discourse piece;
 discuss the intended audience and the purpose of a text and discourse;
 discuss how texts reflect and relate to the power structures that exist in society;
 apply this knowledge in analysing particular texts.

INTRODUCTION

This Unit draws on and refers to areas of language study discussed in other Units. But it
goes a step further; inviting you to see how language features operate in practice. This is
why this it is headed ‘Introduction to Discourse Analysis’.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT

As we have stated, no piece of language, or text, exists in isolation. It always occurs in a

particular context. Many factors within this context – historical, social, situational and cultural,
amongst others – will affect the kind of language used. The purpose of the text, and its
audience, will also influence the writer or speaker’s choice of language. Considering all these
factors, and trying to establish how and why they shape the language of texts, is known as
discourse analysis.

What do we mean by the term ‘discourse’?

The term ‘discourse’ has different meanings according to which field or school uses the term.
In the field of Linguistics, discourse refers to a stretch of language, spoken or written. For our
purposes, this definition may be expanded to include an indefinite number of texts, as well as
social practices. Texts contribute to the construction of broader social patterns and beliefs.
Discourse includes non-verbal elements, such as visual material in the larger social context.
Discourse is broader than text. It links the linguistic to the social.

Examples of texts which contribute to discourse are textbooks, novels, plays, poems,
lectures, political speeches, news reports (in print or on radio and television),
advertisements, cartoons, posters, leaflets or pamphlets, billboards, films, television
‘soapies’, pop songs, e-mails and cellphone text messages. (Think for a moment which of
these examples use language only, and whether this language is spoken or written; and
which use language in combination with visual or aural elements.)

There are tremendous variations in the kind of language used in different texts, depending
on the type of discourse it is. Some texts, for example, have a practical function. These
would include such things as timetables, television programme schedules, and instructions
that come with electrical appliances or which appear on medicine bottles. The purpose of
such texts is to instruct and inform. Accordingly, the language used would be factual, plain,
clear, literal in style, and objective in tone.

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What do we mean by the adjective ‘literal’?

The word ‘literal’ when used to refer to a word indicates its neutral, denotative meaning: how
it would be defined in the dictionary. For example, the literal meaning of the word ‘mother’ is
‘a female parent of a child or children’. No connotations (attitudes or emotional associations)
are attached to this definition. ‘Literal’ language is distinct from ‘emotive’ language. An
emotive description of the concept ‘mother’ would be imbued with personal feelings, negative
and positive, towards a particular individual. (You may like to consider these points in
relation to Serote’s poem ‘Alexandra’ in the Literature module. The speaker in the poem
compares the township to a mother figure with all the conflicting feelings this metaphor
implies.) ‘Literal’ meaning is also understood as the opposite of ‘figurative’ or ‘metaphorical’
meaning, which are rich in emotional associations. (see also unit 4)

What do we mean by ‘objective’?

‘Objective’ language refers to language that is based on facts, does not have any obvious
bias or is not influenced by personal feelings. Its opposite is ‘subjective’, which indicates
language that is predominantly personal, and is based on an individual’s ideas and feelings,
not facts. ‘Subjective’ language is often characterised by the frequent use of the personal
pronoun ‘I’.

What do we mean by ‘tone’?

‘Tone’ is difficult to define. When applied to a text it refers to the feeling or atmosphere of
language: for example, is a speech or a piece of writing cold and distant, or warm and
emotional? Is it formal, or chatty and informal? A text which deals with a crime scene could
be described as having an ‘eerie’ or ‘chilling’ tone. Tone is created by the writer or speaker’s
choice of words and how these words are arranged. With experience and exposure to
different texts, you will become more sensitive to tone, and better able to pinpoint and
describe it.

Literary texts, such as poems, plays or novels, have an altogether different purpose. Literary
writers aim to express personal perspectives in original ways, enriching us, their readers,
with the imaginative worlds they create, engaging our emotions and extending our
understanding of human nature and the world. The best writers are highly skilled in the craft
of language use, and use different creative devices to enhance meaning and effect. These
are the kind of texts you will be studying in the Literature module ENG1501.

What do we mean by the adjective ‘literary’?

The word ‘literary’ relates to literature; texts written by novelists, poets and/or dramatists.
Literary texts may be distinguished from texts such as telephone directories or recipes which
have a functional purpose.

Other texts, such as advertisements and political speeches, aim to persuade the audience to
behave in a certain way – to buy a certain product, or support a particular point of view. Such
texts are likely to use emotive language to sway the reader. Emotive language is also found
in letters to the editor, for example, where citizens write to the newspaper to express their
opinions and feelings about matters which concern them.

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What do we mean by ‘emotive’ language?

Emotive language expresses the emotions of the writer or speaker, and seeks to evoke an
emotional response in the reader or audience. Careful consideration of the words chosen will
help us to identify the emotions expressed or evoked.

Newspaper reports purport to be factual and objective, and to give the reading public
accurate information about current events, but close examination of the language used often
reveals bias. Journalists choose which facts to report, and how to report them. Bias may
often be demonstrated when we compare reports from different newspapers about the same
event. The effect of such reports may vary greatly. Certain facts may be played down or
suppressed in some reports, while other facts may be foregrounded, or given extra
emphasis. The choice of words to describe people and events will colour the reports in
particular ways.

