INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

Language – defined as linguistic communication, speech communication, cognitive ability and

cultured-based.
VERBAL COMMUNICATION- language is remarkable means to communicate

 Speech communication – capable of transferring information even in the shortest amount of

time.
 Mental Process – a cognitive ability where language mirrors the mind
Linguistic Communication - set of signs and a system of symbols
- Study of language
- Cultured – shaped – “Each community is formed by the activity of language” –
Leonard Bloomfield
LANGUAGE VIEWED
Several groups of Linguist view language as follows:

 Structuralist – structured system of components, an idea with specific framework

 Transformationalist – language is a generative and creative process
 Functionalists- language as an instrument for communication and vehicle for expression.
 Interactionist – a product of human desire to communicate with another and acquire
language with one desire to learn.
“The nature of Language”
 Language has something to Learnt – genetically programmed in our brain to make
distinctions of the different sounds, things etc. learned through exposure and practice
 Language as Related to Culture of Society – we speak the same language as the people we
belong to.
 Language as Species-Specific, Uniformed and Unique – ability to use and respond to
language/ language is an attribute of humans
 Language as a System – language is similar to mathematics. It needs analysis.
 Language as Vocal – articulatory device of the human body primarily makes up language.
 Language as a Skill Subject – language is acquiring skills – listening and viewing, speaking,
and writing
 Receptive Skill – ability to understand information represented in words and
sentence
 Expressive Language Skill – facility to put forth sensible ideas into visual and
acoustic symbol
 Language as a means for Communication – process of conveying and exchanging message
from person to person
 Language as Arbitrary – absence of any natural connection between words sound
CHARACTERISTICS OF LANGUAGE:
1. Conventionality and non-instinctive 4. Displacement
2. Productivity and Creativity 5. Humanness
3. Duality 6. Universality
 Conventional – brought about by evolution and strengthen with convention
  Non-Instinctive – non is born with spontaneity to speak any language
 Productivity and Creativity – keeps on sprouting one word emerges another
 Duality – double articulation and semiotic/ gives language expressive power
 Displacement – language is context free, stimulus is not directly induced
 Humanness – endowed with physical attributes for them to acquire language
 Universality – has a unique style of functions in terms of sounds, vocabulary and structure.
Linguist identified two universals:
1. Absolute - all elements apply to every known language
2. Implicational – only particular features apply to different language
LINGUISTICS AND LINGUISTS
Linguistics – study of human language
Linguists – are scientist who study the general properties of grammars

 Micro-Linguistics – also called as theoretical linguistics or general linguistics. Studies

nature of language
“Structures or Levels”
 Phonology – studies the system of sounds
 Morphology – study of morphemes the smallest meaningful unit of a language
(study of structure, addition of letters)
 Syntax – arrangement of words and phrases
 Phonetics – studies of human speech, focusing on physical sound creation
 Semantics – study of meaning in language
 Pragmatics – study in linguistics and philosophy that focuses on the
communication and relationships between languages and their users.
 Macro-Linguistics – views language from a broader perspective. It is concerned of how
language is acquired.
Branch of Macro-Linguistics:
1. Psycholinguistics – focuses on the interrelation between linguistics and
psychological factors
2. Sociolinguistics – study of the effects of the social and cultural factors. It examines
the patterns and variations in a language
3. Computational Linguistics – study of understanding written and spoken language
from computational perspective.
4. Historical Linguistics – study of history of linguistics and how language change
5. Stylistics – study and interpretation of language in tonal style
6. Development Linguistics – studies the development of linguistic ability
7. Linguistic typology – classify language based on their structural and functional
8. Neurolinguistic – studies the relationship between language and the structures
9. Etymology – investigates the origins of words, their birth and development
Behaviorism - it demands that language teachers must be proficient enough.

