Approaching English

Linguistics
SS 2023 Eva Triebl
Introducing myself
• Specialized in Applied Linguistics – Critical Discourse Analysis,
Pragmatics, Conversation Analysis (focus on online communication)
• Why do people say I‘m not an expert a lot on web forums?
• How do people caption instagram postings to guide their audience‘s
interpretation of their images?
• How do moderators of online forums use language to avoid or de-esacalate
conflict?
• How do people present themselves on online dating platforms to create an
authentic/trustworthy impression of themselves?
• …and how does all of this relate to the broader sociopolitical context? (
critique?)
• Reach me via eva.triebl@univie.ac.at
What‘s happening today

• Administrative issues: Workflow & exam

• Overview of course contents

• Universal properties of language

General course information
• 12 sessions (online, Mondays 15:00–16:30)
• Readings accompanying lectures
• Main course book: Yule, George (2014). The Study of Language. 5th edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ( on Moodle)
• Select chapters from other books ( on Moodle)
• Independent (self-study) reading ( on Moodle)
• 2-3 texts (TBA)
Introducing this course
• The origins and evolution of language
• When and how did humans start using language?
• What makes human language different from animal languages?
• Language as a system
• The study of linguistic meaning and meaning relations (Semantics)
• The sounds and the sound system of English (Phonetics and Phonology)
• The structure and formation of words in English (Morphology)
• The structure of sentences in English (Syntax)
• Language in use
• The study of meaning in context (Pragmatics)
• The study of the relations between language and society (Sociolinguistics)
• Language and the mind
• Language acquisition: How do children ‘crack the code’ – how has this impacted language teaching methods?
• Psycholinguisics and cognitive linguistics: where in the brain “is” language, how is the relation between
language and what we know & understand theorized?
• The history and present-day status of the English language
• Historical linguistics
• The history of the English language
• World Englishes
Approaching English Linguistics workflow

lectures readings
EXAM

note-
slides taking
Exam
• There will be an online exam during our last session on 26th June
2023
• 60 minutes
• Multiple choice & cloze questions
• Open questions on main course contents and independent readings
Both parts need to be positive for an overall positive grade!
• 5 sittings (dates TBA)
• For any and all questions regarding exam registration, contact the
StudienServiceStelle Anglistik and read their webpage!

https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/studium/termine-und-fristen/pruefungsterminkalender/
Linguistics?
Linguistics
The study of the elements the language system consists of, the ways
these elements can be meaningfully combined and how language is
used with different functions in various communicative contexts
Elevator music
Wedding music
Phone ringtones
Live concert
Living room concert
White noise for meditating
…..
Introducing this course
• The origins and evolution of language
• When and how did humans start using language?
• What makes human language different from animal languages?
• Language as a system
• The sounds and the sound system of English (Phonetics and Phonology)
• The structure and formation of words in English (Morphology)
• The structure of sentences in English (Syntax)
• The study of linguistic meaning and meaning relations (Semantics)
• Language in use
• The study of meaning in context (Pragmatics)
• The study of the relations between language and society (Sociolinguistics)
• Language acquisition and its implications for language teaching
• How do children ‘crack the code’ – how has this impacted language teaching methods?
• The history and present-day status of the English language
• Historical linguistics
• The history of the English language
• World Englishes
Language?
• “Words leave no traces in the archaeological record” (Balter 2015)
• Proxy indicators used by researchers to determine when language emerged
(for symbolic abilities, such as early art or sophisticated toolmaking skills 
activities which are assumed to require linguistic communication to be
performed)
• ~100,000 – 50,000 years ago (well before written language: ~5,000 years
ago)
• Writing appeared in ancient Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq),
representing a now-dead language known as Sumerian
 Gradual replacement of pictorial signs with symbols representing the
sounds of Sumerian
 Sumerian writing system: cuneiform
Gradual loss of iconicity
Simplification
Initially read from top to bottom,
then reading rotated by 90 degrees