ACTIVITY 7.1

Can you think of events that would be reported in different ways? A report on a strike or
protest march, for example, will be described in a way that reveals the reporter’s point of
view and attitude. If the point of view is conservative, the event will most probably be
described in a negative way, and the tone will be disapproving. If any acts of violence or
vandalism occurred, these will be foregrounded. A reporter from a more progressive
newspaper will have a different point of view and probably emphasise the positive aspects of
the protest action.

These points illustrate that media texts form part of the power systems that operate in
society. By representing situations and events in certain ways, they influence public opinion
and help to construct social knowledge and beliefs. Power structures may be reinforced or
undermined by the attitudes and values implicit in texts and discourse.

What do we mean by ‘power systems’ and ‘power structures’ in society?

Inequality is an unfortunate reality in all societies of the world. Societies are organised
hierarchically into social groups, or classes, according to factors such as financial status,
family background, ethnicity, political allegiance, gender, educational level and occupation,
amongst others. Status is not fixed or stable. Because society is dynamic, the status of
individuals and groups may change over time. The status of an individual will vary,
depending on the social groups s/he belongs to. Some groups and people enjoy power,
while others are disempowered. People’s relationships with one another are based on this
uneven distribution of power which makes them occupy different levels in society. But here
we are talking sociology. What, you may ask, does it have to do with language?

By contributing to discourse, texts reflect and shape the power structures in society.
Language is part of a process of construction. Embedded in texts are values and
assumptions which contribute to the creation of our beliefs. We grow up with these and may
come to regard them as normal and right. By examining the language of texts, we can gain
insight into the fact that social hierarchies are artificially created and not natural and
inevitable. The order of things may be changed, and language can play a huge part in
bringing this about.

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ACTIVITY 7.2

You may like to think about some historical examples of discursive change, a hundred
years ago, women were not allowed to vote, nor could they hold political office. Twenty
five years ago in South Africa, blacks did not have the vote. Many people regarded these
situations as natural and right. They resulted from ideologies that prevailed at the time.
(Ideologies are systems of belief used to explain, justify, interpret and evaluate people and
their activities.) Yet the fact that these things have changed − women and blacks have
gained power − show that they were not natural. People have now become used to the
idea of seeing women and blacks in positions of power. Alternative ideologies have
replaced the old ones.

The examination of the type of text that a piece of language is, is part of a branch of
academic study known as Genre Studies. Our study of language is located within Genre
Studies, and the approach we take is discourse analysis. Discourse analysis is
concerned with the close and detailed reading of selected pieces of writing, and a
consideration of how these are linked to broader social patterns.

Discourse analysis entails the study of language on the micro-level. ‘The morpheme
‘micro’ refers to examining things on a small scale, and requires that you recognise and
understand the basic ‘nut and bolts’ of language. For example, you need to be able to
recognise what word class a word belongs to: is it a verb, a noun or an adjective? Does a
word function as the subject or object in a sentence? Is a verb in the active or passive
form, and is it in the indicative, interrogative or imperative mood? What is the effect of a
comma, or an exclamation mark?

But discourse analysis also entails the study of language on the macro-level. ‘Macro’
involves considering texts on a larger scale: how they are connected to their context, and
what broader effects they have in society. Such considerations take extra-linguistic
factors into account: aspects that lie outside the text itself. Extra-linguistic factors refer to
what is going on around a text: its socio-historical, discursive context. When we read
Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a Dream’ speech, for example, we do so with an
awareness that he was talking from the perspective of Civil Rights, a powerful movement
in the 1960s which aimed to break down racial segregation in the United States. This
background is not explicitly declared in the ‘I have a Dream’ speech itself, and so is ‘extra-
linguistic’, but background knowledge of the context would add greatly to an
understanding and appreciation of the speech’s historical and political significance.

ANALYSING AUTHENTIC TEXTS IN THE REAL WORLD

The best way of understanding discourse analysis is probably by means of practical

demonstration. Below we have reproduced a selection of texts, and after each text, we
ask you a few questions to get you thinking and to alert you to its particular language
features, before we provide commentary. We do not want this Unit to become a passive
reading exercise, but want you to be actively engaged in the critical examination of
language and its effects in different kinds of texts.

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ACTIVITY 7.3

TEXT 1

Before first use:

• Open the lid of the kettle by pushing the lid latch backwards and then pulling the lid
upwards.
• Pour the water in through the open lid of the kettle.
• Fill the kettle to the ‘max’ level. Boil. Discard the water. Repeat this twice.

Make sure that the lid is closed properly before boiling by gently clicking the lid
back in place.
• Always ensure that your kettle is placed on a flat surface.
Where would you expect to find this text?
Why do you think it is written in point form?

Look at the length of the sentences. What do you notice? Are they all full sentences? Look
at the verbs. What is their form?

Consider the lexis (vocabulary) used. Are the nouns concrete or abstract? Is any
figurative language used?

Look at the word ‘max’ in point three. What is different about this word?

In point one, the words ‘open the lid’ appear. In point two, we find the words ‘the open lid’.

The same three words, ‘open’, ‘the’ and ‘lid’ are used in both cases, but are placed in a
different order. How does this change in order affect meaning? Does the word ‘open’, as it
is used in both sentences, belong to the same word class (noun, verb, adjective, adverb,
etc.)?