 Stimulus Response
 Negative (Punishment) and Positive Reinforcement (Reward)
Nativism/ Innatism – humans must be born with Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
 Noem Chomsky – proponent of LAD
Interactionism – language acquisition has both biological and social components
Monitor Model – another idea supporting the principle that acquiring language has both bio and
socio
 Stephen Krashens Monitor Model – known as input hypothesis
Five Hypothesis:
1. The acquisition-Learning Hypothesis – Acquisition is the first language, learning language
usually happens in formal environment
2. Natural Order Hypothesis – natural or predictable order
3. Monitor Hypothesis – barrier at its forces the language learner to slow down
4. Input Hypothesis – simply to receive abundant meaningful “input”
5. Affective-Filter Hypothesis – acts like a screen or an opening
Interpersonal – enables humans to exchange experiences and establish relationships. It uses
grammatical preferences to influence behavior
GENERAL FUNCTIONS OF A LANGUAGE:
Informative – use in making a statement that provides information or that adds emphasis to known
information
Performative – used to do things or perform or reports
Expressive – reports attitudes and emotions. Uses language to express feelings
Jakobson’s Function of Language – influenced by Buhler’s to explain verbal communication, which
involves sharing information using spoken language.

ROMAN JAKOBSON’S COMMUNICATION MODEL (1960)

Context

Sender Message Receiver

Channel

Code

Referential Function – CONTEXT - associated with context and concerned with the content
Emotive Function - SENDER – comes out when we want to express our emotions
Conative Function – RECEIVER – used when the speaker expresses purposively or influence the
receiver
Phatic Function – CHANNEL – used for the sake of interaction, keep the communication open
Metalingual Function – CODE – talking about the language itself, its features

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE MODEL

Dell Hymes – linguist who first coined the term communicative competence in 1972
Communicative Competence – ability to communicate accurately and effectively using cohesion and
coherence.
COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE:

 Grammatical competence – ability to create grammatically correct utterances

 Socio-linguistic competence – concerned with the appropriateness of the utterances. Ability
to apply linguistic knowledge
(Socio – society; Linguistic – knowledge of language)
 Discourse competence – mastery of producing coherent and cohesive language inputs
(Cohesion – form; Coherence – meaning)

 Strategic competence – ability to solve problems during communication

PHONETICS
Phonetics is divided into 3 branches:
1. Acoustic Phonetics – study of physical properties of sound. It includes pitch, dynamics, etc.
 Pitch - is the relative highness or lowness we hear in sound.
 Dynamics - is the degree of loudness or softness of a sound.
 Timbre - refers to the quality of a time that distinguishes it from other tones of the same
pitch.
 Duration - refers to how long or short a sound is.
2. Auditory Phonetics - study of how sounds are received by the ear and decided by the brain.
3. Articulatory Phonetics - study of how sounds are produced
Soft Palate (velum) is the fleshy section of the roof of the mouth that is movable and closes of the
nasal cavity during swallowing.
Speech Production — one of the most complex human activities. It involves coordinating numerous
muscles and complex cognitive processes.
4 Stages of Speech Production:

 Conceptualization - this is when a speaker spontaneous listing of what he or she is going to

say.

 Formulation - this is when a speaker thing of the particular words that are going to express in
their thoughts.

 Articulation - this is when the speaker physically says what he or she has thought of saying.

 Self-Monitoring - this is when the speaker reflects on what he or she has said and makes an
effort to correct any errors in his or her speech.
Phoneme -is a single unit of sound that has meaning in any language
Consonants - described using the place they are articulated in the mouth.
Voicing - is whether the vocal cords vibrate or not. The sound /S/ is called voiceless because there is
no vibration and sound /Z/ is called voiced because the vocal folds to vibrates.
Stops - involves closure of the articulator to obstruct the airstream. This manner of articulation can be
considered in terms of nasal and oral stops.
Trills - a trill results when an articulator as held loosely fairly close to another articulator.
Taps - is produced if one articulator is thrown against another.
ARTICULATION OF CONSONANT SOUNDS
Consonant - is a speech sound, which is formed by the complete or partial closure of the upper vocal
tract.
Places of Articulation
Alveolar - when we use the tip of the blade of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, reproduced is
consonant sound. Example: tie, pie, nigh, sigh.
Bilabial - sound produced by bring bowls clips into contact with each other or by rounding them.
Example: buy, my, pie and so on.
Dental - a consonant sound produced by placing the tongue against the back of the top front teeth is
called dental. Example: thigh, thy and so on.
Labiodentals - sound pronounced by raising the lower lip until it touches the upper front teeth is
called labiodentals. Example: fie, vie and so on.
Palatal - sound pronounces by raising the tongue to or near the hard palate is called palatal.
Example: Hugh and so on.
Palato-alveolar - sound pronounced by placing the tip of the tongue down behind the back of a
tongue
Retroflex - sound pronounced with the tip of the tongue raised and bent backward known as retroflex.
Example: rye, row, ray and so on.
Manner of Articulation - It explains how the tongue, lip, jaw, and other speech organs involved in
the consonant sound production
Classification of Articulation;
Stop Consonants - occur when the articulator is closed complete list so that the airstream cannot go
out of the mouth. There are two types of stop consonants.