Mesopotamia

Record of wages paid to workers 4,000 years ago

(© Trustees of the British Museum)
Egypt
• From 3200 BC onwards: Egyptian hieroglyphs (carved on small ivory
tables & painted
• Hieratic (‘priestly’) script: first ink writing; cursive writing system used
for Ancient Egyptian ceremonial purposes

limestone stela with

hieroglyphs
China
“Oracle bones” in the Shang dynasty (1300–
1050 BC) for divination rituals

pre-colonial
Mesoamerica © Trustees of the British
Museum
(Southern Mexico to Costa Rica)
Evidence of writing from ~900 BC
Mayan glyphs
https://www.bl.uk/history-of-writing/articles/where-did-writing-begin
 The beginnings of language… [also Jespersen:]
“the highest linguistic genius and the
lowest degree of linguistic imbecility are
very
• A divine source? rarely found among women. The greatest
orators, the most famous literary artists,
• “Whatsoever Adam called a living creature, that was the name have been men; but it may serve as a sort
thereof“ of consolation to the other sex that there
• Assumption that in absence of linguistic input, children would start are
speaking a „God-given“ language a much greater number of men than
• Experiments with isolating children, allegedly starting Hebrew (e.g. women who cannot put two words
King James IV of Scotland, ~1500) together
• In fact: Sad examples show that absence of linguistic input leads to no intelligibly, who stutter and stammer and
language acquisition at all hesitate, and are unable to find suitable
expressions for the simplest thought.
Between these two extremes the woman
moves
• Imitation and spontaneous reaction? with a sure and supple tongue which is
• Otto Jespersen (1922) ever ready to find words and to pronounce
• Bow-wow-theory: humans imitate natural sounds (moo, meow, splash, them in a clear and intelligible manner.”
cuckoo….) (Jespersen 1922: 253)
• Does language just consist of names for things, though?
• Pooh-pooh theory: instinctive noises humans make (ouch, oh)
• Egressive vs ingressive sounds
• Yo-he-ho/social interaction theory
• Sounds people make when working together
• Placing language in a social context
• Why don‘t apes speak, then?
• Physical adaptation
• Certain physical features (partial adaptations) are relevant for speech
• Upright posture and changed vocal tract, mouth/teeth/larynx and pharynx
 producing sounds instead of chewing and sucking
• Tool-making
• ~ 2 million years ago: evidence of tools
• Right-handedness: proves lateralization
• Tool-making & speech productin
 close relation between complex vocalization (speaking) and object manipulation (making or using
tools)
• Genetics
• Premise: All babies acquire language, deaf children become fluent in signing  is there an innate
capacity to learn a language?
• Moving away from evidence such as tools (gradual development) towards genetics (abrupt
change)
Communication?
• Do you communicate if you…
• Sweat
• Cry
• Turn red
• Scream?
• Signalling: appearance of signs (that may index aspects of the
communicative situation)

• Communication: use of signs as a means of intentional

communication
What makes human language unique?
What do all human languages share?
Reflexivity
• The ‘meta-property’ of language
• Allows us to reflect upon, talk about and study language
Displacement
“Man is apparently almost unique in being able to talk about things that are
remote in space or time (or both) from where the talking goes on. This
feature— “displacement”—seems to be definitely lacking in the vocal
signaling of man's closest relatives, though it does occur in bee-dancing”.
(Hockett 1960: 90)

http://youtu.be/Vaszh2bY3mc
Arbitrariness
chair
Stuhl
chaise
стул
szék
Sessel
 Wauwau (German)
One exception: bow wow (English)

Onomatopoeia ouah ouah (French)

gaf gaf (Russian)
ham ham (Albanian)
haw haw (Arabic)
ghaue ghaue (Bengali)
guau guau (Spanish)
bup bup (Catalan)
wang wang (Mandarin)
mong mong (Korean, Cantonese)

Image: Soukup 2008

vau vau (Croatian)
vov (Danish)
woef (Dutch)
Productivity, Creativity
• Ability to manipulate the communication system to create a “new”
messages
• Animal language: Fixed reference  one sign corresponds to exactly
one referent
Productivity, Creativity
• cannabusiness, n.: “The branch of commercial activity concerned with
the production and sale of cannabis or cannabis-related products.
Also as a count noun: a company…”
• chipmunky, adj.: “Resembling or characteristic of a chipmunk,
typically with reference to a person having prominent cheeks or a
perky, mischievous character.”
• misgendering, n.: “The action or fact of mistaking or misstating a
person’s gender, esp. of addressing or referring to a transgender
person in terms that do not reflect…”
(https://public.oed.com/updates/new-words-list-march-2019/)
Cultural transmission
• Humans will not produce language instinctively if they receive no
language input
"One of the most important functions of language is its role in the construction of
reality. Language is not simply a tool for communication; it is also a guide to what
[Edward] Sapir terms social reality. Language has a semantic system, or a meaning
potential which enables the transmission of cultural values (Halliday 1978: 109).
Therefore, while the child is learning language, other significant learning is taking
place through the medium of language. The child is simultaneously learning the
meanings associated with the culture, realized linguistically by the lexico-
grammatical system of the language (Halliday 1978: 23).”
(Linda Thompson, “Learning Language: Learning Culture in Singapore.” Language, Education, and
Discourse: Functional Approaches, ed. by Joseph A. Foley. Continuum, 2004)
Duality & Consituency
• Duality
2 levels:
• 1) distinct sounds: Small number of meaningless, but distinct elements (e.g.
/f/ and /s/)
• 2) distinct meanings: The distinct elements combine into meaningful signs
different from each other depending on how the element are combined (e.g.
/f/ and /s/ in fun vs. sun vs. uns)
• Consituency: larger units of meanings can be broken down into
smaller ones (e.g. unproportionally = un + proportion + al + ly)