Feedback to Activity 7.3

Before reading on, think about the following questions and try to answer them. You may
want to jot down your ideas.

Discussion of questions

Where would you expect to find this text?

The source of this text is a leaflet that came with a new kettle. Its purpose is to instruct
buyers in the use of the new appliance they have bought.

Why do you think it is written in point form?

It is written in point form, setting out the steps, one at a time, to make it as easy as
possible to understand. The steps are sequential, making it clear what order to follow.

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Look at the length of the sentences. What do you notice? Are they all full sentences?
What do we mean by a ‘full sentence’?

In this text, sentences are mostly short and simple, again for the purposes of clarity.

The most commonly used sentence structure for full sentences in English is: Subject,
Verb and Object (SVO), for example:

S V O
The woman made the tea.

However, this pattern is subject to variation.

Consider the structure of: ‘Discard the water’. Label the sentence parts. Is it a full
sentence?

Can you find the elements of Subject, Verb and Object?

V O

Discard the water.

Analysis reveals that the Subject is missing. This is linked to the fact that the verb ‘discard’
is in the imperative form, i.e. the form used to give orders or instructions. The verbs ‘open’,
‘pour’, ‘fill’, ‘boil’, etc., in this text are all in the imperative voice. This construction erases
the subject ‘you’, which is nevertheless understood: ‘(You) discard the water’. The latter is
a full sentence, despite the omission of the subject.

The element that is essential to a sentence is the verb. A full sentence requires a finite
(complete) verb. Subject and object may be omitted, but there has to be a verb. So can
we regard the single word ‘Boil’ as a sentence? Yes, we can. It is possible to have a
sentence consisting of one word only, provided that word is a finite verb, which ‘boil’ is.
‘(You) boil (the water)’ is what is understood, even though the subject and object are not
stated. (See unit 3.)

Consider the lexis (vocabulary) used. Are the nouns concrete or abstract? Is any figurative
language used?

The lexis (vocabulary) used in this text consists of concrete words, all common nouns
(‘kettle’, lid’, ‘water’). The adjectives ‘open’ and ‘flat’ are literal in meaning, and the adverbs
‘backwards’ and ‘upwards’ are directional, or time-related (‘always’). No figurative
language is used.

Look at the word ‘max’ in point three. What is different about this word?

The word ‘max’ is an abbreviation of ‘maximum’, an example of a process termed

‘clipping’, because the end of the word is ‘clipped’ off. This is one of the word-formation
processes mentioned in Unit 3, Morphology. Other examples of clipping are ‘exam’ for
‘examination’; ‘supp’ for ‘supplementary’ and ‘op’ for ‘operation’. Can you think of any
examples of your own?

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In point one, the words ‘open the lid’ appear. In point two, we find the words ‘the open lid’.

The same three words, ‘open’, ‘the’ and ‘lid’ are used in both cases, but are placed in a
different order. How does this change in order affect meaning? Does the word ‘open’, as it
is used in both sentences, belong to the same word class (noun, verb, adjective, adverb,
etc.)?

The different arrangement of the three words ‘open’, ‘the’ and ‘lid’, also relate to syntax. In
‘open the lid’, ‘open’ is used as a verb, and ‘lid’ is its object. ‘Open’ in ‘the open lid’, on the
other hand, serves as an adjective, describing ‘lid’. This illustrates how the word class of a
word is determined by its function in a sentence. The same word can belong to more than
one word class, depending on how it is used. It is impossible to know to which word class
a word belongs if we do not see the word in context and so understand its function in a
sentence. Consider the word ‘butter’ in the following sentences:

The butter melted in the heat.

Butter the pan well before baking.

In the first sentence, ‘butter’ is a noun, while in the second, it is a verb.

To sum up, the language in this text aims to be as simple and clear as possible.
Sentences are kept short. Point form is used. The style is plain and literal, the tone factual
and unemotional. To avoid ambiguity and confusion, no figurative language is used. All
these language features are in keeping with its purpose of instructing. The form is
determined by the function and purpose.

ACTIVITY 7.4

TEXT 2

More than 90% of people with eating disorders are teenagers and young women. One of
the most serious eating disorders is anorexia, which causes major health problems.

Anorexia is an eating disorder where there is extreme weight loss. People become
anorexic by refusing to eat enough, and by over exercising. It usually begins in girls
between the ages of 16 and 18. People with anorexia believe they are fat when in fact
they are dangerously thin. Anorexia causes damage to the body’s system as a result of
extreme malnutrition. Slow heart rate and low blood pressure which can result in death
from heart failure, are common problems. Sufferers need psychological treatment.

Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You may
want to jot down your ideas.

What do you think the source of this text is? Who do you think its audience is?

What would you say is its purpose? Is the personal pronoun (‘I’) used?

What sort of person do you think wrote it? Would you describe it as factual or emotive?

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Feedback to Activity 7.4

What do you think the source of this text is? Who do you think its audience is? We
cannot be certain of the source of this text, but it could come from a medical textbook, or
from a lecture given to students in the medical field. The medical discourse used is not too
advanced, however, so the audience could also be laypersons (people without specialist
knowledge of medical matters); for example, a group of parents and high school learners
in a school where anorexia was a problem. The principal may have arranged a meeting to
be addressed by a health professional to educate them about the dangers of becoming
obsessed with being thin. Alternatively, the text could appear in the health section of a
newspaper or magazine.