 Oral Stop - when there is a complete blockage of both nasal. The air pressure in the mouth
will build up and an oral stop will be formed.
 Nasal Stop - when the air is stopped in the oral cavity and it has it through the nose, we
obtain nasal Stop.
Fricatives - involves close approximation of two articulator so that the air stream is partially
obstructed and a turbulent airflow is produced.
Approximant - are produced when one articulator approaches another but does not make the vocal
tract so narrow that a turbulent airstream results.
Laterals - when the air stream is obstructed in the midline of the oral tract
THE ARTICULATION OF VOWEL SOUNDS
Vowel - is a speech sound, which is articulated with and open oral tract. There are 2 kind of vowel the
monophthong and diphthong.

 Monophthong is a single or simple vowel sound constituting the nucleus of a syllable.

  Diphthong is produced as one continuous sound not as a succession of sounds.
3 Categories of Vowel
Vowel-Height - refers to the vertical height of the tongue.
Vowel-Backeness - the position of the tongue during the pronunciation of a vowel with respect to the
back of the mouth
Vowel-Roundedness - the position of the lips plays a vital role in articulating vowels it's is rounded
or not.
Vowel-Nasalization - is the articulation of a vowel sound when the soft Palate is lowered, so that the
air travels through the mouth.
Vowel-Phonation - is the voicing process of articulating a vowel, where the vocal cords produce
certain periodic vibrations.

SUPRA - SEGMENTALS OR PROSODIC FEATURES

Suprasegmental or Prosodic Features – studies the stress, rhythm and intonation of a sentence. Are
the secondary components of language.
Fundamental Frequency - the rate which the vocal cords vibrate. It is otherwise known as pitch,
judged by the listener on scale from high to low.
Duration - It can be a brief sound or long sounds. Some speech sounds are generally longer or shorter
that other sounds
Stress - means to emphatic or more prominent. Stress can be accomplished by changing the pitch.
Phonetic Transcription - is the use of phonetic symbols to represent speech sounds.
Segmental Phonology – studies the phonemes of a sentence
PHONOLOGY
Phonology - is the main branch of linguistics that deals with the study of the sound system of
languages.
Branches of Phonology:
1. Segmental phonology - deals with sound segments of language as vowels and consonants
and how they make up a syllable.
2. Supra-segmental phonology - Supra means ‘above’ or ‘beyond’ and segments are sounds
(phonemes) known as prosody. It is concerned with those features of pronunciation
PHONEME - the smallest meaning distinguished sound in language. the actual symbols that you see
on the IPA phonetic chart. Phonemes are in what’s called “contrastive distribution”, which means
that they can produce a change of meaning.
ALLOPHONES - are the groups of phones that are represented by the same phoneme.

 Allophones of the phoneme /t/.

 Aspirated sounds – produce a little puff of air after the sound.
 Unaspirated sound – does not produce puff of air after the sound.
Phonetic Vs. Phonetic transcription
- is the use of phonetic symbols to represent speech sounds.