• This allows for a potentially infinite number of language sequences

• Economical property of human language
Recursion
• The ability to place one component inside another component of the same kind
• The ability to be repeated infinitely
• The man with the hat  Noun phrase
• The man with the hat in the corner of the hotel in Vienna next to the women with
the silver coat and the green glasses married to my boss with the big nose
• Finite set of linguistic resources to produce an infinite number of utterances

... the rules of the grammar must iterate in some manner to generate an infinite
number of sentences, each with its specific sound, structure, and meaning. We
make use of this 'recursive' property of grammar constantly in everyday life. We
construct new sentences freely and use them on appropriate occasions ...
(Chomsky 1980: 221-222)
Variability
• Human language is inherently variable
• One and the same speaker will use different linguistic forms
depending on the occasion
• Different speakers will express the same meanings using different
forms
• Variation is systematic  linguistic choices are context-dependent
(and may be correlated with contextual variables)
• Relating to speaker identity
• Relating to speaker relationships
• Relating to settings, channels of communication
• …
Variability
Talking to my friend vs talking to my boss
Talking to a stranger vs talking to my mum
Talking about astronomy
Writing a letter vs talking on the phone
Donald Trump talking about women
Women talking to women vs women talking to men
Waiters speaking among themselves vs bankers talking among
themselves
Talking during a lecture vs talking at the nightclub
Animals’ ability to acquire language – a
controversy
• Read Yule, p. 16ff. “Talking to animals”
• Optionally listen to this podcast episode on Koko, the Gorilla, and
attempts of teaching it human language
https://podtail.com/podcast/you-re-wrong-about/koko-the-gorilla/
…and what the video about Koko using sign language
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqJf1mB5PjQ

 What’s the controversy, and what are implications for human

language?
What is communication?
Transmitted via CHANNEL
(auditory, visual, tactile..)

SENDER RECEIVER
MESSAGE Hearer‘s inferred
Speaker‘s intended ENCODING DECODING
meaning Sign meaning meaning

Intended message Message reconstructed

translated into linguistic from received signal
(or other) signal (= message is inferred)
Is this a text?
Yes, because
• A sign with an identifiable meaning has been intentionally selected
• Why can we identify a meaning?
• A linguistic choice has been made that is meaningful in the given
context
What is a (linguistic) message/a text?
Text is meaning
• Meaning is encoded (and thus realized) as
• Wordings (words, parts of words, clauses)  lexicogrammatical units
• Soundings
• Spellings

[T]ext is not made of sounds or letters; and in the same way it is not made of
words and phrases and clauses and sentences. It is made of meanings, and
encoded in wordings, soundings and spellings. In other words, we are
locating text at the semantic level. A text is a semantic unit, realized as
(encoded in) lexicogrammatical units which are further realized as (recoded
in) phonological or orthographic units. (Halliday 1975)
What is a text?
Text is choice
• What meanings are communicated and how depends on the context (
variability)

Secondly, text is choice. A text represents a selection within numerous sets of

options; everything that is said presupposes a background of what might have been
said but was not. In linguistic terms, each decision of the speaker—each
microlinguistic act, as it were—presupposes a paradigmatic environment, a set of
options that have the potentiality of being selected under the given conditions.
This is the background of what might have been. (Halliday 1975)
2 ways of looking at relations between
linguistic signs (constituents)
• Paradigmatic sense relations
(Level of choice)
• Relations between words that can have the same position in a sentence, i.e.
words to choose from
e.g. red, blue, white

• Syntagmatic sense relations

(Level of combination)
• Relations between words occurring in the same sentence
e.g. red wine
white wine
?blue wine
Level of choice
Level of combination

? ? ? 