(Notice the tentative nature of the observations made so far: ‘could’ and ‘may’ indicate
uncertainty. What we are doing here is making ‘educated guesses’, based on our
experience of the world and our awareness of probabilities.)

What would you say is its purpose?

The purpose of the text is to inform. The speaker or writer is obviously someone who is
educated and well-informed about eating disorders in particular and is transmitting his/her
knowledge to others. The person has a command of standard English.

Standard English is English that is usually in the written form, grammatically correct and
free of slang and colloquialisms. It is the speech variety which is legitimised by the
dominant forces in a society and carries prestige. This has strong political implications.
People who have a command of standard English are empowered; those who don’t, are
disempowered and marginalised in certain contexts. Can you see the link between
language and the power structures in society?

If this is a live lecture situation, the speech has been planned well, unlike most spoken
language which is spontaneous, usually less formal, and which may include colloquialisms
and other non-standard features.

Is the personal pronoun (‘I’) used? What sort of person do you think wrote it? Nowhere is
the personal pronoun ‘I’ used. The writer has chosen to take a completely impersonal
perspective. We can infer that his or her educational level is relatively high from this text,
but learn nothing personal about him or her. The person is behaving professionally, and
not giving anything away about his or her own feelings or attitude.

Would you describe this text as factual or emotive?

The style of writing is factual, the tone impersonal. The speaker or writer does not go into
the feelings of the person with anorexia, or express his or her own feelings about the
condition.

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ACTIVITY 7.5

TEXT 3

WINTER ALWAYS MEANS A GREAT DEAL IN THE EASTERN CAPE

So banish your winter blues and turn up the heat with red hot fun and adventure in the
Eastern Cape this winter, where piping hot packages, price scorching discounts and great
getaways are up for grabs. Being in the hottest destination this winter has never been so
cool, so be there when temperatures rise at the many fiery sporting clashes,
action-packed festivals and fun-filled events taking place in the Eastern Cape this winter.

Go on – make a GREAT DEAL of the Eastern Cape’s sizzling discounts on a variety of

prime packages, amazing adventures, sumptuous dinners and escapes and budget-
beating specials AVAILABLE NOW!

Life is an adventure. Live yours in the Eastern Cape – the home of adventure.

What sort of text is this? Where would you expect to find it?

Pick out all the words that relate to temperature. What do you notice about these? Are
they all used in the same way? How do their meaning and usage differ?

Consider the phrase ‘a great deal’, used in the heading and main text. What do you notice
about this phrase?
What would you say the purpose of this text is?

What age group do you think it is aimed at? What makes you think so?

Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You may
want to jot down your ideas.

Feedback to Activity 7.5

What sort of text is this? Where would you expect to find it?

This text is an advertisement and could appear in a travel magazine, newspaper, on the
internet, or possibly be broadcast on radio or television. It could also appear on a poster or
in a pamphlet.

Pick out all the words that relate to temperature. What do you notice about these? Are
they all used in the same way? How do their meaning and usage differ?

There is a lot of word play on meanings of cold/hot, in both their literal and colloquial
senses. Words and phrases relating to temperature include ‘winter’, ‘turn up the heat’, ‘red
hot fun’, ‘price scorching’, ‘sizzling discounts’, ‘hottest’, ‘cool’ and ‘fiery’. Of these, only
‘winter’, meaning a cold season of the year, is used in its literal, or dictionary sense. All the
other words comprise current slang, where the words ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ both de- note
something attractive and desirable. Using ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ in their colloquial sense is an
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example of non-standard English usage. Such informal, non-standard usage is

acceptable in this context, but would not be appropriate in academic discourse. If you
were to use these words, with their colloquial meanings, in an assignment, you would be
penalised. Standard English is required in the academic world.

Consider the phrase ‘a great deal’, used in the heading and main text. What do you notice
about this phrase?

There is also wordplay in the phrase ‘a great deal’: it has two possible meanings; ‘a lot’,
and ‘a bargain’. Both meanings are intended.

What would you say the purpose of this text is?

The purpose of this text is to persuade. Language is used to manipulate the audience. It
aims to motivate people to spend a holiday in the Eastern Cape, boosting the tourist trade
in that part of the country.

What age group do you think it is aimed at? What makes you think so?

The text is aimed at a young audience, judging by the use of slang and colloquialisms like
‘hottest’ and ‘cool’, not generally used by the older generation. References to ‘fun’,
‘action-packed’, ‘fun-filled’ and ‘adventure’ also suggest that an energetic audience
wanting excitement is being targeted. Older consumers would probably look for opposite
qualities in a holiday destination: quietness and tranquillity. The words ‘discounts’,
‘packages’, and ‘budget-beating’ are intended to appeal to those with a limited holiday
budget.

The tone and style of the text is colloquial, racy and emotive, in keeping with its aim of
persuading its audience to buy the product – a holiday in the Eastern Cape.