 Phonetic transcriptions - provide more details on how the actual sounds are pronounced.
- employs special characters to show the difference in the pronunciation of certain words.
- usually given in brackets, like this: /houm/, /kam/.
- Phonemic Transcriptions – a system of symbols used to represent the sound of speech.
- use square brackets to enclose phones or sounds and slashes to enclose phonemes.
- Phonemes – sound pattern
- Syllables – the movement of the tongue.
SYLLABLE - is a unit of pronunciation that can join other syllables to form longer words
- is also often considered the Phonological “building blocks” of the words.
Three types of Syllables:

 Onset (consonant)
 Nucleus (vowel)
 Coda (consonant)
Onset – is the sound at the beginning of the syllables. Example: Buy, plan and strong
Nucleus – consists of only one vowel sound. It can be a monophthong, diphthong or triphthong

 Monophthong – is one vowel sound in syllable. Example: speak /spi: k/

 Diphthong – sound found by the combination of two vowels in a syllable. Example: cake
/keik/
 Triphthong – is a glide from one vowel to another and to the third, all produced rapidly and
without intimation. Example: hour /ɑ: ʊə/
Coda - is the consonant after the nucleus. Example: Stop /Stop/; Fast /fɑ:st/; Comments / kɒm. ents/
- A syllable with a coda is called a closed syllable or checked syllable. Ex. Work /wɜ:k/
- If a syllable has no coda, we call it an open syllable or free syllable. Ex. Try / trɑɪ /
Free / fri:/
TYPES OF SYLLABLES:

 Open Syllable – end in a vowel and have a long vowel sound

 Closed Syllable – end with a consonant and have a short vowel sound
 Vowel-Consonant-e Syllable – end with a long vowel, a consonant, and a silent-e
 Diphthong (vowel sound) Syllable – syllables that include two consecutive vowels making a
singular sound
 R-Controlled Syllable – end in at least one vowel followed by-r
 Consonant-le Syllable – end with a consonant followed by-le
Sound Change -may happen within a language and create language variation or result in change of
one language to another through time.
Sound Changes happen;
  Within a word
 Between two different words
 Pace of speech
 Intonation
DISTINCTIVE FEATURES
Roman Jakobsan - proposed that there is one universal set of distinctive features for all languages,
which define classes of sounds relevant to phonology.

 All contrasts must be stated in terms of these features.

 All restrictions on distribution must be stated in terms of these features.
Distinctive features - are the universal set of cognitive properties associated with the speech sounds
that are used in language.
PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES – are the predictable patterns of speech errors

 Gliding – the substitution of a liquid sound with a glide sound letter

 Stopping – the substitution of a stop sound for a fricative sound
 Denasalization – the substitution of a nasal consonant with a non-nasal consonant
 Syllable Reduction – the elimination of a syllable from a word
 Initial Consonant Deletion – the elimination of the beginning consonant of a word
 Vowelization – the substitution of vowel sound for “I” or “er” sounds
 Cluster Reduction – the reduction of a consonant cluster to one consonant
 Fronting – terms used when sounds should be made in the back of the mouth
 Final Consonant Deletion – the elimination of the final consonant in a word
 Backing – substitution of the sound produced in the front of the mouth
What are the Phonological Processes?
1. Assimilation Process - is a process by which one sound becomes more similar to a nearby
sound in one or more features.
2. Substitution Process – involves changes, such as one sound class changing to another sound
class.
3. Syllable Structure Process – cause sounds, or syllables to be reduced
4. Insertion/Epenthesis – phonological process where a child inserts a sound or a syllable in
between two sounds.
5. Metathesis – where a child switches the order of two sounds in a word.
PHONETIC AND PHONEMIC TRANSCRIPTION
International Phonetic Alphabet – is the most widely used system for phonetic transcription
Phonetic – only requires a basic understanding of the phonemes
MORPHEME
MORPHEME
FREE BOUND Contractual (‘t) (‘ll) (‘ve)
Noun Adjective
 Inflectional ((s) plural) Derivational (Affixes) – base form

Ex: Cats - cat+s = free, bound morpheme

MORPHOLOGY - in Greek, the word “morph” means form or shape, and the “ology” means
study. is referred to as the study of patterns of word formations or structure of words.
Morpheme - is the smallest unit of language that conveys meaning regularly across words.
Morpheme Vs. Word - Morphemes are part of every single word. Word is a unit of constituent that
necessary to create phrase and sentences.
MORPH - is the phonetic realization of a morpheme or the way a morpheme is formed.
ALLOMORPH - is a morph that has a unique set of lexical features. Are the distinct variant of the
same morpheme.
CLASSIFICATIONS OF MORPHEMES

 FREE morphemes - are those that can stand on their own.