ACTIVITY 7.6

TEXT 4

Dear Mr Mayor

Congratulations on your appointment. And a big congratulation on your smart new car.
You have barely been in your position and have purchased a car that most citizens can
only dream of owning.
I am sincerely hoping that this purchase will help you achieve the many goals that lie
ahead of you. I really hope this car helps you to:

• sort out the billing system;

• get all street lights working again;

• stop paying bonuses and unusually high salaries to officials who don’t perform;

• become more transparent with respect to the council’s financial affairs;

• end corruption in the council.

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It looks like this new car really has its work cut out. Good luck.

Citizen, Pretoria.

Where would you expect to find this text?

How does the writer feel about the Mayor’s appointment and the purchase of a luxury car?

What is his/her tone? Are the congratulations sincere? What is the writer’s purpose in
writing this letter?

What does this letter imply about the power relations in society? What sort of person do
you think the writer is?

Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You may
want to jot down your ideas.

Feedback to Activity 7.6

Where would you expect to find this text?

The source of this text is a letter to the editor of a newspaper, or a letter to the mayor
himself. If it appears in the newspaper, the audience is not only the editor, but the general
public; anyone who reads the newspaper.

How does the writer feel about the Mayor’s appointment and the purchase of a
luxury car?

The writer clearly rejects the mayor’s action of buying a luxury car as soon as he gets into
office. S/he pretends to admire the mayor, but really disapproves of his actions.

What is his/her tone? Are the congratulations sincere?

The tone is ironic. What do we mean by this?

Irony entails expressing the opposite of the truth. This is a very general definition: each
example of irony needs to be understood within its specific context. Irony is used in
everyday situations when we may, for example, say ‘Good evening’ to a colleague who
arrives late for a morning meeting, but it is also a frequently-used literary device. You will
encounter irony in many different forms in the texts prescribed in the Literature module.

The writer congratulates the mayor on something he strongly disagrees with – buying an
expensive car. He pretends to believe that the car will enable the mayor to fulfil his duties
when this is clearly impossible.

What is the writer’s purpose in writing this letter?

The purpose of the text is to criticise unnecessary expenditure of public money; to object
to inefficiency and corruption; to highlight poor service delivery; to inform the public of

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something they might not be aware of; to expose and mock behaviour which is not in the
public interest.

The style used is Standard English; the text is written clearly, with points listed
methodically. However, the meaning is not as simple as it appears. There is hidden
meaning and the writer’s true attitude is disguised.

A text such as this reminds us that the declared purpose of a text is not necessarily its true
purpose. The writer claims to be giving congratulations when he is actually expressing his
disapproval. There is an ironic disjunction between the apparent and true intentions. What
does this letter imply about the power relations in society?

The writer’s objections to the Mayor’s expenditure hint at the inequalities that exist in
society, and the uneven distribution of wealth. This in turn relates to the power structures
which privilege some people and disadvantage others. Here we are considering the
broader contextual concerns that this letter is addressing. Even as we study its use of
language on the micro-level, we are also functioning on the macro-level: we are conscious
of the extra-linguistic factors that add to its meaning.

What sort of person do you think the writer is?

The writer is a person with a strong interest in civic affairs and a critical mind. S/he
observes public events closely, feels strongly about them, and takes the trouble to write to
the newspaper to register his/her reactions and opposition, something that most people
would not bother to do. By challenging the existing social order (represented here by the
mayor and his extravagant habits), the writer is attempting to alter the power structures in
society. In a small way s/he is contributing to the discourse of public office; undermining
the belief that a high position should be linked with a luxurious lifestyle. S/he is using
language to do this.

ACTIVITY 7.7

TEXT 5

I knew that I had AIDS when I could no longer climb the stairs from the judges’ common
room in the High Court to my chambers two floors above. For nearly three years, every
morning after tea, I made a point of walking. Two flights, four landings, forty stairs. But on
that day in late October 1997 I couldn’t. Each step seemed an insuperable effort. My
energy seemed to have drained from my legs. I was perspiring grey exhaustion. My lungs
felt waterlogged. My mouth rough and dry. No pain. Just overwhelming weariness.

And fear.

After twenty steps I paused on the midway landing to lean my forehead against the wall.
The stairwell was quiet. I could hear myself panting. I grimaced. The thought − that thought
− could no longer be postponed. I would have to see my doctor. This afternoon.

But already I knew what he would say. It was what somehow I had been waiting for −
fearing, dreading, denying, as it encircled me, closing in, for twelve years. My mouth and
lungs told me what I didn’t want to know, didn’t need to be told. I had AIDS.

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 Where would you expect to find a piece of writing such as this?

Look at the verbs.

What tense are they in? What does this tell us about the type of text this is?

To what extent is the pronoun ‘I’ used? What is the effect of this?

Look at the lengths of the sentences. Are they roughly the same, or is there a variation?
Look at the final sentence of the passage. It is very short. What is the effect of this?

Does the writer always write in full sentences? Why do you think this is?

What contribution, do you think, does this text make to the discourse of AIDS?

Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You may
want to jot down your ideas.

Feedback to Activity 7.7

Where would you expect to find a piece of writing such as this? Look at the verbs. What
tense are they in? What does this tell us about the type of text this is?

This text could come from a diary, a letter; a novel; or an autobiography. (In actual fact, it
comes from an autobiographical text: Witness to AIDS by Edwin Cameron.) All the verbs
are in the past tense. This enables us to recognise that the text is in the narrative form: the
narrator is telling a story or giving an account of an event that has already happened. To
what extent is the pronoun ‘I’ used? What is the effect of this?

The pronoun ‘I’ occurs several times in the text. This gives the writing a profoundly
personal tone. The writer is describing his innermost feelings and sharing his deepest
fears. His honesty creates a very intimate relationship with the reader.

Look at the lengths of the sentences. Are they roughly the same, or is there a variation?

There is a great variation in sentence length. Some utterances run on using several
sentence parts and many words, while others (‘No pain’) consist of two words only. These do
not contain verbs, so, strictly speaking, they are not proper sentences. As already
mentioned, by definition, a sentence requires a finite verb. If we accept this definition, which
of the following utterances are proper sentences, and which are not?

This afternoon.

Two flights, four landings, forty stairs. Just overwhelming weariness.

And fear.

I grimaced.

I had AIDS.

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Only the last two quotations consist of proper sentences. Although short, they contain finite
(complete) verbs (‘grimaced’ and ‘had’). This shows us that even very short utterances
consisting of two or three words (or even one) can be full sentences, while longer ones like
‘Two flights, four landings, forty stairs’ are not, because there is no verb. Sentence length is
not the critical criterion for a sentence.

Why does the writer use ‘ungrammatical’ sentences, leaving out verbs? He is clearly an
educated person, so poor literacy is not the reason.

The writer varies his sentence structures for dramatic effect. As is discussed with regard to
the Shakespearean quotations considered in the Unit on Syntax (‘Full many a glorious
morning have I seen’), writers manipulate language for particular effects, sometimes
breaking the rules of grammar to do so. We call this ‘poetic licence’. This is commonly found
in creative writing, and absent or rare in factual or academic discourse. Unless you are
writing creatively, we do not recommend that you use verbless utterances in your
assignments. The marker would probably underline these and write a stern comment about
not writing in full sentences!

Edwin Cameron is expressing himself emotively, intent on conveying to the reader the
intensity of his reaction to the realisation that he finally had ‘full-blown’ AIDS. His incomplete
utterances, such as ‘No pain’ and ‘And fear’, help to convey his shock. Their short, staccato
quality could also suggest his breathlessness as he tries to climb up the stairs, gasping for
air.

Look at the final sentence of the passage. It is very short. What is the effect of this?

The final sentence: ‘I had AIDS’ is startling in its simplicity and directness. Had this same
point been made in a roundabout, wordy way, it would not have the same impact.

The analysis shows that the writer alters regular syntax − including omitting the crucial
element of the verb at times − to create the desired emotional effect. There is a direct
correlation between the deviant syntax and the emotive content of the text. The language
has been matched to the writer’s purpose and created the appropriate tone.

When you study the prescribed texts in the Literature Module (ENG1501), be on the lookout
for such variations in grammatical structure, and think about why the writer created these. It
is never enough to simply point out unusual features: in language and literature study you
need to be able to comment on their effects. Form and function, and form and purpose, are
linked.

How, do you think, does this text contribute to the discourse of AIDS?

People who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS have been marginalised, because AIDS has
been a stigmatised condition. People infected with and affected by AIDS have tended to
conceal their situations, thereby contributing to the culture of shame and silence around the
disease. They have been marginalised; rendered invisible and voiceless. This, until fairly
recently, was the prevailing discourse. Edwin Cameron, however, has chosen to challenge
this discourse by speaking out. In his book, of which we gave you the opening passage, he
declares his status openly, and has done this in several other public domains. As a
Constitutional Court judge, he holds a high position in society, and so his opinions would

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carry weight and be influential. He has thus altered the discourse of AIDS which assumes
that its victims are low in status and stereotypes the AIDS-ill as social pariahs. By speaking
out, he is encouraging others in similar positions to do the same and disclose their status.
The accumulation of such acts has had a major effect on how HIV-positive persons are
perceived and treated. The implications of this are enormous, including such issues as their
entitlement to free medical treatment and employability. It is significant that this has come
about because of language: such texts have helped to bring about change in the discourse
of AIDS.

ACTIVITY 7.8

TEXT 6

The next text is an edited extract from the famous ‘I am an African’ speech by former
President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, delivered in Parliament in Cape Town on 8 May
1996, on the occasion of the adoption of the South African Constitution Bill.

I am an African.
I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades,
the rivers, the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-
changing seasons that define the face of our native land.
My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has
thawed in the warmth of our sunshine and melted in the heat of the
midday sun. The crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed
by startling lightning, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope.
The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the
Lekoa. iGgili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been
panels of the set on the natural stage on which we act out the foolish
deeds of the theatre of our day.

A human presence among all these, a feature on the face of our native
land thus defined, I know that none may challenge me when I say – I am
an African!

I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the
great ex- panses of the beautiful Cape – they who fell victim to the most
merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first
to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and
independence and who, as a people, perished as a result.

I am formed of the migrants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land.
Whatever their own actions, they remain still part of me.

In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their
proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes
they bore on their bodies from the lash of the slave master are a reminder
embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

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I am the grandchild of the warrior men and women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune
led, the patriots that Cetshwayo took to battle, the soldiers Moshoeshoe and
Ngungunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom.