 BOUND Morphemes - cannot stand on their own, it needs to be attached to a free morpheme
 INFLECTIONAL MORPHEME - is a kind of bound morpheme inserted to within the root
or stem to create a new word but do not necessarily change its meaning.
 DERIVATIONAL MORPHEME - are affixes attached to a free morpheme, which change
their functional meaning.
LEXICAL MORPHEMES - are identified as words that contain meaning of the messages and are
often referred to as the content words.
FUNCTIONAL MORPHEMES - are words in the sentences that modify the meaning.
MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESS - involves changing of stems to adjust their meaning and fit the
syntactic context.
AFFIXATION- is a kind of bound morpheme that is fused to a word stem to form a new word.
PREFIX - are affixes that precede the root or are placed before a stem.
SUFFIX-are morphemes added at the end of root words or stem to form a derivative word.
INFIXES-are free morphemes that are inserted within the root or the stem to create a new word.
CIRCUMFIXES- are affixes attached in two parts to the stem or roots.
MODICATIONS This involves alteration within a root or stem to adjust to a grammatical
requirement of the word in a sentence.

 CONSONANT MODIFICATION - involves in changing of the consonant to change its

categorical meaning.
 VOWEL MODIFICATIONS - involves in changing the vowel to change its categorical
meaning.
REDUPLICATION - is a special word formation where all or a part of the base is repeated as a
prefix or suffix.

 repetition - this is done by repeating the word

 rhyming - done by rhyming the two halves of the word.
  ablaut - done by shifting the vowel which changes the word.
DERIVATION - process of forming words by adding derivational affixes to the base or root word to
form a new word.
BACK FORMATION - It is the opposite of word derivation. It is created by removing affixes and
shortening of some words.
CLIPPING- process of word formation in which an existing word is reduced or shortened usually to
a single syllable without changing the meaning of the word.
COINAGE -is a word formation process where a certain word is created through brand names
BLENDING - is a blend of two or more words to generate a new one.
COMPOUNDING - is a word formation using a combination of two or more lexemes. It may be
written as two words joined by a hyphen or one word.
ACRONYMS - are words formed from the initials of certain names which is a practice that continues
up to the present.
EPONYMS - are words created from the names of real of fictitious characters.
BORROWING - are loan words, is common in the English Languages. These words are borrowed
from other languages
CALQUING - called as loan translation. Word is translated from the original to another language that
fits the characteristics of the new word.
NOINCE WORDS - are new words created for the nonce or single occasion.
MORPHOLOGICAL TYPES OF LANGUAGES - is how many morphological processes a word
undergoes on average.

 ANALYTICAL LANGUAGE = less morphologically complex

 SYNTHETIC LANGUAGES = more morphemically complex
 ANALYTICAL LANGUANGES - are languages with relatively little morphology
 ISOLATING LANGUANGES - are languages with (almost) no morphological process.
 SYNTHETIC LANGUANGES- Divided into three kinds: - Agglutinative Languages-
Fusional Languages- Polysynthetic Languages
 AGGLUTINATIVE LANGUANGES - are languages where words are built with many
affixes, each of which conveys one aspect of meaning.
 FUSIONAL LANGUANGES - are languages where words are built with a few affixes, each
of which conveys several aspects of meaning.
 FUSIONAL - each affix conveys several aspects of meaning simultaneously many
irregular forms
 AGGLUTINATIVE - each affix conveys a single aspect of meaning few or no
irregular forms
POLYSYNTHETIC LANGUANGES - are languages where words consist of very many bound
morphemes