I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St. Helena and
the Bahamas, who sees in the mind’s eye and suffers the suffering of a simple
peasant folk; death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins.
I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided
in the fact, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me
that we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught me human existence
itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence.
Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that
assertion, I shall claim that – I am an African.

Read the speech aloud or get someone to read it and you LISTEN.

How does the language, tone and style of this speech suit the speaker and setting?

Who is this speech aimed at? Who is the audience? What is the mood of the
speaker?
What tense is this speech in? Look at the verbs to establish this.

Does this text have any interesting phonological (sound) features? Refer to the Unit on
Phonology, which discusses how certain phonological features can enhance the meaning
and effect of language.

Look at the words used in the first paragraph of the speech. Common nouns such as
‘hills’, ‘rivers’, ‘trees’ and ‘seas’ are used in their literal sense, but is their effect purely
literal? (Compare these nouns with the nouns used in the first text we discussed, ‘kettle’,
‘water’ and ‘surface’. Do they have the same effect? Why not?)

Look at the different groups, named by the then Deputy President, that form part of South
Africa’s history.

Why do you think he refers to these groups?

Consider the use of the personal pronoun, the ‘I’ in this text. What is unusual about this?

Compare his use of the pronoun ‘I’ with that of Edwin Cameron in the previous text. Is it
the same? This is not easy to decide. Mbeki constructs his identity in a complex way.

Read through the whole text and try to understand how he does this. On what does he
base his identity? Consider whether the meaning of the ‘I’ changes as the speech
develops.

What power relations underlie this text? What is the purpose of this speech? Consider the
significance of the date of this text. Can you relate its purpose to its historical context?
South Africa has eleven official languages, nine of which are African. Why does Mbeki
choose a non-African language in which to express his African identity and pro-African
ideas?

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Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You may
want to jot down your ideas.

Feedback to Activity 7.8

How does the language, tone and style of this speech suit the speaker and setting?
The speaker here, the Deputy President of South Africa at the time, uses language
befitting his position, the setting, and the importance of the occasion. The context dictates
that the speech be elevated, formal and dignified. Although spoken, the speech is
well- planned and carefully prepared (pre-written). The sentences are well-constructed,
and the lexis deliberately chosen.

What is the mood of the speaker?

The mood of the speaker is one of pride, and this is reflected in the positive tone he
adopts. It is uplifting, patriotic and celebratory. Rhetorical devices such as repetition, seen
in the phrase ‘I am an African’, stand out with powerful effect.

Rhetoric involves the skill of using language in a special way that influences people.

A rhetorical device is a method used in speech or writing to heighten the impact of what
is being expressed.

Who is this speech aimed at? Who is the audience?

The audience is not only the assembly in Parliament, but the South African people as a
whole, and the rest of the world. The adoption of South Africa’s new Constitution is a
major political and historical milestone, and would attract worldwide media attention. For
this reason, the Deputy President aims to create the most positive impression of South
Africa he possibly can.

What tense is this speech in? Look at the verbs to establish this.
The tense of this speech is the present: almost all verbs are in the present tense: ‘am’,
‘owe’, ‘know’, ‘come’ etc. Yet the speaker is also drawing on the past, which seems
something of a contradiction. He is subsuming everything in Africa’s history to construct
his present identity: the past is forged into the present.

Does this text have any interesting phonological (sound) features?

Phonological aspects are not easy to pick up when we read a text. This text was delivered
as a speech, designed to be heard, not read. If received aurally, it would be easier to
appreciate the sound effects of the rhetorical devices, such as the rhythms and repetitions
which are strongly present. If you read the speech aloud, you would become more aware of
these.

Look at the lexis (vocabulary) used in the first paragraph of the speech, especially common
nouns such as ‘hills’, ‘rivers’, ‘trees’ and ‘seas’. What is their effect?

The nouns he uses (‘hills’, ‘rivers’, ‘trees’ and ‘seas’) are drawn from nature, and although
they are common nouns, they evoke far more than their narrow, literal meanings.
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Subsequent references to the Drakensberg, deserts and other geographical features

conjure up visions of vast landscapes, magnificent in their scale and beauty. Expressions
such as ‘the crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightning,
have been a cause both of trembling and of hope’ have a poetic quality and powerful
emotive effect.

The landscapes he refers to serve as a ‘stage’ and backdrop for the deeds we enact every
day. You may recognize Shakespearean echoes here,1 which further elevate the tone of
the speech. Some abstract nouns in keeping with the idealistic nature of the speech are
also used: these include ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity’.

Look at the different groups, named by the then Deputy President, that form part of South
Africa’s history. Why do you think he refers to these groups?

The Deputy President names a wide range of groups, sharply different in ethnicity and
culture. He attempts to be inclusive and not leave any group out. When he states that all
these groups form part of who he is, he foregrounds the diversity of the South African
population, while at the same time indicating that they can be melded into one. South
Africa’s history is marked by bitter divisions between racial groups, and he is attempting to
overlay this history with a vision of unity.

Consider the use of the personal pronoun, the ‘I’ in this text. What is unusual about this?
The use of the pronoun ‘I’ is interesting in this speech. When Mbeki begins to speak, the ‘I’
appears to refer to himself personally. However, as he goes on, we begin to realise that,
with every new sentence, he is assimilating into this ‘I’ qualities that he is drawing from
numerous sources, human and non-human. Geographical features and countless different
communities that have existed over centuries are incorporated into his identity. By the time
he reaches the end of his speech, his ‘I’ in ‘I am an African’ has become a powerful
symbolic construct which encompasses the best possible qualities that any African could
have. This complex, comprehensive identity is presented as the ideal.

Compare Mbeki’s use of the pronoun ‘I’ with that of Edwin Cameron in the previous text. Is it
the same?

Mbeki’s use of the ‘I’ is very different from that of Edwin Cameron’s. As we established in
the discussion of that text, Cameron adopts a very personal tone as he narrates his
experience. Mbeki’s ‘I’, on the other hand, refers to a symbolic ideal: a composite identity
comprising many different elements.

What power relations underlie this text?

The power relations underlying this text are also interesting. As the spokesperson of the
government, Mbeki obviously has power. The setting in which he makes his speech – the
Houses of Parliament – is the seat of government, and so imbued with political power and
significance. Yet, in the speech itself, Mbeki seems intent on breaking down the ‘us/them’
divide, and identifying himself with ‘ordinary’ people. This is an essential aspect of the
discourse of democracy he has chosen to use.

What is the purpose of this speech? Consider the significance of the date of this text.

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The purpose of this speech is clear. It takes place in the immediate aftermath of apartheid
South Africa. An entirely different ethos must be established in the ‘new’ democratic South
Africa. The previous marginalisation of certain racial groups has to be reversed, hence the
prominence and pride in the repetitive phrase ‘I am an African’. The negative connotations
the word ‘African’ used to carry are replaced by connotations that are richly positive. Mbeki
is using language in an effort to change the discourse of Africanness.

The social order is in a continual process of change, and this occurs, to a large extent,
because of texts such as the one under examination. A single text is probably not enough
on its own to bring about discursive change, but a number of texts and social prac- tices
combined can do so over time (as we have seen in the change in the discourse of AIDS,
and in the empowerment of women and blacks). Mbeki is using his position of power to
construct a new ideology which could change the course of history.

Can you relate the purpose of this speech to its historical context?
After South Africa’s history of divisions and conflict, Deputy President Mbeki wants to
encourage reconciliation, positive attitudes and national pride. The eyes of the world are on
South Africa, and it is crucial that he inspires confidence and hope in its future. The
content, purpose, tone and style of this speech can be directly related to its historical
context. It is a classic example of a government intent on forging a new identity, and
provides an excellent example of the way that discourse constructs our knowledge and
beliefs. Language does not simply reflect the world: it forms perceptions and actively
creates what we understand by ‘reality’.

South Africa has eleven official languages, nine of which are African. Why does Mbeki
choose a non-African language in which to express his African identity and pro-African
ideas?

It could be regarded as deeply ironic that the ‘I am an African’ speech is given in English.
After all, English is a colonial language, associated with power structures which should be
obsolete in our new democratic order. Also, English is thought by many to be a serious
threat to the indigenous African languages because it dominates public discourse (refer to
Unit 5, where we reproduce the article ‘Death of the Mother Tongue’ by the eminent linguist
Rajend Mesthrie, and discuss the issues it raises). English occupies a hegemonic
(dominant, controlling) position in South Africa and the world, but this could change.
Society and discourse are dynamic, and power structures change over time.

English nominally has equal status with the ten other official languages. However, it is clear
that it is more widely used and enjoys greater status than the other languages. Mbeki can
reach more people if he speaks English than if he were to use an African language. There
are reasons for this: English is an international communicative medium, and it also serves
as a ‘linking language’ or lingua franca within South Africa’s borders. If he were to choose
an African language, which one would he choose? isiZulu is the most widely used of the
indigenous languages, but there are many other language groups who would not be
reached if he chose this medium, not to mention the international audience the speaker
has in mind.

There are logical, practical reasons why Mbeki chooses to speak in English, but the South
African language situation and its attendant power issues remain problematic. It is a
regrettable fact that South Africans lacking in English proficiency find themselves
disempowered in the employment and higher education sectors. Being proficient in English
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in South Africa, on the other hand, carries prestige and has undoubted social and political
advantages. Mbeki, as an English-educated citizen, is aligned with the privileged,
Eurocentric minority. This goes against the thrust of his speech: democratisation and the
establishment of an African identity.

In the discussion of this text, can you see how important extra-linguistic knowledge is to its
full understanding? If we analysed the text in isolation, without taking the surrounding
historical and political factors into account, much of its significance would be lost on us.

CONCLUSION

We hope that this chapter has demonstrated how language works within texts and in
particular contexts, and that you have a better understanding of how to go about textual
analysis. The skills involved in language analysis may be applied to texts of any kind, from
the most basic and mundane ones to those which represent the pinnacle of literary
achievement.

References

Carter, R., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K. & Swift, N. (1997) Working with Texts: A
Core Introduction to Language Analysis, London and New York: Routledge.

Horne, F. & Heinemann, G. (2006) English in Perspective, Cape Town: Oxford University
Press.

Wainright, J. & Hutton, J. (1992) Your Own Words, Walton-on-Thames: Thomas Nelson
and Sons.

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